Why Should Delaware Care?
As homelessness has increased in communities across the state, local leaders have tried to come up with innovative solutions to the problem. In Georgetown, existing homelessness support services are being criticized as ineffective, and town officials are being blamed for exacerbating the problem – potentially foreshadowing a major shakeup in town leadership with an election coming up in March.
Georgetown residents are calling for Mayor Bill West and most members of the town council to step down, blaming town leaders for what they see as a failure to respond to the area’s growing homeless population.
At town council meetings this month, more than 30 residents have spoken about their dismay with the number of unhoused people in the town, and the problems they see with existing homeless services, including The Shepherd’s Office and Springboard Collaborative.
Springboard Delaware, also known as the pallet village, provides individual sleeping cabins to unhoused individuals as they work on finding permanent housing and other necessary support services.
The Shepherd’s Office, which was originally geared toward formerly incarcerated sex offenders but has since expanded to serve other unhoused people, is a day center that gives out meals and holds church services daily.
Outside of recent town council meetings, resident criticism has continued to escalate on social media. More than 2,700 members of a Facebook group called Make Georgetown Great Again post daily photos of unhoused people in town and criticize town officials.
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“I simply want to hold The Shepherd’s Office and Springboard Collaborative accountable, along with our town council, and Mayor West. I don’t think they’re doing what they’re claiming they’re doing,” Georgetown resident Tyler Scott, who created the Facebook page in early October, said in an interview with Spotlight Delaware.
Members of the group say the town’s unhoused population keeps growing. As a result, they say trash is piling up around town, and residents feel unsafe when they go to places like the gas station or the bank.
Amid the mounting disapproval, Springboard Delaware and The Shepherd’s Office are defending their approach to serving the town’s homeless population.
Mayor West and town council members also are standing by their previous decisions but acknowledge they need to expand the town’s efforts to curb homelessness going forward.
“I understand that the people of Georgetown are upset with the homeless population,” West said. “We as a government are going to do everything we can possible to correct this problem.”
Residents call for fines, bus tickets
Multiple residents at recent town council meetings suggested unhoused individuals should be fined or given bus tickets to leave town if they refuse to accept services.
Adam Buczkowski, a member of the town’s recently created Supportive Housing Issues Committee, which is compiling recommendations for the council about how to address homelessness, said he believes Georgetown is making itself a comfortable place for people to be homeless.
“Some people just like being homeless,” Buczkowski said at the Oct. 13 council meeting. “We definitely have a great place to be homeless.”
Others agreed, pointing to the number of drug recovery services in Georgetown – like Sun Behavioral Health and Banyan Recovery – along with the food and clothing The Shepherd’s Office provides as enabling people to stay homeless.
But Director of The Shepherd’s Office Jim Martin, who used to be homeless himself, disagreed. The first step to getting homeless people back on track, he said, is meeting them with the essential services they need.
“They’re broken down,” Martin said. “They’re starving. They haven’t had a shower in a month. And that’s where we meet them. We’re giving them a meal, we’re giving them water.”
While West said he supports the existing services to address homelessness in town, he agreed that writing bus tickets could be a solution for people who are not willing to accept local help.
West said he believes that half of the people living in the well-known tent encampment in the woods behind Douglas Street do not want to take advantage of recovery services.
“All they want is the free stuff and to live free in the woods where they can do their drugs and do their alcohol,” he said.
West said he has already paid for bus tickets for a couple out-of-towners who ended up homeless in Georgetown, even driving one person down to Salisbury, Md., to put them on a bus back to their home state of West Virginia.
Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn (R-Georgetown) also spoke at the Oct. 13 town council meeting, expressing the need for more solutions and resources to address homelessness.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Pettyjohn said he would not rule out any approach to the homelessness issue, including writing bus tickets for individuals who do not want to accept support services.
“We’re going to have to deal eventually with the ones that don’t want help or don’t successfully go through the treatment that’s given to them by either the state or the nonprofits,” he said.
In Georgetown, sleeping in The Circle or in any park within town limits has been banned since before the recent uptick in resident concerns over homelessness. Council members amended that ban on Oct. 27, prohibiting the act between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Previously, public sleeping was banned from sunset to sunrise without any specific hours.
West said at the meeting the council changed its ban because state lawmakers are discussing legislation that would allow people to sleep in their cars or on the street, and he wanted Georgetown’s ordinance to prevent that potential state law from taking effect in the town.
Steve Metraux, a University of Delaware professor who studies homelessness, said that criminalizing it or writing people bus tickets are not effective solutions. They are, however, in line with the approach to homelessness the Trump administration is modeling at the national level, he said.
“The current administration is framing homelessness as a mental health and substance abuse issue rather than a housing issue,” he said.
Metraux added that there is no actual evidence that people come from other places to be homeless in Georgetown, so writing them bus tickets elsewhere would not solve the problem.
Pallet village outcomes
While outspoken residents attacked The Shepherd’s Office for what they called its “free handouts” of food and clothing, Springboard Delaware’s pallet village also came under fire for what residents view as ineffective means of actually addressing homelessness.
Amber Kairos, who created the Make Georgetown Great Again group with her husband Tyler Scott, said she thinks the Springboard Delaware has too quick of a turnaround for people moving in and then leaving the village for it to be effective.
Springboard Delaware Executive Director Judson Malone said he is pleased with the organization’s outcomes in getting residents connected to long term housing options or to higher forms of care.
More than 160 participants have moved into the pallet village and then successfully moved on to other housing since the organization began operating in January 2023, according to data provided by Malone. The average length of stay at the village was four months.
According to the data, 40% of participants moved on to permanent housing, and 48% of participants with substance use disorders received treatment.
Tara McGowan and Dave Rehm moved into the pallet village in March, after they were unexpectedly kicked out of the house they were renting and forced to bounce around between motels and homeless shelters for a few months.
The couple described the pallet village as a “godsend,” helping them to work on getting a bank account and saving money to be able to move forward with their lives.
“This place isn’t just a home.” Rehm said. “It’s also a stepping stone and has everything you’re going to need to get back to where you need to be.”
McGowan and Rehm said they believe some residents’ criticisms about unhoused people creating trash and problems around town are justified, but that it is not fair to target everyone for the situation they are in.
“They’re ignorant to the fact that we’re not all the same,” McGowan said. “We did not choose this.”
Malone said he believes the unhoused population in Georgetown continues growing not because of the support services available, but because the lack of affordable housing in the area continues to increase.
“Until we recognize that it’s a housing issue, not a services issue, we’re not going to resolve the situation,” Malone said. “We’re going to continue to flounder.”
Kairos, who co-created the Facebook page, said both the pallet village and town government are corrupt because Malone’s wife, Christina Diaz-Malone is a member of the town council.
Both Malone and Diaz-Malone, however, said there is not a conflict of interest because the town does not fund the project, and Diaz-Malone voted with the rest of the council to unanimously approve the project before her husband was as heavily involved in its operations as he is now.
“Somehow now I’m the scapegoat,” Diaz-Malone said. “The town has to take responsibility for the decisions we made collectively.”
Diaz-Malone said she would recuse herself from any future votes about the pallet village that come before the council.
Small town politicking
Metraux, the UD professor, said the controversy in Georgetown is representative of homelessness becoming more of a “wedge issue” between political ideologies across the country.
But Scott and Kairos said while the name they chose for their Facebook group – Make Georgetown Great Again – closely resembles President Donald Trump’s well-known “Make America Great Again” tagline, the pair said they do not necessarily intend to align themselves with that national movement.
“We want all opinions,” Kairos said. “We want it to be everyone’s equal opinion about Georgetown, whether you are Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative.”
The couple does, however, intend to use the group to shake up the make-up of the town council.
“I’m going to use this Facebook group to try and dramatically change town hall,” Scott said in reference to the upcoming March town election. “I’m going to make sure that every one of [the council members] except Penuel Barrett has a challenger.”
Scott said he has been happy with Barrett’s time on the council, but he doesn’t feel like West or any of the other council members are actually doing anything to address homelessness in the town.
Town council members do not publicly identify with a political party in Georgetown.
Barrett and Council Member Tony Neal did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment. Council Member Eric Evans declined to comment.
Scott added that he would like to see Angie Townsend, who used to be a council member and narrowly lost the 2024 mayoral race to West, have a place within the government once again.
Townsend, who did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment, was another vocal critic of the town government and its response to homelessness at the recent council meetings.
West and Diaz-Malone said the types of criticisms and disputes mounted by members of the Facebook group are common within the town.
“It’s been going on for six years,” West said. “If people don’t feel that I’ve done a job, then it’s time for me to be replaced.”
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/.