Shepherd’s Office debuts report on homelessness before Delaware commission for disabilities, linking likelihood of homelessness with disability
GEORGETOWN, Del. – A report compiled by Shepherd’s Office Outreach Director Jim Martin detailed the difficulty of surveying the homeless population, as well as the various material conditions that drive homelessness that his organization interacts with on a daily basis.
As part of the report’s findings, Martin says that one of the greatest predictors of housing instability is whether or not a person is disabled.
“Here on the front lines of food insecurity here, we’re seeing the fact that if you’re disabled, you’re extremely vulnerable because of your income level and you’re not able to really ramp up your income to meet other things like inflation and, you know, so so you’re kind of stuck to that fixed income, and we’re finding that people that are disabled are falling out of their rental agreements and rental situations because they can’t keep up with 1500 dollars or $2,000 a month,” Martin said.
Martin tells us in Sussex County, 100,000 people meet the traditional definition of homeless, but believes there are many more that are teetering on the edge or are actively hiding their status.
“You don’t go to work when you are sleeping on your friend’s couch because you lost your home, you don’t want to lose your job if someone asks you to go no I’m not homeless so we call them the invisible homeless, they work they have jobs but they are difficult to track as a group,” he said adding that he believes about 1,000 homeless in the area are disabled.
“Every bad part of the street, when you cannot move freely it is so much worse, they are having a crisis every 3 minutes, and they are more likely to be in that situation, they have that fixed income they can’t work, they can’t try and get a job to hang on a bit longer, Martin said.
Martin tells he presented the report before the State’s behavioral health subcommittee on disabilities and hopes to hear soon on action items.
“They can raise awareness on this, I’ve been ringing this bell for years, but I’m glad people are waking up to this when we need a highway we come in and we move houses because we say we need a highway for cars, we’ll we need something like that for people here because they need affordable homes,” Martin said.
