The nonprofits behind Georgetown’s pallet shelter village project arranged motel rooms for dozens of residents of the town’s homeless encampments last week as temperatures fell below freezing.
Outreach workers visited as many encampments as they could reach, though the driving rain kept them away from the most remote settlements in the woods west of Route 113.
Springboard Collaborative project manager Trish Hill says that with funding from the First State Community Action Agency, she and other outreach workers were able to place roughly 40 people in a motel, focusing on those who wouldn’t be able to find space in Sussex County’s Code Purple shelters.
"Our first priority being women and couples," she said, "because they have less access to Code Purple services locally here in Georgetown.”
While many of those placed in motel rooms will move into the pallet shelter village in January, Hill says they also provided rooms to people who didn’t secure a spot in the village.
Nearly all encampment residents are staying in the same motel – a motel that also houses people relying on Delaware’s temporary emergency shelter program.
They will be able to remain in their rooms through Thursday, at which point nighttime temperatures are still expected to remain below freezing, but warmer weather could arrive as soon as this weekend.
