Xavier Santiago invited everyone to introduce themselves and share how close they lived to the OnPoint site. All those present from NYC lived between 1 to 5 blocks from OnPoint.
Xavier Santiago provided a timeline of the various social, political, policy contextual factors in the past 3-4 years that preceded the opening of OnPoint.
Our group described our first-hand experiences with the many negative issues facing us as residents in the community, and we explained that these issues coincided in time with the opening of the facility. We discussed issues of open injection and drug use, open drug dealing, prevalence of crime and violent crime, shoplifting, challenges to businesses such as IHOP and drug stores, some of which have closed. The mother children who attend ABC daycare described feeling unsafe for herself and her children and described ABC installing bullet-proof glass in response to the increase in drug dealing on West 126th Street adjacent to the ABC building. We talked about how OnPoint has never provided data to community members who requested it. We said there has been a shocking lack of evidence from OnPoint, which makes many claims but never provides evidence beyond simple numbers of reversed overdoses which are not known to be unique individuals, making even that data difficult to interpret. Data has been promised by OnPoint but has never been given to us. Promises have been made and broken. [Continued...]
