Harlem Group Asks For Action On Drug Use, Homelessness

HARLEM, NY — Emboldened by the city's willingness to move an Upper West Side homeless shelter following objections from neighbors, a group of Harlem residents and businesses has written to city officials, asking them to resolve mounting concerns over street homelessness, open drug use and garbage pileups in the neighborhood.

In a letter sent Thursday to Mayor Bill de Blasio, leaders of the Greater Harlem Coalition — a 6,000-member group composed of local block associations and businesses — asked the city to step up police patrols, improve sanitation services and reduce the number of methadone clinics in Harlem.

The emailed letter, sent with the subject line "Medical Redlining in Harlem," frames the issue in racial justice terms, with predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods "fighting the oversaturation of methadone clinics, and housing of the homeless and mentally ill."

Syderia Asberry-Chresfield, a co-founder of the Coalition and co-author of the letter, said she sees someone using heroin roughly every other day near her Harlem home.

"As God is my witness I’ve never seen anything like it," said Asberry-Chresfield, who has lived in Harlem for 30 years.

The Coalition was formed in 2018 to oppose plans by Mount Sinai Hospital to build a new clinic on West 124th Street, and to raise awareness about what they called an oversaturation of drug treatment facilities in the neighborhood. City data obtained by Coalition co-founder Shawn Hill showed that Harlem had a high number of such facilities compared to its share of the city's population.

While the Coalition succeeded in persuading Mount Sinai to drop all drug treatment programs from its new clinic, Asberry-Chresfield said the group's work took on a new urgency during the pandemic, as drug use and homelessness both grew more visible — possibly a result of residents fleeing the city's shelters and resorting to sleeping on the streets.

In the letter, Asberry-Chresfield wrote that the group has "empathy for the homeless" and those struggling with drug addiction, acknowledging that shelters and treatment facilities need to be located somewhere.

But this summer's battle on the Upper West Side, in which the mayor bowed to residents' pressure by agreeing to move residents from a temporary shelter at the Lucerne Hotel, convinced Coalition leaders that the time was ripe for a similar appeal further uptown.

"The city chose to focus on remedying the situation on the Upper West Side with a rapidity and an enthusiasm that we don’t see even though those conditions exist much more significantly here," Hill told Patch.

Coalition leaders also called on the city to clean up piles of trash that have accumulated in the neighborhood amid cutbacks in sanitation services during the pandemic.

"No one is cleaning the sidewalks and streets of Harlem beyond merchants, building owners, and homeowners," the group wrote.

Besides an increased police presence and better sanitation services, the Coalition asked the city to fund more neighborhood youth programs and designate a point person to coordinate a multi-agency response to the neighborhood's concerns.

The mayor's office did not respond to a request for comment.

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