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Data Summary

Greater Harlem Coalition is a data driven organization. Our claims are backed by data analysis derived from data obtained from FOIL. Below are 6 analyses from our key data sources. You can click on the data sources to see the underlying data.

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1. New York State placed 57% of drug treatment capacities in just 8 out of 64 assembly districts 

Note these treatment capacities include OTP (Opioid Treatment Program), residential treatment, in-patient, the crisis management, of which OTP is the majority of such  capacities. 

  • Central/East Harlem (community boards 10 and 11, or assembly district 68 and 70) with 3% of NYC’s population has a patient capacity of 6527—18% of the patient capacity in all of NYC’s.  
  • These two districts only rank 5th and 6th in overdose rates in 2019. (Source: Overdoses by Neighborhood)
  • East Harlem with 1.5% of NYC’s population has a capacity of 4990, the highest of all NYC, which is almost twice as high as the capacity in all 14 districts in Queens combined with 2542 in capacity. Note that Queens has 27% of NYC’s population.
  • The top 8 districts by capacity treat 57% of NYC’s patients.
  • There are 36 out of 57 assembly districts without any opioid treatment programs, and 10 districts without any capacity in OTP, crisis, residential, or in-patient programs. They are Long Island City, Kingsbridge, Parkchester, Bay Ridge, Sheepshead Bay, Co-op City, and Wakefield. (Note: Among these, Co-op City and Bay Ridge appear to not even have any out-patient treatment facilities, based on 2020 FOIL)

SOURCE: OTP Capacity Data

2. 75% of patients getting treatment from Harlem do not reside  in Harlem

Of them, 26% from the Bronx, 12% from Brooklyn, 10% from Queens, 5%  from UES/UWS, 6% from Inwood, 8% from Mid/Downtown Manhattan, 1% Upstate  New York, 1% Long Island, 1% Staten Island. The diagram shows the density of patients traveling into Harlem for treatment.

SOURCE: OTP Patient Residences, 2017.

3. There are about 13,000 adult-only homeless shelter residents in NYC, and 14% of  them reside in Central/East Harlem in the winter of 2019 right before the pandemic

10% of them reside in East Harlem, which has 1.4% of NYC’s population.

● While allocating methadone clinics, OASAS should consider whether the  district is already over-saturated with other social services, such as adult-only homeless shelters 

● Many of this population do not originally reside in Harlem. Counting this population into Harlem’s overdose or addiction rates would artificially inflate Harlem’s addiction rates.

Source: Shelter Census Data

4. From 2010 to 2019, with the opioid epidemic raging, NYC lost  19% of drug treatment capacities or 11578 capacity of patients for all 6 programs: Crisis, residential, in-patient, opioid treatment, outpatient, and youth  program.

It appears the most expensive treatment options are cut back the most 23 districts saw the loss of more than 200 patients, amongst them, 3 districts saw  losses of more than 1000 patients, which are Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Heights and  Jamaica. Only 3 districts saw increases of more than 200 patients: East New York,  New Hyde Park Queens, and Bronx Park South. Other notable districts with loss of  capacities are Murray Hill, Long Island City, Midtown South, Prospect Leffert Gardens, Financial District. 

Breakdown by program types shows these changes. 

  • 35% drop in residential program or 1537 capacities drop, mostly in Queens and Brooklyn. 
  • 26% drop in outpatient capacities or 5191 patients with most drop from Bronx and Brooklyn 
  • 14% Opioid Treatment Program or 4609 capacities, mostly from Brooklyn and Queens 

SOURCE: OTP Enrollment by Year

5. There is a mismatch between overdose rates and drug treatment programs

Addiction rates varies in different districts. Review of overdose rates by district can be a good approximation to addiction rates. Review of this data shows that drug treatment capacities in NYC is not proportional to overdose rate. Districts in Staten Island has similar overdose rates as Harlem but have about 10 times less treatment capacities.

6. OASAS has located over 90% of Opioid Treatment Programs in redlined communities.

By reinforcing the racist neighborhood maps of 1938 (only overthrown  by the Fair Housing Act), OASAS continues to overburden vulnerable communities of color.

See this link for an interactive map.

7. Locational Consolidation: Not only did treatment capacities  shrunk from 2010 to 2019, importantly, drug treatment centers also consolidated, but existing treatment centers also expand in size turning into these mega treatment centers.

Reviewing only OTP treatment facilities, we noticed the unique number of  addresses that provide such treatment went from 74 to 52 from 2010 to 2019.  Reviewing all treatment facilities (OTP, in-patient, out-patient, crisis, residential), unique number of addresses dropped from 318 to 242. It appears this further limits  the accessibility of treatment to patients.  

Sources: OTP Capacity Data and OTP Enrollment by Year

Data Sources

OTP Capacity Data from an OASAS FOIL request by Yonni Pielet in 2019: OCR and Analysis. This dataset lists OASAS-certified programs and their patient capacities.

OTP Patient Residences from OASAS FOIL request. We have two versions of this dataset:

These datasets count the number of “admissions” to OASAS treatment programs, by program and by patient’s provided residential zip code. For patient confidentiality the exact counts are redacted for program-zip code pairs with 5 or fewer patients, and residential zip codes are not necessarily reliable or current.

OTP Enrollment by Year from OASAS FOIL request by Eva Chan in 2020: Original PDF, OCR and Analysis. This dataset lists the average daily enrollments for OASAS programs in 2010, 2015, and 2019.

Shelter Census Data from NYC Open Data: Dataset, Analysis. This dataset lists the census populations of NYC shelters over time since mid-2018.

Overdoses by Neighborhood in 2020, from NYC DOHMH: PDF Data, PDF Report.