New Castle County received a federal grant to address family homelessness. The county is one of seven jurisdictions in the country to receive the grant.
It added $9.6 million to the county’s efforts to end family homelessness. That's on top of $1.4 million for evaluation.
The county’s grant director Michael Bowser said the partnership between New Castle County and Delaware Family Hope will help 120 families access stable housing and reduce returns to shelters.
“It's really just a new approach to hopefully more long term success by having them – rather than, let's say, have a voucher or a section eight voucher – this will give them, hopefully, more freedom to work and find good housing in a very competitive rental market space,” Bowser said.
Delaware Family Hope is an organization in the works. It is set to be created and overseen by Social Finance, a finance and advisory nonprofit.
New County Councilmembers heard the resolution presenting the partnership with Delaware Family Hope at Tuesday’s Council meeting.
Participants will also still have case management and financial counseling available through the Hope Center.
Over $6 million of the grant will go toward two years of rental assistance for families. Bowser said the county and Delaware Family Hope will continue seeking funds to serve as many people as possible.
“We think this is something that could potentially change the way we look at homelessness and family homelessness here in Delaware and how to address it…” Bowser said. “Especially in New Castle County but also statewide, you know, we’re small. So we can try things like this and make a pretty big impact.”
Bowser added 120 families is a pretty significant chunk of families the Hope Center sees in a year.
New Castle County has to raise the funds by itself and will then be reimbursed by the federal grant. Bowser and New Castle County officials had to work over the last year to fundraise the upfront dollars in order to get the project started.
“The county serves two roles in this project,” Bowser said. “We're the grantee from the federal government, but we're also the intervention provider. So as the intervention provider, we’ll be providing the stays at the Hope Center. We're contracting for case management, for financial coaching and then we'll be dispersing funds when families are able to find housing outside of the Hope Center for cash assistance.”
Once that money is spent, the county and upfront funders will be reimbursed.
Bowser said he expects the first cohort of 60 families will receive rental assistance by the end of the year.
Bowser added this is a new model for addressing family homelessness.
“I'm hoping we can show some great success and then hopefully be able to have some meetings with the state, show those savings, really get an understanding on if this works or not to see if it's worth funding moving forward,” Bowser said.
Bowser said he and other district officials are continuing to fundraise to help as many people as possible with this grant.
