A Kensington harm reduction group lost its lease, and a City Council member wants Prevention Point out next

Savage Sisters, a small nonprofit that provides harm reduction services in Kensington, is set to lose its storefront, a move that followed intervention from City Hall.

And City Councilmember Quetcy Lozada, who urged that group’s landlord to not renew its lease, said city funding for Prevention Point — a larger nonprofit that provided services to 36,000 people last year and runs the city’s oldest needle exchange — could be in jeopardy soon.

She said that the two harm reduction groups have “not been good neighbors” and that residents complain that they attract drug users to the neighborhood.

“I have serious concerns about Prevention Point and about how they have negatively affected the community,” said Lozada, whose district includes parts of Kensington. “If I have any say, they will not be in the community.”

But harm reduction advocates pushed back, saying hampering their ability to operate could have a dire health impact, including drug overdoses and the proliferation of disease.

“The most daunting result will be death. Wounds not healing properly. The spread of infectious disease,” said Sarah Laurel, founder of Savage Sisters, which has operated a storefront on Kensington Avenue for two years.

The threat from Lozada to attempt to shut down or impede harm reduction groups in Kensington comes amid a broader push to crack down on the neighborhood’s open-air drug market. She is working with a caucus of three other Council members, and Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has made curbing the drug trade a priority. Police Commissioner Kevin J. Bethel said this week that stricter enforcement of drug crimes in the neighborhood could begin as early as this spring.

More Philadelphians died of overdoses in 2022 than ever before, with 1,413 people fatally overdosing within city limits, and Kensington has long been burdened by the crisis. Residents of the neighborhood are majority Black and Latino, and the area has higher rates of poverty than other sections of the city.

The near-billion dollar drug industry means hundreds of people live on Kensington’s streets. Many are addicted to heroin, fentanyl, and xylazine or “tranq,” which can leave open wounds. Trash, human waste, and suffering is widespread, as is crime and violence — the area has some of the highest rates of shootings in the city. On Friday, a 15-year-old boy, Duvan Dennis, was shot and killed at 1900 E. Monmouth St., just off Kensington Avenue.

Lozada has led a group of Democrats in Council, known as the Kensington Caucus, who are exploring legislative changes in the neighborhood, including zoning adjustments and a curfew for some businesses.

» READ MORE: Philly City Council members are pushing for a Kensington ‘triage center’ for people who use drugs

She has rejected some harm reduction approaches that former Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration embraced — including supervised drug consumption sites — which aim to help people in addiction avoid overdoses, infections, and other health consequences until they’re ready for treatment.

Silvana Mazzella, interim lead executive officer of Prevention Point, called the situation and the Council member’s position “unfortunate.”

”When people talk about limiting harm reduction, they’re not just talking about limiting harm reduction,” she said, “but all of those other life saving services, clinics, case management, resources to help people get to the next step in their lives.”

Laurel said she was contacted by Savage Sisters’ landlord, Shift Capital, this week and was informed that once her lease expires in September, it won’t be renewed.

Shift said in a statement that it has “evaluated next steps” for the space and decided to not renew Savage Sisters’ lease.

“We remain supportive of community-minded organizations as we believe Kensington residents, families, and businesses deserve holistic solutions to the health and humanity crisis,” the developer said.

The decision came after Lozada made it clear she took issue with Savage Sisters. Laurel said she met with Lozada several weeks ago, and that the Council member said she intended to get the organization off Kensington Avenue.

Laurel said the meeting was disheartening.

”To stand before my community leader and to have her say our work means nothing and she wants us out was deeply hurtful,” she said.

Lozada described the meeting differently. She said she urged Savage Sisters to “go back into your community and speak to your neighbors,” and that the group was not receptive.

The Council member said she told Shift that she felt Savage Sisters was violating its lease agreement. Laurel said the organization “followed the terms of our lease to the ‘T’.”

Savage Sisters provides showers for people living on the streets and wound care. The group also runs several recovery homes around the city.

Some of organization’s work, like distributing sterile syringes to prevent the spread of disease, is handled by mobile teams away from the storefront, Laurel said. Within the last year, Savage Sisters staff connected 664 people to treatment and treated 324 overdoses on the street.

Savage Sisters plans to move to mobile operations once the lease ends, and purchased two vans to continue to offer showers and wound care. If clients move out of Kensington as a result of a law enforcement crackdown, Laurel said, she will follow them.

”My friends are going to migrate elsewhere, and I can move and maneuver and make sure they get served,” she said. ”When my team relocates, I hope that the city is prepared to fill that gap.”

Prevention Point, one of the city’s pioneering harm reduction organizations, could also be a target of local officials.

Lozada said Council members are reviewing Prevention Point’s work, and may oppose millions of dollars in city funding during the next budget negotiation process, which will begin next month.

Prevention Point was allocated more than $7 million this fiscal year for services including health care, addiction treatment, and a homeless shelter. Those dollars make up a significant portion of its budget — in 2022, its revenue totaled $14.6 million, according to tax papers.

A representative for George Manosis, the developer who owns the building where Prevention Point is headquartered, said the lease remains active and “no one has formally reached out” to the owner to discuss relocation.

Mazzella said the organization, founded more than 30 years ago, has leases at four buildings in the Kensington area that have at least a year left on them.

Outside of its syringe exchange program, which Mazzella said serviced more than 30,000 people last year, Prevention Point offers HIV care and testing, meals, clothing, drug treatment, restrooms, overdose prevention training, and housing support. Their wound treatment clinic served 1,100 people last year, she said, and in just the first six months of this fiscal year, they’ve given out over 50,000 doses of naloxone, the overdose reversal medication.

Cutting off their funding, she said, would cost the city and its healthcare systems more in the long run, and result in people not getting the treatment they need.

”We do a lot to be the best neighbors that we can be,” she said.

The organization has had a tumultuous two years, including internal controversy with employees and the departure of its longtime executive director.

But city officials under the Kenney administration have described the group’s work as “lifesaving.”

» READ MORE: Prevention Point Philadelphia head to step down after 16 years: ‘It’s time for a change for me’

A 2019 study in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome estimated that Philadelphia would have seen 15,248 HIV diagnoses associated with injection drug use between 1993 and 2002 if they had not allowed Prevention Point to open.

Instead, the city reported 4,656 diagnoses in that time.

Inquirer staff writer Max Marin contributed to this article.