New Castle County’s Hope Center is trying to adapt as federal dollars that supported long-term stays in the hotel-turned-shelter run out.
New Castle County Division of Community Development and Housing manager Carrie Casey says the Center hopes to start getting new residents in and out of the shelter within 90 days.
“With 90 days, we feel most folks are able – if they are engaging and working with us, we can get them rehoused," she said. "The shortest we’ve done is 22 days.”
She says that goal is complicated by the persistent shortage of housing statewide; for now, the Hope Center is relying heavily on rental assistance programs and doggedly pursuing landlords willing to accept rental assistance.
To keep the Center financially viable, she adds it also needs to build partnerships with organizations willing to pay the $50 a night to house a person or family.
Casey says new partnerships will also play an important role in filling the shelter as the number of people living unhoused rises and temperatures drop.
“We want to make sure we have a full building, whether it’s through the state or whatever, because winter is coming," she said. "We know we aren’t in a period without people experiencing homelessness – we just need to make sure people can access us.”
That effort began over the summer, when the Center partnered with the Delaware Center for Justice and Project New Start to offer emergency housing for people exiting prison into homelessness. Casey noted that the Hope Center may have provided shelter to formerly incarcerated people in the past, but that the new partnerships mark the Center's first direct foray into reentry support. The Hope Center cannot, however, take in those on the sex offender registry.
More recently, the Center began working with the Community Education Building in Wilmington, which is paying to house homeless students and their families. School caseworkers are collaborating with case managers at the Hope Center to support families moving into the shelter.
Casey says the partnerships serve as quasi-pilot programs — an opportunity for the Center to learn how to better meet the needs of formerly incarcerated people navigating a tight housing market, for instance.
At the same time, both state- and county-level leadership have expressed growing interest in creating a second Hope Center downstate: the source of many of the shelter's current residents.
