Without will, change won't soon come to Tent City

The politicians and city officials have come and gone from Tent City.

They arrived last week at this encampment in a clearing by the railroad tracks in Fairhill, where dozens of addicted men and women live in shacks or in tents or on the trash-strewn ground, shooting heroin or smoking crack cocaine all day and into the night. Where hundreds more from across the city stream through each week, leaving behind endless syringes and mountains of trash in an already-stricken neighborhood.

The politicians walked past the shacks. They trucked off a few willing people to rehab. They tried to tend to a reluctant man with a grievous infection. And then they left.

Hopefully, they grasped the enormity of the task ahead of them.

Here's what that enormity looks like: On Tuesday, the camp was as crowded as ever.

In his shack, Jose Santiago sat with his badly abscessed leg stretched before him, a needle between his teeth. Last week, when the politicians came through, Jose had rejected their offer to call an ambulance.

"It stinks," a man said now of Jose's wound, crinkling his nose.

Soon, another man knelt before Jose. With precision, Jose slid a syringe into a vein in the man's forehead.

Of course Tent City was back to normal. And it will likely remain that way for some time. To think it would be anything else would be naive. As I wrote Sunday, clearing the decades-old camp and helping the people there will require a lot more than police raids and a new fence.

It's going to take a committed, collaborative strategy that requires strong leadership from City Hall and buy-in from state and federal officials. And that just hasn't been happening.

Roland Lamb, the director of the city's Office of Addiction Services, was among the group that visited the camp last week.

He makes a good point: It's not that the city hasn't been working in its own way to help the people in Tent City. It's just that everybody needs to get on the same page with a long-term solution. And stick with it.

"I'm hoping that we can create a partnership between ourselves and the community that goes beyond the moment," Lamb told me. "That goes beyond the news cameras and the stories, and actually talks about the services that need to be delivered."

His outreach workers first visited the camp, which sits in a clearing behind Second and Indiana, in 2006, he said, during an epidemic of fentanyl-linked overdoses. For the last four years, the city has worked through its needle-exchange program, Prevention Point Philadelphia, to get people in the camp into medical care and, eventually, recovery.

Last week, after seeing how the camp had grown, Lamb said, city outreach workers returned the next day and will now visit the site weekly. And he'll fight for more funding to expand Prevention Point - and to build partnerships with civic leaders who might help persuade more people in the camp to accept help.

Many of those in the camp first came to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico through unregulated recovery houses that promised help but swindled them out of their identification and public assistance, advocates say.

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez has led the fight against these sham recovery houses - and for more legitimate recovery and medical services in the neighborhoods around the camp.

But she, too, told me that all efforts have been hindered by a lack of cohesion among city officials and state and federal leaders.

U.S. Rep. Robert Brady told me Monday he only heard about the camp last week. He said that he and State Rep. Angel Cruz would take the lead in pressuring Conrail, the company that owns the property, to secure and clean the area around its tracks.

Cruz, who organized last week's visit, said he is considering a class-action lawsuit against the railroad for abandoning the property. The suit could be filed on behalf of the families of people who have died in the camp, he said.

But even with those steps, the enormity of the despair along the tracks will demand more nuanced solutions, said Jose Benitez, director of Prevention Point. Funds to help those camp residents who want to return to Puerto Rico, or to get new identification. Shelter programs that specifically target the community along the tracks. A dedicated syringe cleanup. And so much more.

If Philadelphia is to truly be a transcendent city, then we can no longer look past an encampment of people living along railroad tracks five miles from City Hall.

Changing that will demand innovative thinking. It will require dirty work.

And it has to happen.

215-854-2759@MikeNewall