Sussex County Habitat for Humanity unveils plans to use $3 million of Delaware’s American Rescue Plan Act funds to rehab and build new homes in Georgetowns’ Kimmytown neighborhood and elsewhere.
Kimmytown – a low-income neighborhood on the north end of Georgetown within walking distance of a Purdue processing plant – will see a vacant block redeveloped into ten new affordable housing units.
Habitat for Humanity will also repair some adjacent homes.
CEO Kevin Gilmore says an earlier plan by a previous landowner to develop higher-density affordable housing on the lot stalled. “There was an attempt to make this into a multifamily transitional housing unit that didn’t work out because of the process to go through a zoning change," he said. :We were able to use the existing zoning and the prior use, because we’re not changing the use – it’s still transitional housing, albeit a different kind of transitional housing.”
Sussex County Habitat for Humanity plans to build a total of 27 new homes across the county, in addition to 275 planned renovation projects.
The Kimmytown site is only two blocks from where two other Sussex County nonprofits – First State Community Action Agency and the Springboard Collaborative – plan to build a tiny home village to act as transitional housing for some of the area’s homeless residents.
The Dover-based nonprofit NCALL plans to build 40 new affordable rental units for poultry workers in Sussex County – a group hit especially hard by rising housing costs. NCALL received $6.9 million in ARPA funds for that project and to purchase properties in Kent and Sussex Counties for future affordable housing development.
