Sunset Park is getting its first inpatient drug detox center in March, but some skeptical locals say the center should be placed elsewhere because the neighborhood has become a magnet for services that cater to city-wide issues without meeting local needs.
“I think more resources to help fight drug addiction is great, but I feel like Sunset Park is always the neighborhood that gets the short straw,” said Silvia Velasquez, a lifelong Sunset Parker. “We have all these homeless shelters now, more than anybody it seems, and people come from all over the city for shelter. And now we’re getting this detox center that’s probably going to bring more people from all over the place. And my question is ‘Why?’ Why do these sort of things keep showing up here?”
In the last year, the city has inundated Sunset Park with hotels-turned-shelters that house homeless from across the city. But Sunset Park and neighboring Bay Ridge are experiencing an opiate epidemic and the detox center is as much for locals as it is for any Brooklynite in need of a starting point on their road to recovery, said the president of Resource Beacon of Hope — the drug and alcohol treatment group behind the forthcoming 39th Street facility.
“We have an opiate epidemic in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge,” said Donna Mae DePola, a Bay Ridgite who will run the addiction-treatment facility and is herself a recovering addict. “Right now, one of the closest inpatient centers is all the way out at Coney Island Hospital. This detox center is the first of its kind in the area, and it’s really needed, because there are not enough beds in the borough. So we’re filling at least part of the need here.”
The center, which will be located between Fourth and Fifth avenues, will be equipped with 20 beds and give patients a supervised space to clear their systems that is staffed with doctors, nurses, and counselors. Once someone is admitted, counselors will meet with the patient to understand their needs and develop a plan for where they will go after the cleanse — such as an outpatient program or a rehabilitation center, according to DePola.
A stay will cost about $350 per night — which is on the low end of the spectrum, according to employee Samuel Benitez. It’s a far cry from the $1,785-per night Betty Ford Clinic-esque rehab center opening in Red Hook later this year.
But some residents remain skeptical of placing the facility in Sunset Park.
“I’m very supportive of efforts to combat drug addition but there is a downside to this, because it’s just an extension of the institutionalization of Sunset Park,” said community activist Tony Giordano. “It seems like every service that helps people in the city is being placed in Sunset Park, and that’s in part because there is a need for it, but that’s what we’re really getting fed-up with. There’s just too much.”
