If history is any indication, the committee will approve the bill: Council unanimously adopted nearly identical legislation late last year that prohibits new medical offices in Northeast Philly’s 6th and 10th districts, represented by Bobby Henon and Brian O’Neill. The bans mean that doctors and dentists who want to open small practices will first have to go through neighborhood meetings and get the approval of the Zoning Board of Adjustment, a five-member panel that decides... when to grant exceptions to the city’s zoning code. But doctors and dentists aren’t the real targets of the legislation. The real targets are methadone clinics, which provide treatment to heroin addicts, and which many communities tend to consider nuisances, stains on the neighborhood, blight. They can be problematic. There are only 14 methadone treatment centers in the city, and each sees hundreds of visitors a day. Patients gather outside, loiter, smoke cigarettes, buy and sell prescription pills. And yet some city officials say the solution to these problems isn’t fewer methadone clinics, but more, targeted in the areas that need them the most, with each caring for fewer patients. Last week, Dr. Arthur Evans, commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health, told the Planning Commission that while residents sometimes claim that new methadone facilities will draw drug addicts from other areas into their neighborhoods, drug abuse and addiction is a citywide problem. “There is no part of the city that doesn’t have drug addiction or mental health challenges,” Evans said. “We think it’s important to have facilities in those places.” It’s true. According to data provided by the city’s Office of Addiction Services (OAS), there are at least 4,607 city residents in methadone treatment, spread across Philadelphia, but concentrated in parts of Kensington, the Northeast, and South Philly. According to the data, roughly a quarter of methadone patients reside in zip codes in the 6th and 10th Councilmanic districts, where new clinics are now banned. Another thousand or so live in the 1st district, where a medical-office ban is proposed. (For two years, residents of Holmesburg have been fighting the placement of a methadone clinic in that neighborhood. According to OAS data, Holmesburg (zip code 19136) has the second-highest concentration of residents in methadone treatment of any zip code in the city.) Some Council members are now seeking solutions to the problems that accompany methadone facilities without banning them outright. planphilly/articles/2014/02/03/some-on-council-look-to-manage-methadone-clinics-not-ban-them
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 14:46:18 +0000
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