The remaining residents of Milford’s largest homeless encampment will scatter this weekend as the property’s new owner prepares the forested lot for new construction.
News that the multiple-acre lot west of Route 113 had been sold reached residents of the encampment and city officials in mid-December, giving little time to prepare for the displacement of the roughly 50 people living in the camp.
Milford Vice Mayor Jason James says he had already reached out to Delaware's Department of Health and Social Services for help surveying encampment residents to find people eligible for veterans' assistance and treatment for mental health conditions or substance use disorder.
"The idea was to get as many people referred to services as possible," he said, "but when news of this move came along, that effort had to be expedited, if only so that there would be fewer people with nowhere to go come January."
More than a dozen encampment residents have been placed in temporary housing through behavioral health treatment programs so far, but Milford Advocacy for the Homeless Director Martha Gery underscores that many of those placed in treatment beds will return to homelessness in the near future because of a shortage of long-term housing options. "These programs don't last forever," she said. "Maybe up to a month, depending on what type of treatment."
Gery also noted that the intricacies securing insurance coverage to pay for inpatient treatment has hindered efforts to place people in temporary housing on a short turnaround.
By Friday afternoon, the encampment was largely deserted, though signs of the massive displacement — including hastily abandoned tents — were scattered across the forest floor.
The few residents still packing up their belongings were under too much stress to give comment. Hardly any knew where they will go next; one man says he plans to stay with a sibling, while others will simply find new places to camp.
Gery went tent-to-tent, reminding anyone she found that a team of volunteers will arrive on Saturday morning to help those remaining in the camp move their belongings. But options for storing belongings — a key service during such a sudden displacement — are few and far between.
Neither residents nor Milford city officials have a clear sense of where those displaced this weekend will or should camp next. James, who negotiated with the property's buyer to give encampment residents an extra week to prepare for the move, says that he is in talks with both nonprofit partners and local businesspeople about alternative sites for housing the displaced.
“Those conversations are happening – they’re in the development stage," he said. "We don’t have anything readily available."
Gery has also requested that Milford's City Council consider making a warming shelter the city opened on short notice in its public works building during December's cold snap available during future extreme weather events — a necessary step, she says, in shoring up the city's homeless services infrastructure.
Meanwhile, residents of another large encampment in Georgetown are also in the process of packing their belongings ahead of a possible land sale. Some will move into the soon-to-open pallet shelter village nearby — the first of its kind in Delaware — while others will simply relocate.
