Philly City Council postpones effort to require data collection on overdose reversals and homeless encampments

Philadelphia lawmakers on Tuesday voted to postpone legislation compelling the city to collect and share data on issues related to homelessness and drug overdoses, including the number of people who are repeatedly treated with overdose reversal medication and where they are located.

City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents Kensington and sponsored the bills, put them on hold after city officials testified during a committee hearing that they already keep some of the data she’s seeking and would compile it.

The legislation marked the latest move by Council to change how the city responds to the drug overdose crisis, which led to a record 1,413 deaths in 2022. A group of four Democrats led by Lozada has sought to crack down on the conditions in Kensington specifically, where an open-air drug market has long plagued the neighborhood and ushered in high levels of homelessness.

It also comes as new Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has sought to end the drug market and has advocated for a handful of strategies different from her predecessor, former Mayor Jim Kenney, who favored a public-health driven approach. Last week, Parker said her administration would not allow dollars derived from settlements with drug companies to fund the purchasing of clean syringes or other items that enable drug use.

Not everyone agrees with her. And a tense two-hour hearing about Lozada’s bills Tuesday exposed divisions in Council over City Hall’s intense attention on Kensington, with more progressive members expressing concern about the legislation. It ended with Lozada putting the bills — which Parker supports — on hold.

Lozada said Council wants to better understand specific blocks where the overdose crisis is most acute so the city can more efficiently fund city services.

She and her allies want anonymized information about the number of people living in homeless encampments, as well as concentrations of people who are repeatedly administered naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal medication also known as Narcan.

“Sometimes we are reversing overdoses for the same person multiple times throughout the course of the day,” she said. “At what point do we say ‘we need to address this person, or we need to connect this person to more resources?’”

Martin W. McCall, the fire department’s deputy commissioner for emergency medical services, said the city already has data on naloxone use and could publish anonymized information about how often, and where, first responders administer it.

But he said identifying the number of people who are repeatedly administered naloxone could be a challenge. First responders often never learn the names of people who are treated because, he said, many patients refuse further medical treatment after being revived.

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City Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat who represents the city at-large, said her takeaway from McCall’s testimony was that the city already has much of the information the legislation required it collect.

“We all know there is a massive problem and we’re all ready to roll up our sleeves to help with it,” she said. “I don’t want to use limited city resources to do things like counting people and counting things, when what we really need to do is build significant treatment facilities that lead to long-term housing and care and job creation.”

David Holloman, the interim director of the Office of Homeless Services, said his office also already collects and publishes data on the number of people who are unsheltered in the city — a requirement under federal law — and could compile information on efforts to clean up encampments.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re asking in terms of what you want [us] to report on,” Holloman said.

And emotions flared when at-large City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, a member of the progressive Working Families Party, questioned McCall about the city’s support for “harm reduction,” the drug policy approach that aims to keep people alive until they are ready to seek treatment.

He asked about the consequences “if the city stops funding harm reduction, resources like Narcan, specifically.” The implication elicited a forceful response from Lozada, who has rejected some progressive approaches to addressing the opioid epidemic but has said she does not oppose all forms of harm reduction.

“I want to end the misinformation that is out there that my colleagues and I, or this administration, want to end harm reduction in the Kensington community,” she said. “That is not the facts.”

Lozada then turned to O’Rourke during a break in testimony and said, “That is not true, and we have had this conversation.”

Parker said last week that she is similarly not opposed to harm reduction strategies like syringe exchanges as a concept, but that the funding the city receives from opioid settlements will be focused on long-term treatment and housing. She has not said her administration would seek to limit city funding for naloxone.