For the second consecutive year, Mayor Cherelle Parker centered Kensington in her budget address Thursday, recognizing the Kensington Caucus while unveiling a $6.7 billion budget proposal with major spending on policing, prisons, and a “wellness ecosystem” largely represented by a city building complex that various trade unions gutted and converted into an addiction recovery housing facility in Northeast Philadelphia.
Parker’s spending plan includes $216 million over five years on the “wellness ecosystem,” mostly for the Riverview Wellness Village, a 336-bed recovery housing facility for people who have completed between 30 and 90 days of substance use treatment. She is also seeking $65 million in capital funding over the next year to expand Riverview’s building capacity to 600 beds by constructing an additional residential site. “Since day one of my administration, we have worked shoulder to shoulder with the residents of Kensington to end this opioid-driven humanitarian crisis once and for all,” Parker said.
She repeatedly thanked various trade unions for their role in city projects.
“Under the leadership of Managing Director Adam Thiel, Capital Programs Director Aparna Palantino, and a host of city agencies – and with the tremendous work of the Philadelphia Building Trades and other unions, we gutted and rehabilitated an existing city facility in Northeast Philadelphia in 88 days – record time! – and we opened the Riverview Wellness Village in January,” Parker said.
Riverview, which opened in January, has nearly filled one wing of the new facility, which can house up to 44 people, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Meanwhile, the city estimates that about 800 people are experiencing homelessness in Kensington.
Clients can be referred to Riverview by their counselors at a drug treatment program using the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services’ (DBHIDS) recovery house referral form, according to Amanda David, the interim deputy commissioner for DBHIDS.
Beyond Riverview, Parker is proposing $2.7 million to expand the Kensington “wellness court”– a fast-track court for people arrested on summary offenses, including disorderly conduct, obstructing the highway, public intoxication, and failure to disperse. She wants to expand that program from one to five days per week.
She is also seeking $2.8 million to expand the Police Assisted Diversion (PAD) program at B St. and Lehigh Avenue in Kensington and $1 million for the Defender Association of Philadelphia to support the wellness court process.
Funding for these initiatives would come from the city’s general fund and opioid settlement funds, according to the budget proposal documents. The settlement funds are from a federal lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Policing, prisons, and violence prevention
Parker’s five-year budget plan includes $3.77 billion in “new, targeted investments,” with 27% allocated to public safety. The remaining funds are distributed across seven other spending categories: clean and green initiatives (22%), economic opportunity (16%), the labor reserve (15%), core support (9%), housing (5%), education (4%), and the federal funding reserve (3%).
For the 2026 fiscal year, which runs from July 2025 through June 2026, Parker proposed nearly $306 million in public safety spending. That includes more than $186 million in operating expenses and $119 million in capital funding.
Under Parker's proposal, public safety spending accounts for 44% of the next one-year budget, followed by Parker’s five other spending sectors: clean and green (20%), economic opportunity (17%), core support (12%), education (4%), and housing (4%).
“Philadelphians want to be safe and feel safe, and they deserve that basic human right, and I am unapologetic about supporting our police department,” Parker said.
The proposed public safety budget includes $5 million in funding for new police facilities, with $1 million for security improvements and general renovations and construction.
With that money, Parker wants to continue expanding the Philadelphia Police Department, which expects to hire 400 officers in 2025, compared to 369 in 2024 and 201 in 2023, Parker said – a nearly 100% increase from former Mayor Jim Kenney’s last year in office.
“I've always made it clear I fully support every police officer who's on the front lines protecting and serving Philadelphians, so long as they do so without any misuse or abuse of their constitutional authority,” Parker said.
She said every patrol officer will be outfitted with a body camera by the end of 2025, and the city will install dash cameras in every police vehicle.
An information sheet shared with the press Thursday states that the police department “continues to upgrade and deploy a range of new technology and equipment,” including cell phone and video software, as well as drones.
Parker also referenced anti-violence grants her administration awarded to community organizations between 2024 and 2025, totaling over $40 million, plus $3 million for youth sports.
“We cannot police our way out of the problems associated with gun violence or open air drug markets anywhere in our city,” she said.
The Department of Public Safety would receive an additional $25 million in Anti-Violence Community Partnerships Grants under the current budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
Parker also mentioned Philadelphia’s prisons department, which has been under scrutiny following several recent prison deaths and a judge’s recent ruling that the city’s jails have not improved as required following a 2020 lawsuit over inhumane conditions.
Her proposal includes funding to replace locks, install security cameras and air conditioning throughout the city’s prison facilities, and purchase body cameras for corrections officers, according to Sabrina Maynard, the city’s budget director.
She also plans to allocate $4.3 million per year for the Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) programs in the city’s prison system.
At least three people have died in either the police or prison department’s custody in recent months, and Philly’s jails are chronically understaffed, leading to consistent backlogs in initiating MOUD treatment for people incarcerated there.
Other priorities that could impact Kensington
Another key expenditure in Parker’s plan is a push to expand Philadelphia’s housing stock by 30,000 units.
For that project, Parker is asking City Council to approve an $800 million loan, paid in annual installments of $166 million, to fund her Housing Opportunities Made Easy (HOME) program. That request is in addition to $2.2 million per year she wants to spend on consultants and program staff to manage the initiative.
Budget documents state that the HOME program housing is intended to be priced below the market rate—or, as the text reads, a price affordable to “the typical Philadelphia household.”
Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who represents the 7th District, said she will “ensure” that affordable housing development occurs in Kensington without displacing residents while also preserving the “identity, history, and culture” of the neighborhood.
“Most of the land available is in the Seventh and the Fifth Councilmanic Districts, and so I'm looking forward to having conversations with the administration to figure out what that looks like,” Lozada said in an interview following the budget address.
Lozada also said she will advocate for more education funding and ensure economic opportunities for Kensington residents.
Parker also highlighted her budget’s continued spending on cleaning and greening initiatives. That includes more than $3 million per year for street and vacant lot cleaning and $2.7 million over five years for planters along commercial corridors.
She also plans to use opioid settlement funds for outreach to address overdose disparities ($550,000), wound care ($855,000 each in fiscal years 2026 and 2027), and the maintenance of 175 homeless services beds ($2.8 million per year).
What happens next?
On March 24, Parker is hosting a special budget session focused on housing, where she said she plans to detail her affordable housing plan.
City Council budget hearings at City Hall will begin on March 25 and run through May 7. Public testimony can be made during the last two hearings on May 13 and May 14.
Anyone can view the full budget proposal documents, view the budget hearing schedule, and sign up for public comment at phlcouncil.com/budget2026.
Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this story? Send an email to editors@kensingtonvoice.com.
