A large group of state lawmakers and city staffers walked down Kensington Avenue for about 90 minutes on Friday afternoon, navigating used needles, cigarette butts, and piles of litter. They also walked by dozens of people sitting or lying in varying states of consciousness on the sidewalk.
The group included two state senators, a venture capitalist, two police supervisors, two mayoral advisors, a nonprofit director, an addiction outreach worker, and a handful of people from the city’s Police-Assisted Diversion program.
State Sen. Christine Tartaglione, who represents parts of Philadelphia, including Kensington, said she gathered the group because Sen. Greg Rothman, who represents two counties west of Harrisburg, asked her for a tour.
Both senators sit on the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, which monitors how local jurisdictions spend federal opioid settlement funding from lawsuits against drug manufacturers and distributors. The dollars are distributed to Pennsylvania and then to local jurisdictions. Philadelphia received about $20 million in 2023 and is expected to receive a total of $200 million over the next 18 years.
“I know what’s going on in my counties,” Rothman said before the tour. “And I said to [Tartaglione], ‘I’d like to see what you’re doing.’ I will always defer to the senator from their district, but I also wanted to see it for myself.”
City leaders allotted $7.5 million of the $20 million to two Kensington nonprofits – Impact Services and the New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC). It’s now being disbursed for improvements to schools and parks, home repairs, and eviction prevention.
But in June, both Rothman and Tartaglione voted Philadelphia's spending in Kensington noncompliant with state rules, as did the majority of the 13-member trust.
Tartaglione says Philly’s spending falls outside Exhibit E, a state-approved spending list, which includes overdose antidote naloxone, medication-assisted treatment, care for pregnant women, and recovery programs, among other allowances.
“When we went through the items for Philadelphia, they weren’t the traditional requests we had from around the state,” she said.
The City of Philadelphia has filed an appeal against the decision and will bring the issue to the trust’s resolution dispute board on Oct. 3. A “no” vote would not claw back the money Kensington groups have already received, but it could affect the way the state distributes funding in the future.
“We’ll see what happens,” Tartaglione said Friday. “If [Philadelphia] can make their argument that it fits under Exhibit E, we’ll do it. If they don’t, they have the opportunity to go to Commonwealth Court.”
Rothman said he initially voted the funding noncompliant because he didn’t realize the impact that the opioid crisis was having on residents in Kensington, especially families.
“If you had asked me this morning how many kids live in Kensington, I would’ve said, ‘There are no kids in Kensington,’” he said. “I just saw [a school] a half a block from where we were walking.”
Keli McLoyd, director of the city’s Overdose Response Unit, reminded Rothman that Philadelphia’s rejected plan for the opioid settlement money includes funds for six Kensington schools.
Rothman admitted a “lack of knowledge” and said he was deferring to Tartaglione as an expert on her district.
“I just didn’t know,” he said. “We try to do this job with all the facts, and now I’ll know.”
During the tour, McLoyd also told Rothman and others about the wounds on peoples’ limbs and faces. She explained that xylazine – a veterinary tranquilizer found in most of Philadelphia’s street opioid samples – causes lesions even in areas where people don’t inject. She pointed out people who have likely lost limbs due to untreated infections.
McLoyd also noted fire marks on the sidewalks, left by unhoused people lighting debris for warmth, and homes that have been vandalized or unlawfully inhabited. She commented on the lack of trees in the neighborhood, and the heat in the summer months. The state funding in question supports home repairs and improvements to green spaces.
After the tour, Rothman said that he feels differently about his vote.
“I feel like Saul on the road to Damascus,” he said, in reference to a story from the Bible. “The eyes are open.”
Tartaglione would not elaborate on her “no” vote but said after the tour that she hopes to see Philadelphia commit its opioid settlement funding to long-term treatment facilities.
“Until we get more beds, we’re not going to be able to do anything,” she said.
The group walked past several grassroots organizations without pausing, including the Sunshine House and Stop the Risk. McLoyd drew their attention to Prevention Point, a health and social service provider that is currently facing a zoning challenge from the city.
Tartaglione asked to stop at Rock Ministries, a church and Christian treatment referral organization that some have criticized for connecting people to faith-based treatment centers that do not use evidence-based practices. The church has received verbal support from Parker’s administration, and one of the treatment providers it partners with recently opened a second site in Kensington.
Kensington resident Yolanda Walker intersected the tour while running errands and stopped to ask Tartaglione about boarded-up homes in the neighborhood.
“I think that means a lot, if people are watching what’s going on,” Walker said afterward. “[Politicians] don’t do that … they sit inside and listen to whoever comes and complains about their problem and not everybody’s common problem.”
Like many residents, Walker’s main concern is child safety.
“I just feel like Kensington needs a better environmental place for children … for us to keep watching them poke themself in they neck, them laying on your steps, that’s traumatic,” said Walker, who has young children.
Elise, who had recently returned to Kensington from rehab, doubts any change will come from the visit. She was standing on Kensington Avenue when the tour passed by. Kensington Voice withheld her last name for privacy reasons.
“I don’t even know what the point is,” she said afterwards. “People hit the block and it’s just business as usual.”
Twice during the tour, members of the group who were part of the city’s PAD program checked on people laying on the sidewalk who appeared to not be breathing.
In the first case, the person woke up after being tapped on the foot. In the second, the person did not immediately rouse, and McLoyd grabbed Narcan, the brand name for naloxone. The person regained consciousness before McLoyd needed to administer it.
Rothman asked if he could see the naloxone canister, admitting he had never looked at one before. He asked McLoyd how many times she’d had to use it.
“Seven or eight,” she said.
The two senators, plus Tumar Alexander, the former managing director under the Kenney administration and current advisor to Mayor Cherelle Parker, said they plan to bring all of the trust members to Kensington soon for a similar experience.
“It’s one thing to read about it, even to see pictures of it; it’s another thing to experience it,” Alexander said. “This is just the beginning … We’re all trying to attack the problem; we just have probably bigger problems than most.”
Have any questions, comments, or concerns about this story? Send an email to editors@kensingtonvoice.com.
