Philly City Council advances bill to block Parker administration addiction facility in Fairmount

Philadelphia lawmakers are a step closer to blocking Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration from renewing a lease at a Fairmount homeless shelter where officials have expanded capacity to serve people with addiction.

City Council’s Committee on Public Property advanced legislation Wednesday to block the city from renewing its lease at 2100 W. Girard Ave., the site of the former Philadelphia Nursing Home that has also been used as a shelter. The city’s current lease at the state-owned facility ends in 2026.

The legislation, championed by Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., comes after he and Fairmount residents expressed outrage at the Parker administration’s efforts to quietly add 90 beds and additional services at the site last month. Top administration officials cast the effort as a needed expansion of addiction services amid a crisis of drug use and homelessness in the city. The administration has focused much of its work in Kensington, the site of one of the largest open-air drug markets in the country.

Young, who took office in January, said he was not consulted before the administration moved forward with its plans, and residents said they feared open drug use or homeless encampments sprouting up in their neighborhood.

» READ MORE: Fairmount residents up in arms over Parker administration plan to house people in addiction

Parker acknowledged the miscommunication during an interview with The Inquirer’s editorial board Tuesday, saying her administration should have met with Young before moving forward with plans to expand capacity at the location.

“We should have been more proactive in our communication,” Parker said. “You’re never going to hear me or anybody in this administration falter if we’ve made a mistake.”

But her administration opposes Young’s effort to prevent it from renewing the lease. David Wilson, deputy managing director for general services, said in written testimony Wednesday that the Parker administration doesn’t support the bill or “any similar pieces of legislation” that would prohibit future agreements between the city and the state at the location.

Wilson wrote that the legislation “does not align with the administration’s vision and commitment to provide long-term care, treatment, and housing to our most vulnerable residents.”

He did not testify in person, and the administration didn’t send a representative to the hearing to answer questions from Council members, which Young called “unfortunate.”

“We put this bill in to have a substantive conversation with the administration about the property,” he said, adding that Fairmount residents are “owed a conversation, a public conversation, a transparent conversation.”

Tim Butters, president of the Fairmount Civic Association, testified in favor of the legislation, saying he was concerned about safety around the building and had seen an increase recently in open drug use, discarded syringes, and overdoses.

“These are things that we were not ready to be helping people with because we didn’t know that it was coming,” Butters said. “Maybe if we were more prepared, had a dialogue with the city, we’d be more prepared to help our community take on these challenges.”

The bill could be considered by the full Council as early as this week.