Mayor Cherelle Parker celebrated the opening of a $54 million substance abuse recovery center in renovated city-owned buildings on Wednesday.
Opening the Riverview Wellness Village in Northeast Philly is a key step toward fulfilling the vow she made when she took office last year to shut down Kensington’s open-air drug market. It’s part of an effort to move unhoused drug users off the street and into treatment, and to comprehensively address the health impacts of the city’s decades-old opioid epidemic.
“This is long-term care, treatment and housing. This is a part of our public health and safety ecosystem,” Parker told some 200 city workers, elected officials, judges, construction workers, law enforcement officials and health care professionals who gathered at the complex’s main building for the announcement. “This is about prevention, intervention and even enforcement, but this is also about putting people on a path to self-sufficiency.”…