The “Broken Windows” series started with one complaint—one complaint by one individual about a group of people he saw as junkies and drug dealers. It was a matter of one local methadone clinic’s clients loitering and making the neighborhood look bad. Many agreed with him. Some did not.

The individual’s name is Ray Caceres. He felt the presence of this group hurt his real estate business. His customers cited the activity they saw as a reason to not buy property—at least not at the asking prices. Caceres claimed similar properties just a few blocks away, closer to the heart of Northern Liberties, sold faster, and for much more money. Data from Philadelphia’s Office of Property Assessment showed him to be correct.

But it was not a lost commission that brought Caceres to The Spirit. It was not a “reduced price” sign that put him over the top. No, it was a fistfight—a fight between two women, who were believed to be clients of the nearby Goldman Clinic, though the clinic cannot confirm such information, due to HIPPA regulations.

The two women brawled up and down the area around Girard Avenue and Marshall Street before crashing through the front window of Caceres’ real estate business. The broken glass on his floor represented a temporary problem. The cause of that problem seemed like eternal hell.

Our first encounter with the characters of this story included one of the combatants explaining herself to Caceres. She went from apologizing and promising to pay him back the half of the damages she was responsible for, to faulting him for not having shatter-proof windows.

The story began with conflict, and it continued with conflict. But the conflict had little to do with fists or weapons. It had to do with change: the old versus the new. In most cases, the “new” is easily cast as the bad guy: a big corporation paving over an open-space area that a community loves, a politically-connected power-player threatening eminent domain, or a methadone clinic moving into an old working-class neighborhood. But what happens when it’s a renewing neighborhood moving into a methadone clinic? Trickier, huh?

This was not my first methadone clinic story. The people of Holmesburg and Mayfair long fought several clinics from setting up shop. I attended angry, vocal civic meetings, spoke to nearby, legitimately concerned business owners, and even chatted with the people who owned the clinics trying to open. Americans. Humans. All with opinions and insight. And emotion.

Their battles spawned laws that morphed into variations that the River Wards may use in the future—or not. The laws are so complex that even if the bureaucracy needed to enforce those laws is ever set up, the inevitable flaws in the execution of enforcement would be low-hanging, sweet fruit for a legal team of a clinic.

In this final part of the series, The Spirit decided to give ourselves and the community a voice. We spoke with a lot of people, but the ones that live here or set up a business here are the most vested. Politicians come and go, police officers get transferred to other parts of the city, and employees of businesses take other offers and move on. But home is home.

The first person up is the man who sells those homes:

“The only way, I mean the only way, that anything changes is if [Goldman Clinic administrators] hire somebody. They need security on that corner,” Caceres said. “Yes, it would cost them money. But it would be what? $18,000 a year? You would see a complete difference. Just that presence, not every other hour like the cops do. Keep things moving, that’s their beat. Nine to nine, nine to five, whenever they’re open. Do it until these people get the message.”

Caceres said the police presence, particularly the bike officer, has helped tremendously. He even noticed a pickup in property sales and interest in development in recent months. But he worries about the future.

“The cops have other things to take care of. They can’t be here all the time,” he said. “We have daycare centers…how’s that going to work when you have zombies walking around?”

Matt Kilcline is a community activist from Fishtown. He spoke with me over coffee about SEPTA’s potential role, but also about the residents taking action directly. SEPTA Key is a fare-collection method that could be manipulated to conform with laws that require subsidized transportation for people with addiction, while limiting the amount of time they spend near the clinic.

“SEPTA is holding off on adopting the Key RFID technology until after the upcoming Democratic National Convention and the Pope visit,” Kilcline said. “Understandably, they don’t want to be using a less-than-fluid system during those moments of … high scrutiny. Having said that, with the roll-out being paused, it could be a good time for them to bolster their understanding of the incoming system and its capabilities. Unfortunately, in their eyes, they have very little to gain by doing a lot more work. Maybe I can get the ear of a councilperson to put the appropriate pressure on SEPTA to encourage them to improve the loitering and all-day riding without purpose.”

Kilcline continued:

“The group that I started … is tentatively titled ‘Front and Girard Group.’ [It’s] really about aligning the common interests of the surrounding neighbors, who, because of multiple overlapping divided borders, have historically not been aligned. Some of the challenges are easy to find insurmountable, but the goal is to organize the huge problem and dissect it into more manageable pieces, like any project that the area’s professionals would do with their challenges at work.”

Tom G., 39, a recovering addict who sat with me at the McDonald’s near Front and Girard, initially wrote a letter critiquing my opening article of this series. We talked for close to two hours. When we reconnected last week, Tom was still looking for a plumbing job—but more importantly, he was still clean.

“I don’t see nobody at the donut shop [at 7th and Girard] when I pass by on the trolley anymore,” he said. “I can’t really say [the lack of activity at the shop] is going to solve the problem, though. It’s just gonna move somewhere else. It may be unsolvable. This whole thing is a commodity. People want it, and they’re gonna get it.”

Tom sees the problem as a healthcare system issue, too.

“These people doctor-shop,” he said. “They say ‘I’m crazy, I need this.’ Then they pay him, say $100 or something, and he gives them a script for 120 zannies [the street term for Xanax]. Either they pay with cash or use public assistance.”

For the recovering addict, the solution may be positivity.

“I had an idea,” he said. “It came from what you said about that homeless newspaper [One Step Away]. What if we had a methadone paper? We could write about success stories, you know? Like ‘He’s five years clean’ and … stuff like that.”

“This life is not fun. I actually found myself lecturing a young guy the other day. And as I’m talking I thought, ‘I’ve heard this before.’ Yeah, because it’s exactly what someone told me way back when. Hopefully he listens. I didn’t.”

Tom Foley is an addiction treatment specialist who makes Northern Liberties his home. When we first met, he told me about the difficulty treatment professionals face with patient compliance. He also helped me understand how Vivitrol, a once-monthly shot that is showing a lot of promise in replacing methadone, works. While promising, the new injection is expensive.

“How useful is the medication if nobody who needs it can afford it? And a great majority of the people who need it are sometimes destitute or without the means to afford the medication,” Foley said. “Vivitrol’s gotten better … but it’s the other end of that [if you can’t afford the medication], the insurance company doesn’t cover it, then you can’t pay out of pocket.”

“Another thing is education. [By that I mean] treatment professionals have to understand … more,” Foley said. “[They] have to know more of the options that are available. The medical professionals, and the counselors, and the social workers, and the case managers have to know that these things are available, and that they’re safe and effective, and that they’re evidence-based.”

Finally, it’s my turn—the reporter’s take. I usually just talk to people, write the story, and keep my fat butt out of it. But my editor convinced me to share my thoughts.

I’ve interviewed more than 30 sources, on the record and off. I’ve sat down with the administrators of the Goldman Clinic in their offices for hours. I listened to residents at several civic meetings, and enjoyed many cups of coffee in doing so. My recorder memory maxed once or twice, and somewhere a tree is missing a branch, due to all of my paper notes.

So here it goes: All of the characters who sat down with me are correct—at least somewhat. Yeah, I know, that’s a cop-out, right? Well, no it’s not. I’ve been watching “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” on Comedy Central, so I know how to “Keep it 100,” meaning 100 percent true.

Caceres is right that a security person is needed. The addicts in question need more than just drugs and counseling. They need a lifestyle change. It behooves the clinics to get their clients to stop hanging out on street corners. Tom G. told me “they look like fools out there.” I can’t help but think that hanging on corners as teenagers led to some poor decisions in the first place. It’s time to help them break that cycle. It’s time to get them to move along.

But as Tom G. also pointed out, the problem will just relocate. In some respects, it has already. Now, the corner of Front Street and Girard Avenue seems to be more active. His idea of a addiction treatment-themed newspaper is interesting (How could I not think that? I’m a journalist). The vetted and accurate information for readers would be invaluable. That’s a long-term solution, but moving people along and illustrating the light at the end of the tunnel may just buy time. The more time away from the drug, the better the chance for recovery.

Matt Kilcline wants problems solved now. His new group is just a culmination of his selfless hard work in recent months. I’ve seen him at the community meetings; I’ve seen him in the neighborhood. I’m impressed by how much research he did on SEPTA’s new RFID fare program. His recognition of the problem at Front and Girard—which essentially boils down to no one group really owning it—and his solution to that problem is what leaders do. He’s got the ears of both of the police organizations that cover the intersection, he’s got the civic groups with him, and the businesses’ attention. He’s going to start working on the City Councilmen that cover the area. And they better listen. If they don’t, they may be running against him in four years.

Finally, Foley hits it on the head with access. Medications like Vivitrol need to become more available, not less. That’s certainly a bigger problem than a neighborhood civic association can tackle, but it must be kept in mind. The community needs to pressure the clinics to adopt the new treatments—particularly ones that possess no street value and reduce how often recovering addicts need to be at the clinic.

It comes back to the old versus the new. I don’t doubt for one single second that Laura Jones of the Goldman Clinic believes in what she does: that she believes in methadone, and that she cares deeply for her clients. But sometimes you have to recognize the merits of the new and embrace it.

I believe in tipping points. There’s not one thing that will solve this problem. There’s no magic bullet. But if each person I spoke with did their part, if each one believed it could work, then maybe…maybe. Maybe one addict gets away from the pressure of the predators for one more day, one more week, one more month. Maybe one business takes a chance, opens up, and hires someone. Maybe one young man not knowing what he’s going to do in life chooses to apply for that job rather than sell pills. Maybe.

But it takes a first step. Ray Caceres made a call to The Spirit and told his story. Matt Kilcline gathered a group. Tom G. wakes up every day and journeys further and further from his demons. Tom Foley dedicated his professional life to helping addicts. They know it takes more than just complaining about it.

No one ever paid Caceres for his broken window. But maybe, just maybe, the story it spurred will bring back something more valuable than money. Maybe.