PHILADELPHIA, PA – A major media event took place on Wednesday in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. Police, city officials, and city workers invited the press as they cleaned the neighborhood and relocated a homeless encampment a few blocks away.
The next morning, Thursday, Kensington was back to normal. It has been that way since. The city is working overtime to try to make the cleanup effort appear successful, but live streams on YouTube since Wednesday tell the same story.
Today, Kensington looks just like it looked on Tuesday and years before that. Drug addicts, trash, and vagrancy permeate on every street corner.
The city’s efforts did not work.
To the city’s credit, they are trying to keep the neighborhood clean, but their corps of trash collectors, transit cops, and street sweepers can’t keep up with the sheer volume of filth being generated each hour in the neighborhood.