Community supports homeless during storm

When last week’s snowstorm crushed the tents of homeless people living in the woods outside Georgetown, the community provided them with food, housing and, in some cases, connections to help improve their lives in the long term.

Residents of Pallet Village, a cluster of temporary residences for formerly homeless people off Kimmey Street, took in five couples before the Jan. 6 storm that later buried their tents off Douglas Street under a foot of snow. Other groups came forward to provide food, emergency shelter and access to public services. 

An emergency shelter program could only assist individuals. The couples who stayed at Pallet Village were housed in a large community tent that also serves as a dining hall.

They slept on air mattresses in the large military tent that is being used while a permanent building is constructed on the site, said Trish Hill, project manager for Pallet Village. The tent has wooden walls and floor, and a canvas top, Hill said. It is equipped with water, electricity, heat and a refrigerator.

“I think everything went pretty well,” Hill said. “People came in droves with food.”

The Shepherd’s Office on North Bedford Street in Georgetown was among the groups that brought food. It also fed about 20 other people from the woods encampment and put them up in local motels, said the group’s director and pastor, Jim Martin.

“We saw a flurry of activity, when people were living in the woods and they needed help,” Martin said.

His volunteer group, which is funded entirely by donations, provides many services to the homeless on a regular basis, including 200 to 300 free hot meals each day, Martin said. The Shepherd’s Office has a food pantry available at any time on the porch of its small office and gives away clothes daily. It also offers daily prayer services for the homeless.

“Everyone in the village pitched in and did the shoveling,” Hill said of Pallet Village residents. ”They worked all night shoveling and salting. The community, they take care of each other.”

The 40 small residences on the Pallet Village site, which was opened two years ago by Springboard Delaware, currently houses 47 people, Hill said. They made room for 10 other temporary residents during the storm.

Hill said in the days before the storm, several groups began to reach out to the homeless people living in the woods to warn them of the danger and offer assistance.

“The people we helped under no circumstances would come out of the woods,” she said. “They usually ride out these storms.”

Several organizations began to mobilize to provide housing, food and other necessities beginning Jan. 4.

“People from the community really helped,” Hill said. “Food kept coming, sleeping bags, toiletries.”

John Wanner, a resident of Pallet Village who cooks in the kitchen and runs the art room, said it took a lot of work to respond to the crisis.

“It was hectic the first couple of days, but we got it all running,” Wanner said.

Suzanne Weis, another Pallet Village resident, said she cleared the community tent for the homeless couples. 

“I took all the tables and chairs out,” Weis said, “Transformed it into a place they could be warm and comfortable.”

Hill said some of the homeless people who were brought in from the cold were connected to healthcare and other services, and she hopes the outpouring from the community will show them that there is help available to them. 

“If they know there are people willing to help them, they may be more inclined to ask for assistance," she said.

“I’ve been in their situation,” Weis said. “You have to have a goal and purpose in life.”

The temporary shelter at Pallet Village closed Jan. 10. Hill said she was not sure where the homeless had gone. She worried that at least some of them had returned to the woods.