Why Should Delaware Care?
Resources for homelessness and drug detox are scarce across the state, but particularly south of the canal, where residents often need to go out of state to Maryland or Pennsylvania to get treatment. A couple of legislators and nonprofit organizations are trying to address that gap in Kent County, but they lack the necessary coordination and state funding to get the projects to the finish line.
A former auto shop next to a Route 1 offramp? A Kent County court building? A two-story office building on West Division Street? Or a hotel?
As Kent County rushes to address a worsening homelessness situation, and a persistent drug crisis, all of these spaces in Dover have been proposed as potential sites to help people who are suffering.
Everyone seems to agree that something needs to be done. But a lack of committed dollars from the government, combined with limited coordination between different groups proposing new services pose a risk that the efforts could ultimately create a patchwork of underfunded facilities.
“We already have small facilities and they don’t work,” said Doug Ferris, who recently purchased the auto shop property near Route 1 to build a 75-bed detox center.
Ferris said his proposed center, by contrast, would be big enough to sustainably serve the county.
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On Monday, the retired financial advisor showed Spotlight Delaware the property, highlighting that it sits along Bay Road, an arterial where many homeless people sleep. During the tour, State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-Dover) pulled into the property in a large pickup, wearing an American flag baseball cap.
He joined the interview and began to talk about his own plans to provide homelessness and addiction services. Offering a frequent Republican critique, he claimed that Delaware has “demonized” police, leading to too little enforcement of drug use.
“I can show you where Kensington Avenue is in Dover,” Buckson said, referencing a street in Philadelphia at the center of that city’s drug epidemic.
Buckson’s Push
For Buckson, opioid use in Kent County is personal.
His sister, a former Delaware lawyer, ended up pregnant and living on the streets with a drug addiction, he said. Buckson described the challenges that he and his wife faced having to raise his sister’s child for five years, while his sister was in rehab.
Because of this experience, Buckson told Spotlight Delaware that he has been advocating for homelessness and drug use services since the 2010s when he was a Kent County Levy Court Commissioner.
In more recent years, Buckson has been pushing for what he calls a “HOPE-style Center” in Kent County, modeled in part after a hotel that Gov. Matt Meyer turned into a homeless shelter in 2020, while he was New Castle County’s executive. He used $20 million in COVID-era relief dollars to make the purchase and subsequently named the facility the Hope Center.
The Kent County version would be more focused on detox from drug abuse than its New Castle County counterpart, which is primarily a homeless shelter, Buckson said. He views drug use as more of a pressing issue in the Dover area.
“It really should be a robust, middle-of-the-state center. All things addiction, mental health and everything else,” Buckson said.
Buckson’s focus highlights an ideological divide among advocates for the homeless. With the differing opinion, University of Delaware professor Steve Metraux, who studies homelessness and advises on strategies to address it, said the focus on detox in Kent County is just one piece of the puzzle.
He said the county should also continue to focus on expanding services that provide housing.
“At the end of the day, they’re still going to have a housing problem, and they’ve got virtually no chance of any kind of sustained sobriety if their housing needs aren’t met,” Metraux said.
The Housing Alliance Delaware’s most recent statewide Point-In-Time count, which tracks homelessness across the state on one night in January, found that 2025 broke the record for the highest number of people unhoused, at 1,585. This was a 16% increase from 2024, which was the previous highest year on record.
According to the Kent County Emergency Medical Services Division, reported opioid overdoses in the county dropped by 25% from 2023 to 2024. Still, Delaware remains the state with the fifth highest drug overdose death rate, according to the CDC.
Buckson has been lobbying for a detox facility for years, and has suggested using a recently vacated family courthouse in Dover, which the state purchased with federal COVID response funding. However, he said he has struggled to get people with the “necessary funding” on board.
“I have failed miserably to get the attention of the majority party to help me champion this thing,” Buckson said.
Buckson added that he is looking to the governor’s office to “move the needle” on the project by committing public dollars to it.
In a statement emailed to Spotlight Delaware, Meyer’s office acknowledged the value of a potential HOPE Center-like facility in Dover, but did not commit specifically to providing funding or support for the project.
“Our focus is on ensuring that any investment is sustainable and delivers measurable results for Delawareans in need,” Meyer said in the statement.
A detox center, from the ground up
Ferris, the owner of the autoshop property, said as recently as last year he had no intention of getting involved in the homeless services sector.
But eight months ago, he said people who work in addiction recovery approached him about launching a detox center in Dover. He declined to say who made the suggestion. He soon began to see the dire need for such a space, he said.
“You drive downtown and you look and it’s like, that’s somebody’s kid out there. It’s really sad,” Ferris said.
Two months ago, Ferris closed on the property at 1011 South Bay Road, where he plans to demolish the auto shop there and build a detox center.
Theresa Campbell Harris, director of the Center for Neighbors in Need in Dover, said she also sees a need for a detox center, given the number of the people who use the shelter’s meal program and also need medical attention for drug use-related issues.
Harris doesn’t know where to send people, she said, because the limited detox services in Delaware are either too far for her center to transport people to, or are closed in the evening, when her center is serving meals.
“It’s kind of hit-and-miss,” she said.
Adding to the dearth of resources in Kent County, Harris said, Bayhealth Medical Center, the primary healthcare provider in Kent County, does not have a dedicated substance abuse team, like its counterparts at ChristianaCare in New Castle County and Beebe Healthcare in Sussex County.
This makes Bayhealth a less viable option for residents in need of substance abuse treatment, she said.
A spokesperson for Bayhealth confirmed in a statement attributed to Chief Strategy Officer John Van Gorp that the hospital does not have a dedicated substance abuse team, though it does “regularly treat patients experiencing medical conditions related to substance use.”
In an effort to fill this gap in detox facilities, Ferris said his intention is to fit about 75 beds in the facility, which will eventually be staffed with doctors, nurses and therapists.
While Ferris said he is prepared to finance the whole construction process himself, which he estimated would cost $4 million to $5 million, he hopes to get some state funding to push along the project.
He said Del-One Credit Union is helping to finance the project, as well.
Wraparound services needed
A 10-minute drive across town from Ferris’ space is 630 W. Division St., where the Dover Interfaith Mission for Housing has a building. Its officials acquired the property in 2023 using a federal grant, and they plan to turn it into an all-purpose facility with drug rehab, 40 beds of transitional housing and other support services.
Carol Boggerty, the organization’s board chair, said she likes the HOPE Center in Wilmington as a model, but views the services that Dover Interfaith plans to provide as most closely suited to Kent County’s needs.
“Standalone facilities like the HOPE Center, they won’t work in Kent County,” Boggerty told Spotlight Delaware. “So when people are ending Doug’s [Ferris] program, he will automatically know, ‘hey,’ I know Dover Interfaith has a bed.”
The Dover Interfaith Mission has faced controversy over the past few years, as its former director and another employee embezzled over $700,000 in federal grant money, meant to be used for people suffering from homelessness. The two employees, Karen Wilder and Renwick Davis, pleaded guilty to the embezzlement charges on Aug. 8.
Boggerty said the scandal has not impacted the rest of Dover Interfaith, as the community has recognized that it was an isolated incident with the two employees, and has continued providing financial support to the nonprofit.
Still, she said, the organization has the funding to get the building ready, but not to carry out its full operation. For that, its officials need to get money from the state.
Boggerty, who is also the director of pastoral care at Bayhealth, said she would like Interfaith’s new facility to partner with Bayhealth, so that the hospital could send patients there for care and transitional housing before they are released fully on their own.
Bayhealth said that it was open to collaborations that could “complement” the care that the hospital already provides.
A bipartisan effort?
Though Buckson said he still needs “champions” from the Democratic “majority party” to get on board with the project, he and State Sen. Kyra Hoffner (D-Smyrna) have been collaborating on the vision for a couple of months.
Hoffner, too, said she has recognized the need for better detox and transitional housing services in Kent County for a number of years, but the barrier has always been funding.
Two years ago, Hoffner proposed purchasing a hotel on U.S. Route 13 in Dover for such services, but could not get enough money for it. She also said that neighbors opposed it.
Now that Hoffner and Buckson are joining forces, she said she feels optimistic about the project.
“I feel like we’re doing baby steps,” she told Spotlight Delaware. “But with me and Senator Buckson working together, it will become a bipartisan support.”
To pay for a service center, Buckson mentioned the possibility of using money allocated to Kent County from a commission that distributes public dollars that had been obtained from the state’s legal settlements with prescription opioid producers.
Bradley Owens, director of the state opioid commission, said the commission already is giving “significant funding” to other Kent County organizations, indicating that any grant requests from Buckson’s may not automatically be approved.
Still, he said he has met with Buckson to discuss his vision, and supports the senator’s push for better resources in Kent County.
Local politicians in Kent County, including Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen and Levy Court Commissioner Bob Scott, also have expressed support for Buckson’s project. But, they also said its funding would be up to the state.
Asked if the county could dedicate dollars, Scott said, “I’m not sure exactly what we can do.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify Steve Metraux’s perspective on housing initiatives in Kent County.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.