Why Should Delaware Care?
Since last year, tensions have been high between community advocates and Wilmington officials over the city’s handling of its homelessness crisis. This month, the city’s homelessness task force released its recommendations to the mayor on how to address the problem, but advocates say the plan falls short, prompting them to develop their own proposals.
Homelessness advocates in Wilmington are urging Mayor John Carney to consider providing more city-funded services for those who are unhoused, as some argue that the city’s recent proposals fall short in addressing the local crisis.
On Tuesday, after the city’s homelessness task force approved its list of recommendations to send to the mayor’s office, advocates from eight different organizations met in a subsequent meeting to discuss a new set of proposals that they say will help expand resources and shelter access for the city’s unhoused population.
“The city must step forward with significant resources if we’re ever to end homelessness, not just manage it. And that responsibility does not go away because it wasn’t in the task force charter,” said Kim Eppehimer, a member of the task force and the executive director of the homeless services nonprofit Friendship House, during the advocates’ meeting.
Over the past few weeks, advocates and residents have criticized the city’s task force for not committing sufficient money and resources to address homelessness across the city, leading them to create their own potential solutions.
The task force’s final recommendations include temporarily allowing a tent community in Christina Park until a village of “tiny homes” can be built to replace the tents; opening another day center facility for unhoused individuals; creating a personal item storage facility; and getting local developers to build additional units of affordable housing over the next decade.
“Our recommendations make clear that homelessness is not a crime, and the report maps out a balanced approach to providing additional shelter beds and housing opportunities, medical care, mental health, and other services to unhoused individuals, if a sustainable funding source can be identified and approved,” said Claire DeMatteis, chair of Carney’s task force, in a recent press release.
But advocates say the city’s final proposal is an “implicit endorsement of the status quo.”
New ideas promoted
During the Sept. 30 meeting, community advocate Shyanne Miller proposed a new list of recommendations to submit to Carney, which would require the city to provide funding to establish better housing, health, and public safety resources.
The proposal includes asking the city to stop conducting sweeps, encampment bans, unnecessary arrests, or fines; increasing the number of emergency shelter beds; establishing a city-run Homeless Services Office to coordinate services and programs; and increasing access to restrooms, showers, and mobile health clinics to prioritize public health.
“The city is really reluctant to provide funding for this issue, to provide land, to provide other public resources, And by doing that, they could be helping increase the number of low-barrier emergency beds and permanent supportive housing units that cover those in the city who need it,” Miller said.
In response to the recommendations, officials from Carney’s office said they will continue working on solutions outside of the task force and are reviewing the feedback they received from the community.
“This is a complex issue, and the City of Wilmington task force is just one part of the solution. We are committed to continuing our work with partners at both the state and federal level, and the state task force is currently evaluating many of the funding and programming concerns that were expressed,” said Caroline Klinger, Carney’s spokeswoman.
Attendees of the Sept. 30 meeting included the Housing Alliance Delaware, Friendship House, H.O.M.E.S. Campaign, Delaware Poor People’s Campaign, Tide Shift Justice Project, and the Episcopal Church of Sts. Andrews and Matthew, among others.
City council members Christian Willauer, Shane Darby, and Latisha Bracy were also present at the meeting.
Task force was limited, advocates say
Many gave Carney and the city credit for getting the conversation around homelessness moving, while underscoring flaws in the task force process and its output.
Advocates say the city still lacks a clear pathway for people to exit homelessness, has not adequately addressed mental health needs or the criminalization of homelessness, and appears to lean too heavily on outside nonprofits to help with the problem.
Eppehimer, who voted in favor of the final recommendations while on the task force, said that the task force was limited in what it could actually accomplish.
“We were not charged with creating options to end homelessness or even with holding the city accountable for the resources that this crisis demands,” she said. “Our mandate was pretty narrow. It was, and I quote, ‘to make recommendations to Mayor John Carney on an approach to improving the conditions of Wilmington’s street homeless population.’”
Carney established the 12-member task force in March after vowing to make addressing homelessness a priority of his mayorship when he was elected last November.
Rachel Stucker, executive director of the Delaware Housing Alliance, also emphasized that the task force made “predetermined recommendations” that “primarily focused on reducing the visibility of homelessness in the city, not solving the problem.”
The advocates hope that the recommendations, if considered, will support the unhoused population beyond what the task force approved.
Asked what will happen if Carney is unsupportive of the advocates’ recommendations, Miller said she hopes that the city council will “step up.”
Councilwoman Bracey noted that it is too early to say what the next steps will be.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and there are council members who are willing to do that work, and I think it’s just a matter of us coming together and figuring out what those next steps look like, and what funding looks like, [and] all of the decisions that need to be made in the future,” she said.
Carney is set to review the task force’s recommendations and respond to them in the coming weeks.
