It was fortuitous that the Sheraton Wilmington South in New Castle County went up for auction right before the state had to meet the spending deadline for federal CARES Act funds. Amid a raging global public health crisis, Delaware’s most populous county needed safe non-congregate housing for its most vulnerable population, and, following California’s Project Roomkey model, it looked to hotels.
On Dec. 1, 2020, New Castle County settled on the property for $19.5 million, and a mere two weeks later, the Hope Center opened, welcoming its first 73 residents on the eve of the state’s first COVID winter surge.
Four years later, the massive 192,000-square-foot complex—which has hosted close to 450 households since it opened its doors—now functions very differently from its original design, evolving away from a purely emergency housing model to an ecosystem of care that its co-founder hopes will help end homelessness in Delaware.
Wraparound Services
One of the first challenges the Hope Center encountered upon opening was access. The hotel grounds, already outside the city of Wilmington, are situated in the Christina River wetlands and habitually experience flooding of the main access road. The center needed to figure out how to get not only the clients there from the city but also the services that they would need to weather the worst of the pandemic.
“We brought any and all partners inside,” says Carrie Casey, the center’s co-founder. Casey is also the general manager for New Castle County’s Department of Community Services. In addition to offering case management and mental health services on site, the center took advantage of its space to accommodate a full medical practice—run by ChristianaCare, the state’s largest hospital system—on one of its floors. There, clients have access to in-house EKG lab testing, bloodwork, and obstetric and pediatric care. “They coordinate any specialty care visits for every single person in the [center],” Casey says.
With 185 available rooms and around 360 clients on any given night, the Hope Center is the largest such shelter in the state and likely one of the largest on the East Coast, Casey imagines. It has housed more than 4,300 people for at least one night so far, over half of whom have been children.
It’s the only shelter in the state that can accommodate families of more than seven people (allowing families of up to nine), thanks to its spacious rooms. The center has partnerships with local groups to support those families that have school-aged children—including with a network of charter schools in the area, who refer families enrolled in their schools and pay for up to a 90-day stay for them—as well as with the Delaware Division of Family Services, which serves families at risk of losing their children due to their homelessness. The center has adjusted its services to address their changing needs over the years, for instance, providing computer access for remote learning during the pandemic and after-school programming today.
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Given its former life as a hotel—with elevators, accessible rooms, and easy-access doors—the center is also ideal for medically compromised clients. ChristianaCare’s footprint in the center has since expanded to occupy an entire floor for the state’s first medical respite program to accommodate patients whose medical needs no longer require an overnight stay in the hospital but who cannot yet be discharged due to their housing instability. After observing ChristianaCare’s model, Veterans Affairs, which currently operates a per diem program in the center, hopes to follow suit with a respite program of its own.
Faithful Friends Animal Society also operates in-house, offering free veterinary and pet care to clients with pets ranging from dogs and cats to guinea pigs and lizards. Finding pet-friendly housing is challenging enough, much less emergency housing, so the center’s partnership with Faithful Friends was a conscious decision to remove as many barriers to entry as possible. The Hope Center is the only shelter in the state to do so. “It can be a real hardship for people,” says Casey. “I have three dogs and I would never, ever go into shelter without my animals.”
The center’s clients are just as diverse as the services it offers: it has sheltered families, veterans, returning citizens, domestic violence and sex trafficking victims, refugees, and other vulnerable groups. The Hope Center faithfully follows a housing-first model, and with the exception of sex offenders and those who pose a threat of violence to staff or other clients, “the only requirement is you have to be unhoused,” says Casey.
Addressing a Continued Public Health Crisis
On a given night in Delaware, there are roughly 1,300 people experiencing homelessness, some 200 of whom are unsheltered for the night, and sleeping in cars, parks, encampments, or other outdoor spaces.
“We have a very medically fragile population,” says Casey. “Our strongest, most significant need is physical and mental health for these folks. And it’s not just elderly folks, it’s even young people.”
Even though the crisis of the pandemic has receded somewhat, people experiencing homelessness are still challenged with significant health concerns, developed in large part through that experience. And without stable access to medical care to address longstanding and complex health conditions, many are at risk of chronic homelessness.
Casey says that while the Hope Center is primarily an emergency housing shelter with 24-day stays (with a maximum of 90 days), many of its clients who are considered to be chronically homeless—defined by the National Alliance to End Homelessness as someone who has experienced homeless for longer than a year, otherwise repeatedly—have stayed for over a year. “There’s just nowhere for them to go,” she says. “We don’t want to discharge people back into houselessness if we don’t have to.”
That’s why the center is adapting its model to one that Casey describes as a “hybrid respite, permanent, supportive, emergency shelter” to meet the reality of its clients’ needs. Recently, it welcomed its first tenants for permanent supportive housing, which will soon occupy two floors of the building. The section’s first tenants will be veterans, followed by those who meet the definition of chronically homeless. Long term, the center hopes to convert 80 existing units into permanent supportive housing.
Its ambition doesn’t end there. Recently, the center applied for a U.S. Treasury grant (through the collective investment scheme, or CIS) to the tune of $10 million to provide not only a 90-day stay for families, but also, for the two years after they move out, direct rental assistance to the client—not the landlord—with comprehensive case management and financial coaching.
Casey is excited by the prospect of what that funding can do to help former clients find and sustain housing long after their stay. “The idea is really to create a framework, a potential foundation to end family homelessness,” she says.
“Sticking them in an apartment without any supports isn’t going to help them. You got to provide support; it doesn’t work unless you’re able to do that.”
Sustaining an Ambitious Model
But funding for this holistic vision is a perennial issue as the center struggles to cover even its operational costs.
While the center is owned by the county, it does not receive funding from it. Instead, Casey says, the center subsists on a “patchwork” of diverse funding streams, but prioritizing its clients over the costs is not without its consequences. The center relies on its network of 17 agencies across the state to refer clients to it; the agencies cover the clients’ stay at $50 per night. That rate has not changed since the center opened, even as today’s costs look more like $80 per night. But those agencies are also cash-strapped, Casey says.
On a given night, some 30 percent of clients are “comped,” meaning the center is not receiving any funding to house them. But, she adds, “we aren’t a hotel. We aren’t in it for the money.”
All told, operations amount to roughly $4.5 million a year—an achievable goal, Casey believes, given how much support the center has already received. So far, in addition to income from referral agencies, the Hope Center has received HUD grants, congressional delegation funding, private grants and donations, and $20,000 in grant funding from Uber for transportation needs.
But the center has done well in racking up savings, too. One example Casey cites is the medical respite program: according to ChristianaCare, the average one-night stay in one of their hospitals amounts to over $2,200, versus the $50 nightly rate at the Hope Center.
“We think that it’s so worth it to keep this thing going and to keep this unique model going. We believe that, long term, we can sustain it.”
Ending Houselessness
Over the past four years, Casey believes, the Hope Center has done its job in changing how the state looks at providing emergency shelter—and how it treats this vulnerable population overall.
The center opens its doors to the public on Wednesdays, inviting the community to take a tour of its facilities in the hopes of ending stigma around the shelter. “People have their impressions of it, and we try to negate that by having an open door,” says Casey. “Come and see for yourself.”
Many community members now volunteer at the center, and local churches often host dinners there. The center’s monthly town halls sometimes host public officials, like New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, one of the center’s earliest advocates. And people in the surrounding neighborhood, once wary of a massive shelter complex in their backyard, are now some of the center’s fiercest advocates, says Casey.
Part of the Hope Center’s mission is to not only challenge society’s perception of who the most vulnerable members of their community are, but also to imagine a different approach to tackling homelessness—one that is humane and dignified, and applies resources where they’re most needed.
“We see what works,” she says. “We just need to fund it.”
But as for replicating the model elsewhere, which many visitors who’ve come to the center from around the country have looked to do, Casey isn’t convinced that that’s the best solution.
“I don’t really think we need another Hope Center,” says Casey. “I think we need more housing. We need people not to get stuck at the Hope Center.”
Hotels to Housing—Help Us Cover this Story
Did your organization or local government buy a hotel and convert it to short-term or long-term affordable housing? Did you want to, but couldn’t make it happen? We’d love to hear from you about your experiences and what you were able to do, or what roadblocks you encountered. Reach out to Lillian Ortiz at [email protected].
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