35% increase in homelessness for Delaware, organizations say more affordable housing needed

DELAWARE- 35 percent increase; a striking number reported of homelessness in Delaware, and an issue that some organizations are seeing locally.

“I’ve been helping the homeless myself since 2008 and now we are in 2021, this is definitely the busiest year ever,” Jim Martin, founder of the Shepherds Office, said.

The Housing Alliance Delaware does a study every year, for one night, to count how many people are experiencing homelessness.

“What’s particularly striking is a lot of the folks that we counted who were staying in shelters were looking for housing and were unable to secure housing,” Sarah Rhine, Policy Director for Housing Alliance Delaware, said.

This is something Kevin Gilmore, Executive Director for Sussex County Habitat for Humanity, said he’s also seeing, as their application rates for affordable housing has gone up 43 percent over the past year.

“We see a lot of couch surfing ,or people are staying at friends houses or family house just because they don’t have a place of their own,” Gilmore said.

Another part of the study that was alarming was the increase in families and children at shelters.

“A large number of those who we found were homeless this year, who were not last year were children under the age of 18,” Rhine said.

Dale Smith, the Board President for Family Promise of Southern Delaware, said seeing these numbers is the reason why he wants to bring services to Eastern Sussex County.

“That’s whats gotten us energized is the number of families with children that are living in these, its not a primarily location for housing,” Smith said.

While we’re told all the tools are not there right now to fix the homeless issue, organizations said they aren’t giving up.

“The time for talking is kind of over now, we have to take action,” Martin said.

Gilmore said the whole spectrum of housing is in need right now,whether that be stable housing or shelters.

Martin with the Shepherds Office agreed that more needs to be done to increase the number of beds that year round shelters can accommodate in the area.

Smith said right now they are trying to get enough community support behind them so can provide prevention services and shelter diversion, but they need funding to do that.

Rhine said for change to happen it’s really going to take people reaching out to legislators about the need for affordable housing.