Clandestine injection sites have existed for years. There were illicit for-profit facilities in New York City during the 1980s. The first authorized safe injection site in the United States was projected to open in Philadelphia February 2020 but received strong opposition from its immediate neighbors. Community members successfully blocked the establishment of SCS in their neighborhood by getting the building's owner to withdraw the lease offer for Safespace. Several other locations such as San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Denver, Portland and Boston have considered opening them as well. Sam Chapman, advocacy director for Safer Spaces Portland whose interest is to provide testing of drug primarily for drug addicts "living outside" told the "Portland Business Journal" he's not looking for public funding and he said "I’m confident we can find private funding," but "I’m not at liberty to disclose where it would come from." The United States Department of Justice had filed a civil lawsuit against the nonprofit organization Safehouse in Philadelphia in February 2019 to prevent its opening. The nonprofit Safehouse filed a counter suit against the US Government arguing that its proposed operation is "a legitimate medical intervention, not illicit drug dens" as well as their "religious beliefs compel them to save lives at the heart of one of the most devastating overdose crises in the country." The newspaper commented citing religious beliefs to get around drug laws isn’t unheard of in "harm-reduction circles" and cited an example of a man in Maine who opened a “Church of Safe Injection” to legitimatize a needle exchange.