In Philadelphia, the cross-street intersections often identify Kensington Avenue (The Avenue). Kensington and Allegheny (K & A) or Kensington and Front Street may mean many different things as you walk along The Avenue. Conditions were documented on The Avenue in June of 2021, which led to an open-air drug market along the street.
When I was working on Kensington Avenue, the junkies were closer to Front Street, along with the methadone clinic. The Catholic Church took up a good bit of the blocks by Kensington and Lehigh, along with a population of low-level sex workers; there has always been a little more activity at K & A. There was some legacy retail on the street and always a few pioneers.
Working down there in the early ’90s, we were buying for 100 dollars, putting in $60,000, and selling it for $30,000, and the people in the house next to it were walking away from their equity. Things got better, and the area was in a rebound the past ten years. Many people were living close to poverty, and drug use increased.
The rent moratorium meant many lost their homes because they did not pay rent and could not afford to pay rent in the future. A large encampment moved into K & A. consisting of campers, disabled, and some drug addicts have resulted from the lockdown.
Open-Air Drug Market
The area has become an open-air drug market where you can buy what you like, along with threats of intimidation and violence. Shootings, on occasion, add to the dangerous element of intersections.
The encampment is having an impact on the retail industry across the United States. I saw it in Seattle during the lockdown, where an encampment closed down the entire block. Even if you could get past the tents, you still had to deal with the disaffected population and everything that goes with being around the addicted person.
If you go down to The Avenue and watch, you will see the castoffs of society living on the sidewalks and all of society’s ills on display. The drug encampments make up the common theme of The Avenue, which is the availability of drugs and narcotics. To solve these issues, what needs to be reinforced is to recognize that the streets are for cars, and the sidewalks are for people to walk along the street. It is not a hard concept, but it fits. It would be best if you made people move.
Phased Planning to address Open-Air Drug Markets after the Pandemic
I have developed the following phases for eliminating aberrant behavior:
for the person seeking refuge in Open Air Drug Markets after the pandemic, the following scenario plays out in their mind:
- If I go there, I can do it
- If I go there, I may be able to do it
- If I go there, I might not be able to do it
- If I go there, I can’t do it
If you arrest people in every instance at K&A, you get to #4 pretty quickly. A softer approach will take time because the area has been a notorious open-air drug market since the pandemic. It would take longer in the summer, but now is the time to do it because exposure to elements is more severe.
Citizens Concerned about the Impact
When moving people was proposed, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on November 6, 2022
“Clearing one corner just pushes people to the next one over, police say, and many of those living on the street face compounding, unaddressed health and other problems.”
I laughed when I read that, as the problem is not on the corner but the entire street length. You look at a street in 100-foot intervals when place-making on the street. This will have to be looked at on a larger scale. Make people continue to walk. Do not allow loitering; everyone has to keep moving. What is happening on The Avenue is a long-standing problem that has only intensified. The garbage and litter are completely out of hand. You have people banging people up with some concoction on the street.
The streets must be closed in the morning to clean up after a night on The Avenue. A littering infraction cannot control several sanitation issues. Then there is the vomit, urination, and other secretions and bodily fluids. It is necessary to hose the street down in the morning…not too early, but maybe about 7:30 or 8 AM. That is when I used to hose down Philadelphia’s South Street before the stores opened. I’m unsure how many stores are left on The Avenue, but they should have the same opportunity citywide.
Kensington Avenue Residents Concerned about the Petty Drug Crimes
This is not a wholesome environment for the neighbors or the people on the street. The goal is to provide a quality of life for the neighbors and honest and fair treatment for those clinging to existence. That said, no one wants to walk down the street and have their 8-year-old witness people banging heroin on the street.
No one’s grandmother wants to walk down the street in fear of having her purse snatched. Conversely, no homeless person wants to fall asleep only to be awakened by being pounded by Kensington youths.
Medical Attention to the Side Effects of Drug Use
There needs to be some common sense applied to the situation, and the easiest thing to do is to make people move. There will be a need to establish a central intake to deal with the plethora of ill and otherwise infirmed drug users. Open wounds and disease are the norm in these encampments. A central area would need to be established to evaluate the people needing medical or psychological help. Those seeking not to avail themselves of help will need to keep moving.
The degradation of human life is on full display as people bargain sexual favors to secure money for drugs. On public display, people roll around in the human waste and remnants of regurgitation from the night before to secure money to purchase drugs.
Pandemic Eviction created an Unhoused Population.
There are not just drug users clustered in the open-air drug market. A subset of the open-air drug market are people who are there because there is nowhere else to go as a result of eviction because of the pandemic. When I worked in Kensington in the early 90s, the homeless were classified as bums on the street, and some of the younger people there would beat the stuffing out of people. I saw the same thing in the Becton section of London near the royal docks. Only they had hammers. So, seeking safety in numbers could be advantageous, no matter how dangerous the clustering is.
These people have done nothing wrong and are not involved in any activity other than running out of money after the rent moratorium or having a domestic incident—people with children and maybe some general run-of-the-mill people without the desire to live indoors.
The people who have nothing wrong will walk—a 24-hour walk. The crowd thins out, and the street becomes a little more manageable. When the guy without legs shows up after evaluation and some help, the atmosphere for him to stay there for weeks ends.
I have had two big circle projects in Philadelphia, Mardi Gras and the Greek Picnic, and in both cases, the strategy worked perfectly. This was the strategy that the Philly police recommended, and it worked. Most of the residents were in favor of the plan.
I would estimate it will take about six weeks to eliminate Kensington Ave’s open-air drug market.