Why Should Delaware Care?
With the upcoming closure of Wilmington’s only sanctioned homelessness encampment, advocates are asking where unhoused people will live after its shutdown. City officials are currently considering sponsoring a pallet village initiative to be built by Springboard Delaware, but the plan is already facing pushback from communities.
A proposal to build a village of tiny homes for homeless people in Wilmington is running into early resistance from residents of Southbridge and the Eastside, two neighborhoods being considered as potential sites.
Mayor John Carney’s office is currently in talks with the Springboard Delaware — an organization that operates pallet-style shelter villages — about a plan to bring the tiny homes to Delaware’s largest city at a cost of about $1.5 million.
The project could provide housing assistance to Wilmington’s growing homeless population, but neighborhood opposition to the project could complicate its prospects.
During a Southbridge Civic Association meeting last month, Springboard Delaware Executive Director Judson Malone presented the idea of building tiny homes in the area. Residents in attendance promptly rejected the proposal.
They argued that their community is already lacking public resources. They also expressed a fear that a pallet village could cause loitering, panhandling, and safety risks to spill into the neighborhood.
“At the end of the day, we are the most underserved community in the city of Wilmington. And then you want to bring the most underserved people into the most underserved community,” one Southbridge resident said during the meeting.
The debate comes as tensions in Wilmington remain high over the Carney administration’s handling of homelessness, especially with a June 15 eviction date approaching for residents living in the city’s only sanctioned homeless encampment at Christina Park.
Homeless advocates are unsure where encampment residents who haven’t found housing by that date will go.
The mayor’s office has said camping in public spaces will be prohibited,
The move to consider the tiny homes also follows more than a decade of Southbridge residents voicing opposition to planned developments in their neighborhood, including a failed proposal to build a cattle housing facility, and another to build a slag production plant. Several residents also pushed back in recent years to the state’s plan to transform the site of the Elbert Palmer school into new housing.
A Sussex nonprofit heading north
In 2024, Springboard Delaware changed its name from Springboard Collaborative, according to a report from the Cape Gazette.
That same year it also had faced a funding shortfall that jeopardized operations at its Georgetown pallet village.
Despite the difficulties, the nonprofit continued and last year named as its board chair Tom Ogden who previously served in Wilmington city government under then-Mayor Mike Purzycki.
Throughout the time, Springboard operated what it calls a ‘navigation center’ in Georgetown, providing 40 tiny homes and services to those who are homeless.
Each home has electricity, a microwave, and a minifridge. Those living in the village also have access to showers, restrooms, laundry, and meals. The case management services include counseling to help people find jobs, healthcare, and permanent housing.
The average stay, according to Springboard’s website, is around four months. About 40% of the individuals living in the pallet village have transitioned to permanent housing, the website also states.
Malone asserts that the pallet village in Georgetown “is the most peaceful community you can go into,” saying there have been no overdose deaths there since it opened.
‘So we know it works, but we also know it’s hard to get your arms around when there’s a community like this,” Malone said.
Carney spokeswoman Caroline Klinger said the city has been in conversations with Springboard Delaware for more than a year, but discussions picked up after plans to build a pallet village in Dover didn’t work out.
During last week’s civic association meeting in Southbridge, Malone noted that city officials and Springboard Delaware were considering two locations.
One is on Garasches Lane, a small street lined by industrial land in Southbridge. The other is across the street from Christina Park, where a private property owner offered their land as a potential location.
Klinger said Garasches Lane is a potential site because it’s already overseen by the city, has the necessary space for a tiny home village, and could be set up in a time frame that would give Springboard Delaware the ability to use federal COVID relief dollars before they expire at the end of the year.
“Our biggest challenges have always been determining how to support operating costs and identifying a site,” Klinger said.
Malone said the Wilmington project would cost about $1.5 million alone to set up the 40 tiny homes. He said the nonprofit would look at to the state for funding, which could include COVID dollars.
ARPA Database
Delaware has received more than $100 million under the federal American Rescue Plan Act. Wilmington hopes to tap some of the remaining funds to serve its homeless population. To see how Delaware has spent the funding to date, click below.
Klinger also said the plan will only move forward if the state takes on funding for the operating costs of transitional services, and approves an appropriation of COVID dollars to build the pallet village.
Without both pieces in place, the proposal remains uncertain, she said.
In addition to resident opposition in Southbridge, some members of the City Council have expressed objections to using a site across from Christina Park near the Eastside neighborhood as an option, Klinger said.
City Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver, who represents the Eastside, told Spotlight Delaware she is against the project being in her district, stating it would be too close to homeowners.
“I’m against it, because it’s between two underserved communities that already have challenges. It works downstate because they have so much farmland,” she said.
Oliver said the city should instead use a vacant building for a shelter, suggesting the Gibraltar estate. In recent years, taxpayers had invested $3 million into renovating Gibraltar, which currently sits empty.
Despite such pushback, city officials said conversations will continue.
“The voices of the surrounding neighborhoods are the mayor’s main priority as we continue exploring a tiny homes option,” Klinger said.
