Special Series
This is the second story in Spotlight Delaware’s five-part series examining homelessness in the First State. Read Part 1 here. If you or someone you how are experiencing homelessness, available resources can be found here.
Why Should Delaware Care?
Although Delaware’s homeless population has grown in recent months, the availability of resources and affordable housing has not. Spotlight Delaware spoke with multiple people experiencing homelessness throughout the state to learn more about their experiences with living in an encampment or shelter, finding housing, and surviving the winter.
During the coldest nights of the year, Ron “Philly” Simmons stays behind while his neighbors at a homeless camp at Wilmington’s Christina Park seek refuge inside downtown hotels.
To stay warm sleeping in his tent, Simmons cocoons himself within 10 blankets and uses a myriad of hand and body warmers.
He said he doesn’t make the mile-long walk from the Eastside park to downtown because of a limp, caused by a bullet that remains lodged in his leg.
And there is no one offering rides, he said, while donning two jackets and a Philadelphia Eagles baseball cap.
Simmons had lived in a house in Dover in the past, before splitting with his wife, he said. He also previously had been homeless in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
He notes that his life today “is no way to live.”
“There’s no way to really live in a public park. Are you kidding me?” he said.
Spotlight Delaware spoke with several people across the state, living in parks, shelters and wooded encampments to better understand the different ways Delawareans experience homelessness. Though no two experiences were the same, many shared similar concerns about accessing restrooms and other resources, about attempts to stay hidden from the public, and about ultimately finding permanent housing.
The number of people living at Christina Park has grown in recent weeks despite cold temperatures, according to several residents. One, who asked to be referred to by his first name, Al, said there were around 12 tents at the park when he arrived in early November. By Dec. 9, there were about 50 tents.
The growth followed a slew of recommendations made by a Wilmington task force that determined the park should be a city-sanctioned homeless encampment.
Despite the recommendation and the population growth, living conditions within the encampment are harsh.
Because there are no public restrooms, people must use buckets to relieve themselves or make the 20-minute walk to the Wilmington train station or to the Sunday Breakfast Mission – the only homeless shelter in downtown Wilmington.
“You have to train your body to be able to do that,” Simmons said. “Or you go in a bucket somewhere up here, or you take your chances behind a tree or something.”
Earlier in the fall, city leaders pledged to install porta-potties at the park – a measure that also was part of the Wilmington homelessness task force recommendations. But Philly said they have yet to be installed.
Spotlight Delaware also has not seen any during recent visits to the park.
Caroline Klinger, a spokeswoman for Wilmington Mayor John Carney, said last week that the administration identified a company that rents trailer-style bathrooms and is “in talks to get those to Christina Park as soon as possible.”
The city also is drafting a contract with an organization that will oversee the management of the park and those new bathrooms, Klinger said. She did not disclose the name of the organization.
Until then, most of the help for people living in Christina Park comes from churches or nearby residents. Some people bring food on the weekends. A chicken truck comes every Sunday, Philly said.
Still, food throughout the rest of the week can be “hit or miss.”
Sometimes, well-intentioned community members bring too much food to the park, and without a refrigerator it goes to waste.
In November, people brought more than 15 trays of Thanksgiving food to the park in November, but Philly estimated that park residents had to throw away $5,000 worth of food because they could not eat it all.
Like food, clothing can also go to waste at the park.
Donated clothes are often left along the sidewalk. If they aren’t needed or don’t fit, they are left outside where they rot from the rain or snow.
While there is material help from the community, Philly said he is the only security the park has.
He also says he and Al have assisted others in the park community by helping them find rehabilitation centers, offering their own tents for shelter, and connecting with people’s families.
“I’ll do anything in the world for us,” Philly said. “For us homeless people, I’m willing to do anything it takes to change this.”
‘Just keep trying’
For more than seven years, Scott Meade had been chronically homeless, living in tents, chicken houses and abandoned buildings in Seaford and Georgetown.
At one point, Meade said, he had to be picked up by the police to get help for a medical emergency, and the officers couldn’t believe that he had been hiding in the vacated building near the Georgetown campus of Delaware Technical Community College for multiple years without being discovered.
“You’re really good at hiding,” Meade recalled the police officers telling him. “We go back past here all day long, and we never knew you were here.”
After getting the suggestion from a daytime homeless center in Seaford, Meade moved into Springboard Delaware’s Pallet Village in Georgetown – a transitional housing development that provides residents with individual sleeping cabins along with social services to secure identification documents, apply to jobs, receive other mental and physical health services and search for permanent housing – about two years ago.
Over those two years, Meade said he has gradually been able to move out of what he called “survival mode” while living on the streets, and re-learn how to interact with other people, something he came to avoid in order to stay out of trouble while outside.
Meade has also found an outlet for himself through art, using the village’s Healing Arts Studio, which is run by another resident.
“If you looked at my art last year or a couple of years ago, it would be a lot different than what I’m doing today,” Meade said of the transformation he has seen in himself.
While he has been able to re-socialize himself and work through his emotions artistically during his stay at the Pallet Village, Meade said he still faces some logistical obstacles to moving forward into permanent housing. These include getting his birth certificate and other forms of documentation, in order to be able to collect Social Security and other government benefits for which he might be eligible, he said.
The Pallet Village does not place a limit on how long its residents can stay there, as each person’s needs and situations look different, executive director Judson Malone told Spotlight Delaware in October.
While Meade has been living at the Pallet Village for two years, Malone provided data to Spotlight that the average length of stay is four months.
“I just keep trying, because you don’t know where you’re going to be in six months,” Meade said. “You don’t know where you’re going to be in a month.”
Rural homelessness challenges
While residents at the Pallet Village are able to settle into a more permanent routine, with a cabin to return to every night and a secure place to store their belongings, day-to-day life looks more uncertain for homeless people utilizing a Code Purple site in Seaford.
Michael Starr has been homeless for more than five years, moving around to various locations across the state.
On Dec. 12, Starr came into North Star Nights, a Code Purple shelter that operates nightly from December through March and is run by the nonprofit organization Redemption City, with his fiancé, cousin-in-law, and a large wagon with all of his belongings in tow.
Starr and his companions had been living in a tent behind the Walmart on the side of U.S. Route 113 in Seaford, before they decided to relocate to the shelter for the winter at the beginning of December.
“We kind of live more luxuriously than many homeless people,” Starr said. “In the tents we have two different beds, plus we got room for storage.”
They also used to have a space heater in the tent, Starr said, but they had to “pawn it off” in order to be able to buy food.
Starr said it was a challenge to drag all their belongings more than 2 miles from their tent near the Walmart to the Code Purple site on North Bradford Street, but it was worth it to have a respite from the cold nights.
Still, there are few hours in the afternoon between when the day services at the shelter close and Code Purple starts up again for the evening, so Starr said his group has been carrying all their stuff to the nearby Hardee’s restaurant during that time, where they are usually allowed to stay without having to buy anything.
Starr highlighted a common experience for those experiencing homelessness in Sussex County – the rural nature of southern Delaware, and the large distance between towns, often presents additional challenges than those faced by their more urban counterparts, he said. Accessing resources, or simply finding a place to warm up from the cold, often requires walking along deserted country roads or massive highways like Route 1 and Route 113.
The trio is on the list for Section 8 housing vouchers and some shelters where all three of them might be able to stay together, Starr said, but he isn’t very optimistic about finding a place they could afford, as their only current source of income is disability money his fiancé and cousin-in-law receive.
“It’s kind of rough with these two having the only source of income,” he added. “It makes it harder because the cost of living is going way up.”
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/.