Monday, September 28, 2026 36 days to November 3

Wilmington shut the city-sanctioned tent village at Christina Park on June 15. Officials promised to help the people they displaced find housing. Three months later, WHYY's Sarah Mueller found some of those same residents living beneath an underpass near the Amtrak/SEPTA station - and Delaware Online reported the same mixed picture: some with a roof, others back on the street (WHYY, Delaware Online).

That is not a footnote. That is the housing crisis with names attached.

Boz Malik told WHYY he got a motel voucher for the Superlodge - three months, on paper - then he and other former park residents were told to be out by July 15. He is under the train bridge now. Frederick Allen Hodgson, who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran, said he was in the hospital when the park closed. When he came back, his tent and belongings were gone. What he had left was his wheelchair (WHYY).

Keep the city's numbers honest, and keep them dated.

At closure, Mayor John Carney's office said 52 people were placed or scheduled to be placed in housing (WHYY). In June, before the fence went up, Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Walker told Delaware Public Media the city had served 85 people since January 5, completed 55 needs assessments, and placed 49 into what the administration called stable housing - treatment programs, independent housing, or staying with friends or family - with 25 of those at the Hope Center (Delaware Public Media).

Today, Walker says about 20 people are in 90-day placements with private landlords or in shelters or group homes. Friendship House - the nonprofit that managed the encampment - says it is still helping about 20 former park residents, most of them at the Hope Center. A day center, Walker said, could potentially open by January (WHYY).

Fifty-two promised or scheduled. About twenty still in short-term placements. That gap is the story. Housing advocate Shyanne Miller put the question plainly: how did it turn out, and did they use good practices? "The answer is obviously no," she told WHYY (WHYY).

And the underpass is not quiet. Malik describes cleanups that throw out food, clothes, medication, even IDs. The mayor's office denied "sweeps." Walker said the city power-washes the area weekly to clear trash, dirt, and human waste (WHYY). Call it whatever you want. When someone's medication or ID can end up in the trash, that is not sanitation. That is a person being erased.

I spent years as a travel ICU nurse. You do not stabilize a patient by taking their meds and calling it cleanup. You stabilize them with a bed, a bathroom, and a plan that lasts longer than a 90-day voucher.

Zoom out from one park. Friendship House CEO Kim Eppehimer told WHYY the number of people becoming homeless in Wilmington is rising - a dozen or more under the train bridge, more camping at the Seventh Street skatepark. Her helpline for rent and utility help used to get 75 to 100 voicemails a day. Now it gets about 600. "I think we're hitting a crisis on people's ability to stay housed," she said. "I think it's a canary in the coal mine situation" (WHYY).

That is not a Wilmington-only failure. That is what happens when shelter beds and rental assistance are scarce while rents and utilities keep climbing - across this state and across this country. Temporary encampments and motel nights are not a housing policy. They are a pause button.

The city is not standing still on every front. Spotlight Delaware reported that Wilmington put $1.15 million in returned Incyte incentive money toward land on West 7th Street in Quaker Hill and opened an RFP for housing and commercial development - proposals due October 16. How many affordable units get built is not yet confirmed (Spotlight Delaware). Future housing on an RFP clock matters. It does not house the person under the bridge tonight.

Here is where I stand. Housing is infrastructure. A roof is not a luxury and it is not charity. It is the floor under a life. I support universal housing because without it, every other promise - health, work, school, dignity - collapses. Congress should fund rental assistance and permanent housing at the scale of the need, not the scale of the press conference. Cities cannot close a park, hand out short-term placements, and call the crisis solved while a helpline goes from a hundred calls to six hundred.

I'm running as a write-in candidate for the U.S. Senate (Delaware Department of Elections). This campaign is funded by people. No Super PAC money. Ever.

Register by October 10 (iVote Delaware). On November 3, write in TRAVIS JACK STEVENS travisjackstevens.com