The Springboard Village is composed of 40 cabins that provide people experiencing homelessness with transitional housing and resources. Spotlight Delaware photo by Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez
This story was originally published on Spotlight Delaware.
Georgetown’s transitional housing pallet village is facing a funding shortfall, jeopardizing the project that houses 40 people experiencing homelessness in Sussex County.
The village’s nonprofit operator, The Springboard Collaborative, was hoping to receive a $1.5 million grant this year from the Longwood Foundation, the Wilmington-based charitable grantmaking foundation linked to the du Pont family. It didn’t receive that funding, however, and is now struggling to find funders for its operational expenses.
The 40-cabin community, known as Springboard Village, imposed broad layoffs and cut staff costs by 28% in recent weeks.
The village, located in Georgetown’s largely-Latino Kimmeytown neighborhood, works to stabilize folks experiencing homelessness by providing resources and guiding them to permanent housing. The community has sheltered 131 people since it first opened in early 2023.
The village’s potential closure may displace its 40 residents, possibly contributing to the wooded encampments and homeless population in Georgetown, the seat of Sussex County. The funding woes come as Delaware struggles with rising rates of homelessness and a decreasing number of affordable housing units statewide.
Nationally, a chronically homeless person costs the taxpayer upward of $35,000 a year on average, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Delaware spends millions of dollars annually, across a slew of agencies and nonprofits, toward homeless resources.
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Delaware rose by 9% in 2024 with 1,358 people experiencing homelessness as of January, according to the annual Point-In-Time survey. That number is the highest total count on record in Delaware, excluding the pandemic years of 2021 and 2022, according to the report.
The collaborative currently has three months of cash reserves and is aiming to secure nearly $1 million in operational funding from a “patchwork of potential support” to keep it afloat until the next legislative session, according to Judson Malone, executive director and co-founder of the Springboard Collaborative.
Judson Malone, executive director and co-founder of The Springboard Collaborative, says the funding shortfall is only one more obstacle that the organization is facing on top of the many it faced in opening and operating. Spotlight Delaware photo by Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez
Longwood gave Springboard an $800,000 grant in the spring of 2022 but has not announced any subsequent funding. When reached for this story, the foundation said that it does not comment on its grantees.
Springboard is hoping to secure state support by late August, Malone added.
Following staff layoffs, the organization is training residents to become paid “community stewards,” who upkeep the village and provide security. Springboard Collaborative officials maintained that the village will not be closing, but have notified residents of the issue and drafted a contingency transition plan if the closure comes to be.
“That’s the mountain we’re climbing,” Malone said. “It’s tough, but we’re tough people.”
64-foot-square pallet cabins
Mitchell Weicksel likes to go down to the ocean sometimes. He looks for driftwood or pretty rocks.
Weicksel had been displaced from his lone tent in the woods after a state trooper left a note on it asking him to leave. He had been a resident of the village for roughly three months.
Now, Weicksel sat at a picnic table at the Springboard Village as the setting sun waned above him on a recent afternoon. He donned a loose denim shirt and propped a pair of sunglasses atop his head.
Mitchell Weicksel, right, and Lewis Myers, Springboard Village residents, were grateful for the services that they’ve received from the organization. Spotlight Delaware photo by Jose Ignacio Castaneda Perez
The private 64-square-foot cabins are outfitted with microwaves, heat, electricity, air conditioning and a mini-refrigerator. Springboard allows pets and couples to live together, which are some restrictions that often keep folks from entering other shelters.
The cabins were bought with $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds from the town of Georgetown. In July 2023, Springboard received over $2.4 million in ARPA capital funds to be used to build infrastructure.
Nearly $1 million was allocated for a new community center in the Georgetown village, complete with a commercial kitchen and office space. The other $2.4 million was earmarked to build a new village elsewhere in the state.
It’s “very unusual” for a small town to receive governmental support for an approach like Springboard, but it serves as a model for other communities, according to Stephen Metraux, an associate professor at the University of Delaware who studies homelessness.
Metraux, an advisory board member of the Springboard Collaborative, said that the housing-first approach is the “golden-standard” to addressing homelessness. Springboard offers an intermediate housing approach before a permanent housing-first model is reached.
There were early plans to possibly build a village in Wilmington or Dover, but those have been put on ice until operational funding is secured. The ARPA funding can only be used to build structures and infrastructure, and is prohibited for operational expenses – leading to a conundrum where closure is possible despite millions being allocated.
“Bricks and sticks,” Malone said, referring to how the capital-only funding can be used.
Expansion considered amid community concerns
The latest financial difficulties for the Springboard Collaborative is a dramatic turn from just six months ago when the nonprofit was eyeing its first expansion project.
In January, Milford City Council considered a proposal to build a Springboard village in town. Dozens of residents voiced their support and opposition of the potential project during the meeting.
Supporters argued the new village would be a step in the right direction of mitigating homelessness and affordable housing issues in the area.
Disapproving residents raised concerns about the village attracting more people experiencing homelessness to Milford and its low-barrier approach, which doesn’t require residents to be sober to be admitted.
In Georgetown, residents of the surrounding Kimmeytown neighborhood have raised nuisance concerns about people experiencing homelessness knocking at their doors and milling outside their homes through the night.
Numerous local residents raised nuisance concerns surrounding the village during a Spotlight Delaware community listening session in Georgetown this spring.
Residents don’t have a curfew and can largely come and go as they please. The village has an established policy that requires residents to be either inside or outside the space from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.
“We tell our participants to be respectful and for the most part, they are,” Malone said. “Almost every community in any town is going to have those issues to one degree or another.”
Anytime a project like Springboard is built in communities, it can be more or less expected to get these concerns and community pushback, Metraux noted.
The village and homelessness in Georgetown was at the center of a contentious mayor’s race this year that was ultimately won by incumbent Mayor Bill West, a Springboard Collaborative board member, in a 34-vote victory.
IN THE NEWS: New laws reshape DIAA and high school sports
West’s opponent, former Georgetown councilwoman Angela Townsend, labeled the village as a magnet for homelessness in the area as she largely focused her campaign around the issue.
West underscored his stance that the village is not attracting people experiencing homelessness to town, citing a small waitlist to enter the village. Folks are coming to Georgetown because of other homelessness resources and food being offered in town, he said.
“Everybody wants to say the pallet village is drawing the people to Georgetown,” West said. “If that was true, why don’t we have a waiting list of 30 or 40 people?”
Town officials are trying everything in their power to prevent the village from shutting down and displacing its residents, according to West. The potential closure would put a “black eye” on West and would not be good for Georgetown, he added.
“We are going to get through this,” West said.
Trish Hill sat inside her office at the Springboard Village on a recent afternoon. Hill, Springboard’s project manager, joined the project before the village was even built and conducted outreach to the wooded encampments.
She’s put a lot of her soul into the program, she said.
“If the program were to not be, it would take a good chunk of my soul with it,” Hill said. “Sometimes you just have to live in the present and do good work and hope that it gets noticed.”
Hill has faith. Malone has always come through and figured it out.
Get Spotlight Delaware stories like this delivered to your email inbox by signing up for the free newsletter at spotlightdelaware.org/subscribe. Contact Jose Ignacio Casteneda Perez at [email protected].
Share this Post