Thursday, September 6, 10:56am, Kensington Avenue, 100 feet from the Somerset Station entrance to the Market-Frankford El.
A skeletal woman in a blue flower-patterned dress and white tennis shoes is lying on the sidewalk. Her right wrist appears broken and is bandaged, her hand and swollen fingers contorted into a talon. There are wounds on her skin, flies, and several hospital bracelets indicating she was recently an inpatient. Her face and neck have turned white; her lips are gray, and her eyes have rolled into the back of her head. There are three women surrounding her, trying to rouse her, but she is unresponsive.
Rosalind “Roz” Pichardo and her staff member Dan rush out the doors of Sunshine House and down the block to where the woman lies. After an urgent examination and attempts to revive her, Pichardo gives her a nasal dose of Narcan. In less than two minutes, the woman is sitting up, with some help, and speaking. It is impossible to know how old she is — she could be 30; she could be 50. But she is alive. And she’s upset. Narcan (generically known as naloxone) works instantly to reverse an overdose, erasing the high and putting users in a withdrawal state. It’s a wasted hit, and for the next few hours, she won’t feel well.
She had to be assured that she had been, in fact, dying. She collects her dropped needle off the ground, accepts a cup of water, and considers the invitation she received to come inside.
Pichardo doesn’t write this life-saving overdose reversal down in the pocket Bible she once carried everywhere. There are so many now that she can barely keep track using her notes app and various notebooks she keeps handy. She estimates it’s around 2,400. Pichardo is unphased by what’s just happened — not the woman’s condition, overdosing on the street, saving her life, nor her reaction to nearly dying. She needs to reheat about 40 frozen breakfast sandwiches that were donated earlier that morning for her sunshines — her term of endearment for the individuals she has dedicated her life to helping.
“A lot of agencies are forcing treatment, but when people aren’t ready to go into treatment, then you’re setting someone up to fail. So let’s not do that,” she says. “Let’s slowly build that bridge again, and make the bridge strong, so that when they’re ready to go home, it’s solid. Let’s not force people into this.”
A house for Pichardo’s sunshines
Sunshine House sits on 2774 Kensington Avenue, where the Kensington Storefront used to be. Open from 2017 to 2020, Kensington Storefront was a joint operation between Mural Arts Philadelphia and the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. It ran arts and community healing programs and became a beloved community space for people with nowhere else to go. Pichardo wanted to fill the void left by the Storefront’s closing and establish a base for her then-mobile nonprofit Operation Save Our City, but even while working at both Temple University Hospital and harm reduction organization Prevention Point, she couldn’t make it work — until an anonymous donor made it possible.
“This vision, you know, this thought that someone else believed in me, in my vision, that sealed the deal for me,” Pichardo says. “I believe in myself, but apparently I don’t believe in myself enough, because I’m not in the Storefront. And then this person, this guardian angel of Kensington … they don’t realize the magnitude.”
She opened Sunshine House in early March, not long after Savage Sisters’ nearby brick-and-mortar operation had to close. Grants for anti-violence, first-aid and naloxone training, and outreach services also fund her work.
Pichardo founded Operation Save Our City following the 2012 unsolved murder of her brother with a mission “to provide trauma-informed care, life-saving skills, education and basic necessities to people who have experienced homicide, grief, addiction or secondary trauma from exposure to violence.”
It was while traveling around the neighborhood distributing goods to victims’ families and connecting them to services that she began to encounter people overdosing. She decided to learn how to help them. She trained on how to use naloxone and began training others. Since then, she has traveled the country teaching others overdose reversal and also conducts Stop the Bleed training.
In six months, more than 12,000 people have visited Sunshine House. They keep a sign-in book at the front desk, but you aren’t required to enter your last name. There’s a water station, folding chairs, a large TV on the wall for news and entertainment, and a sink in the back for cleaning up. Behind the desk is a message board for families and people on the street to get in touch with each other. Behind a folding room divider is a raised platform for the monthly open mic night. Stacked along the walls are boxes of medical supplies, hygiene products, and bags of donated clothing.
The staff on hand this morning included Erika and Annabelle, who set up folding chairs as people came in to relax and wait for a snack. They take signups for shoes that will be distributed later this afternoon.
And curled up in his blanketed pen beside the water station is Sonny, Sunshine House’s emotional support cat.
“If you don’t have the trust of the people, then no one’s going to follow your lead.” — Rosalind Pichardo
Pichardo can now do her life-saving training on naloxone and gunshot first-aid in this space. “I got this cute little arm that actually has fake blood,” she says with a wry smile. “It’s a cool little addition. We call him Army.” The mannequin she uses for Narcan training is known as Sunshine.
Some days, over 200 people come through her doors. She has hired five staffers and a case manager who comes in two days a week to help sunshines navigate the system of city beds, housing, and basic needs like getting an ID and activating ACCESS cards. Nursing student volunteers come in two days a week.
What might be most important to recovery is the messaging center. Sunshines can reach out to family members from Sunshine House and arrange for family members to call back when they think they’ll be there, or leave messages for them when they’re not. It’s a low-tech yet essential point of contact for families to know their loved one is alive, and a place to seek out those who are missing.
“So there’s constant contact, there’s constant rebuilding and reconnecting, and that’s so important for a lot of our sunshines because, as we know, when they suffer from substance use disorder, they burn a lot of bridges,” Pichardo says. “And a lot of times, folks don’t want to be seen in the state that they’re in. They’re not looking how [they did when] they left home. So doing that soft connection through the phone line is so important.”
Harm reduction
Harm reduction is the effort to minimize the physical, social and legal negative consequences of addiction and homelessness. The approach requires “meeting people where they are at,” a phrase many outreach personnel and social workers use that recognizes not everyone is ready or capable of stopping substance use, and many are not in control of their faculties due to mental illness. In the 1990s, Europe implemented harm reduction as one of the Four Pillars Drug Strategy. The results: significant reductions in public consumption of drugs, overdose deaths, and infection rates for HIV and hepatitis.
Harm reduction takes many forms: clean needle services, social services outreach, shelter and housing opportunities, food and clothing distribution, mobile healthcare units, and even accessible restrooms and showers.
“When you feel good, and you look good, it gives you so much motivation,” Pichardo explains. “Clothing and showers are so key. How can we get people to start feeling so good about themselves and see themselves again? It’s something so basic as showers and clothing.”
This approach, however, requires time, a long-term commitment of resources, and, above all, patience. “A lot of people are saying, No, go into treatment. You can’t force that kind of thing because you’re setting someone up for failure or for death,” Pichardo says. “With what’s happening now with incarceration for paraphernalia? The system is broken. I mean, you’re wanting people to get off the street, but where are they going to go?”
Crossing lines to help the most vulnerable
Pichardo is walking a fine line between communities that are both vulnerable and dangerous. She makes sure the dealers have bleed kits and tourniquets while offering addiction services to their customers. She is protecting her sunshines despite the specter of illness or injury, while the City’s Kensington Community Revival Plan has the police conducting “quality of life” enforcement sweeps.
That initiative, announced April 11, is a five-phase plan Mayor Cherelle Parker outlined: warning and opportunity, law enforcement & the community’s establishment of goals and expectations, securing the neighborhood, community transition, and stability. The goals, according to the Mayor’s 100-Day plan, are to establish a team for Kensington and a network of community partnerships, “Secure, stabilize, and maintain the Kensington Avenue corridor and surrounding corners,” stop the open-air drug use and sales, “remove the presence of drug users,” “eliminate shooting victims,” and improve environmental and economic conditions.
The document, though, is short on details. It mentions securing funding for the plan, but the City’s budget explicitly cut funds for syringe exchange programs and does not include any measures to increase the necessary infrastructure for healthcare, mental healthcare, rehabilitation, and housing. Where the plan is clear is on the role of the PPD and enforcement.
Tensions, Pichardo says, are high. Her sunshines are lining up to get in her doors before she’s open for fear of getting picked up and having their names run. People with substance abuse disorders have difficulty keeping track of dates and times, don’t have access to transportation, and can’t pay for a ticket or citation. The next time they encounter a cop, it often means arrest for not complying with a court order, paying a fine, or appearing at a hearing.
At the sixth annual Memorial March honoring overdose victims on August 29, police dismantled the tables with photos, flowers, and signs from loved ones in McPherson Square Park. Pichardo, who has never gotten a permit for the walk and vigil, always notified the 24th and 25th Districts in advance of the event, and counted on that relationship to protect her volunteers and participants. That relationship has changed in the last several months as the Parker administration has pushed their Kensington initiative.
“I used to work with them, regularly,” Pichardo says. “And now … I am trying to approach them from a place of education.” She says she takes the time to stop, observe, and explain when she sees officers incorrectly administering naloxone, for example. During the time that she and Dan were reversing the overdosing woman on the sidewalk that morning, two PPD officers on bicycles rode by, slowed down to see what the commotion was, and then continued away.
“We’ve been running the same way. We’ve been running in a humane way, in a compassionate way,” she says when asked about the impact of the City’s intervention. “And education is key, you know, showing people how to do this in a way that’s not harmful is so important. And you have to gain the trust of the people. If you don’t have the trust of the people, then no one’s going to follow your lead.”
It’s now just before noon, and staff member Tammy arrives just in time to begin distributing shoes. It’s clear that Sunshine House could use a lot more folding chairs. They also need a larger microwave, as frozen food donations take a long time to heat up when you can only fit four breakfast sandwiches in at a time. Pichardo is hoping to make space for showers, but that’s in the long-term plan. In the short term, they need snacks, particularly breakfast snacks. “I like to get people here first thing in the morning to get their day started, to remind people that they have a job to do throughout the day. And I remind people every morning, you got work to do today. What are you missing? Are you missing your ID? Are you missing getting your shots to keep you off the substances? Because some people just don’t have a place to go.”
They could also use Sonny supplies. He prefers Meow Mix.
After more than a decade — and two mayoral administrations — serving people living in active addiction in Kensington, Pichardo is adamant there’s a right and a wrong way to help. Neighbors are understandably fed up, and many want the neighborhood’s drug users gone by any means necessary. Pichardo, though, maintains the only solution is to be on the ground, helping folks survive, showing them someone cares about them, relentlessly pointing toward a path to recovery.
I ask Pichardo what else the citizens of Philadelphia could do to help. “I would encourage people to be part of something,” she says. “If you feel like you’re part of something, then it makes you motivated to change.”
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