Pallet Home Village in Georgetown celebrates ribbon cutting, $2.4M ARPA funding infusion

GEORGETOWN, Del. – State, Local, and federal officials Friday gathered to hold a ribbon cutting for the SpringBoard Collaborative’s Pallet Home village for the homeless in Georgetown.

The event marked 6 months of the center’s operation and highlighted the greenlighting of 2.4 million dollars in American Rescue Plan funding heading towards the center.

The funds were originally set aside to help the center open, but multiple delays saw the project turn to volunteers and alternate investment to launch.

The center offers homeless people the ability to have an address, attend wrap-around social services, and transition into more permanent work and housing.

Georgetown Mayor Bill West says the center is a success that needs more support to keep going.

“All 40 of them were occupied, I think there are 11 people that have permanent jobs, there’s seven that have gone out and got permanent housing, and there are numerous ones that are attending drug rehab and or alcohol rehab,” he said adding that the federal dollars will go towards creating a community center with a permanent kitchen, and offices for expanded social services.

“People are shipping birth certificates, disability, attending treatments, getting clean, and the two folks managing all of this it is not enough we need more,” West said.

The funding is making its way to the site thanks to efforts from Delaware’s congressional delegation.

Senator Chris Coons spoke with some of the residents and says it’s a model for how to fix homelessness in the nation.

“If the folks who are here are all in one place and able to get housing, counseling, occupational counseling, health care, and support, instead of being scattered all throughout this community, it actually costs less in taxpayer dollars to provide the same level of support,” he said.

He tells us he spoke with residents at the facility, many of them veterans, and called helping them a moral imperative for the state.

“I was talking to a Navy veteran who’s been homeless in this community for some time and for whom this is her first safe, sanitary, decent, accessible home if we can’t house our veterans, who can we say that we are meeting our moral obligation to house,” he said.

According to state officials, the day was also highlighting Delaware’s push for functional zero homelessness, which is defined by homelessness being rare, brief, and non-recurring in the state.

Mayor West tells 47ABC that the Mayor of Milford has committed to achieving a similar vision in his town, as well as multiple out-of-state agencies touring the site to see how it could be replicated in their communities.

“We have set the precedent of what one should look like and how it should be controlled,” he said.