Usually, when a crowd of people gathers in a room to talk about supervised injection facilities, tensions run high. But at a party in Society Hill on Friday evening, pretty much everyone was in agreement that such a site would be a powerful public-health tool that would help save lives.

It was the first convening of a group of supporters of Safehouse, the nonprofit that plans to open a supervised injection facility in Kensington.

Marissa Perrone hosted the evening with husband Joe Piscitello. She had the idea for what she called a “friends of Safehouse” group after attending the most recent community meeting in Kensington, at which neighbors voiced opposition to Safehouse’s proposal to open a space near the Kensington and Allegheny El stop where people could inject drugs under medical supervision.

Perrone said she was struck by the degree of opposition from the neighbors, and what she described as the level of misunderstanding about what Safehouse will and won’t do. She was surprised that people thought this was a project paid for by the city. She wanted to make the argument that this was a way people could be linked to treatment. And she didn’t think investing in Safehouse had to mean that Kensington wouldn’t get the other improvements it so sorely needs.

“A ‘friends group’ can change the narrative — it doesn’t have to be the Safehouse or improving Kensington,” she said.

So Perrone thought it would be helpful to convene a group of that could help dispel myths about supervised injection facilities and also be a voice advocating for them.

Perrone and Piscitello are invested in Safehouse because they believe it would have helped their 24-year-old son, who has struggled with addiction over the years.

“We knew he was in Kensington, and there were nights that we would literally wonder and go out and hope that if he was overdosing that somebody would find him,” said Piscitello, a personal-injury lawyer.

He said he wishes there had been a place like Safehouse for his son to use.

“That would have been a dream — to know that maybe he’s in Kensington, but maybe that’s not certain death.”

Their son is currently in recovery. The couple was joined by Izzy Harper, who lives in Point Breeze, and her mother, Cara Moser, who lives in Massachusetts. Moser’s daughter, Eliza, died of an overdose several months ago in her home. Her younger brother found her body and tried to resuscitate her.

Moser said she knows her daughter would not have wanted that.

“I know that on that day, had she had an option, she would have gone somewhere. She did not want to die.”

So the two linked up with Piscitello and Perrone to create a network of advocates. They reached out to other families who had lost loved ones to overdoses, as well as activists, attorneys, and those in the medical profession, including Jeanmarie Perrone. She is head of medical toxicology in the emergency department at University of Pennsylvania Hospitals and is Marissa Perrone’s sister.

In all, about 50 people sipped wine and ate snacks Friday alongside Safehouse board members Ronda Goldfein of the AIDS Law Project and Jose Benitez of Prevention Point to strategize ways to get their message across more clearly.

“This reminds me of the early HIV days, when we were all in rooms together trying to figure out how to not lose people,” Benitez told the group gathered in the old row house.

Though the initial aim may have been to clear up misconceptions and make the idea of Safehouse more palatable or easier to understand, as the conversation unfolded, a new theme emerged: A first step is to listen.