Moderator Debra Jeffries-Glass What is one thing that has been difficult here?
Marcellus Valentin For us, we post our outreach right across the street (Delancey Street across from the BRC Senior Center). And that’s predominantly where some of the drug dealing happens. And so it’s been hard for us to: 1) have our guests feel safe. And 2) also for us to feel safe. When these things are happening. And also on the same sort of level – being that we’re providing services to help people go into recovery – having their suppliers there makes it immensely harder because they see easy access.
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Jeff Cohen (Okay. Housing. Trying to find housing for our population, (whether it’s through JCC, whether it’s through the shelter system.
Most of my population that’s in this park are undocumented. They have fear of actually going into the system. (And we see them and they become lost.
So trying to figure out what to do with them (0:39) is my biggest problem.
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Carol Prudhomme Davis I would say keeping the park clean is a big hurdle. If we had the park where it was clean, the majority of the time we could have more events, we could be doing more gardening projects and food equity projects, which my organization is very interested in.
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Brian Crozier
One thing that’s been difficult, I would say this is overall, but we experienced it in the park a bit, is just like the standard approach to managing public drug use.
Managing public drug use tends to just be pushing people out, pushing them further to the margins. When people move out of eyesight, people move further into the depths, into the margins, it becomes much more dangerous when they are using. We’re losing connection with people.
People are at more risk of overdose. People are at more risk of using contaminated or like further adulterated substances. You know what I mean? So without having the constant connection with people, it’s deleting a lot of work that harm reduction outreach is doing in the community.
So I would say, again, that’s a pretty general thing, but we can focus on it here as a community. The standardized managing of public drug use, it would be great if that could be changed a bit to be a little more inclusive and understanding of those.
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Noel Sierra & Jake Leibovitz I think the amount of people that we engage every day is probably the most difficult part. Of course, getting those people housed is also pretty difficult. We help all street homeless people south of 23rd Street.
And SDR is a big part of that area, but also just one part of that area. And unfortunately, we could spend the rest of our lives probably working towards housing, and we still might not be able to see the end of it.
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Wei didn’t get to answer this question due to an interruption: Her answer post -panel:
Wei Tchou
As a mom, I am concerned about safety, of course. I have a fantasy that my kid can go to the park by himself one day, explore, say hi to Bob and his friends at the garden, but I’m not sure that’s feasible with current conditions. At the same time I do think part of my stewardship of my child is to allow him to see how adults struggle with difficult choices and it see the world and society as it actually is, to show him a way of being in the world and a way of seeing. So I also feel like it’s imperative to find a compassionate vantage from which to perceive, engage, and understand the “bad elements” of the park: the drug use, the declining mental health of those who go uncared for, the unhoused, etc. I don’t have any answers but what happens in the park and how it is cared for really materially affects me and my family.
Mason Crawford Yeah, I kind of feel a lot of, some similarities here.
One thing that’s like, I feel like the hardest for me is when someone does get connected to services, you make that initial point of contact and then you never see them again and they’re lost somewhere out there. You don’t see them in like this park or another park. You don’t see them on the street.
So it’s like, well, what happened? Now you have this like start of care, you know, intentions to do something, but there’s no follow up. You don’t know how to follow up. A lot of people don’t have phones.
They don’t have easy ways to contact them. You don’t know where they’re going to be. They may be in this park. They may be Washington Square Park. They just may be in the community, but if you miss someone when you’re out there, now they’re lost and there’s someone who doesn’t have the resources that they need.