On July 20, the City of Philadelphia implemented a highly restrictive law targeting mobile outreach services for people who use drugs in Kensington. The neighborhood contains about one-third of the city’s unhoused population.
Though the new regulations don’t explicitly targeting harm reduction services, that is the focus. Bill 240665-AA was filed in September 2024 by Councilmember Quetcy Lozada (D), whose district includes Kensington. It creates a permit system that applies specifically to mobile services addressing overdose, blood-borne disease transmission, and other medical and non-medical services. But it exempts EMTs and a number of other outreach services that would otherwise fit the description, like mobile vaccines and mammograms.
Mobile medical services such as HIV and hepatitis C testing can now only operate in two locations. One is off-limits between 11 pm and 6 am. The other is in front of a local law enforcement-assisted diversion program. Adam Geer, the city’s chief public safety director, has described this as “creating a natural synergy to co-locate important resources and meet people where they are in a safe environment.”
Non-medical services, meanwhile, cannot remain in the same location for more than 45 minutes at a time. For all providers, violations are punishable with a $1,000 fine.
“Moving every 45 minutes is extremely destabilizing,” Liddy Rechenberg, communications director for Savage Sisters Recovery, told Filter. “Outreach is built on trust and presence, not speed. Constantly relocating wastes time and causes confusion.”
Many participants have limited mobility, or other barriers that will prevent them from connecting to outreach under the new law. Rechenberg said the permitting process is also “slow and unclear,” and that city officials caused lot of confusion by failing to sufficiently involve providers in the process.
“We weren’t consulted before the law passed, and there’s been little guidance since,” she said. “The lack of collaboration with community orgs actually doing this work is extremely disappointing.”
“The majority of our mobile outreach will be impacted.”
The City Council is purporting to address complaints from Kensington residents.
“Among other things, residents living near where vehicular mobile service providers operate in the Seventh Councilmanic District have experienced increases in: The accumulation of plastic waste, human waste, discarded drug paraphernalia, discarded pills, medical supplies and various other items on residential streets, which pose a danger to children, the environment, public health and the dignity of our communities,” the law states. “Increased social conflict and confrontation [are] caused by some recipients of mobile services who engage in nuisance and criminal activity.”
Savage Sisters has not received any updates about next steps. Rechenberg and her colleagues have preemptively rescheduled outreach hours to the evenings, but she noted that a lot of other providers can’t necessarily do the same.
“The majority of our mobile outreach will be impacted,” Rechenberg said. “Our services rely on being present in high-need areas for consistent periods.”
Kensington, often vilified as one of the nation’s largest so-called “open-air drug markets,” has long been a flashpoint for housing and harm reduction. But in 2024, the neighborhood saw a 23-percent increase in unsheltered homelessness compared to 2023. In recent years, city officials have steadily defunded syringe service programs in favor of “community policing” and crackdowns public drug use, while Kensington’s affordable housing crisis continues to worsen.
Mayor Cherelle Parker (D) was elected in 2024 on a “tough-on-crime” platform, and shortly after taking office declared a public state of emergency in Kensington. This involved mobilizing law enforcement with an executive order to “permanently shut down all pervasive open-air drug markets, including but not limited to the open-air drug markets in the Kensington neighborhood.” Parker has expressed support for practices like “stop and frisk,” while opposing public-health strategies like overdose prevention centers (OPC).
In an appeals court hearing in April, nonprofit Safehouse Philly continued a years-long battle against the Department of Justice and the federal “crack-house statute” that criminalizes OPC. The DOJ first sued Safehouse in 2019 during President Donald Trump’s first term. During the April hearing, a federal judge suggested that Safehouse may have an avenue toward legal operations under religious freedom exemptions in the Controlled Substances Act.
“I think it probably cuts in favor of Safehouse, because it’s a prohibitive activity, or it’s a controlled substance like peyote was, but they want to either take it or enable others to take it safely for religious purposes,” United States Circuit Judge David J. Porter, who was appointed during Trump’s first term, said according to Courthouse News. “And if that interest is burdened, and if the government’s not prosecuting everyone the same way for doing that, then they have a pretty good case.”
Top image (cropped) and inset graphic via City of Philadelphia