Delaware festival-goers displacing homeless

DOVER, Del. – Some homeless people who benefit from programs that offer temporary housing in hotels and motels are finding themselves out on the street because of NASCAR and music festivals in town.

Visitors to Dover for last month's NASCAR race and this month's Firefly Music Festival and Big Barrel Country Music Festival are renting hotel rooms that would otherwise be used as emergency shelters.

Festival attendees are willing to pay higher rates than what the programs usually pay.

"Hundreds of homeless, including many mothers with small children, have found themselves back on the streets," said Christy Gordon, vice president of Foundation for a Better Tomorrow, a Dover-based nonprofit working with mentally-ill people and one of the groups working to find housing.

"Many of the homeless have been temporarily put in these motels by state vouchers, churches as well as volunteers from organizations such as Foundation for a Better Tomorrow and Code Purple Kent County," Gordon said. "It has been extremely frustrating and disappointing to these small group of volunteers ... to get the growing number of homeless in the area permanent housing, employment opportunities, education, primary care, mental-health care as well as the state benefits that they qualify for."

The problem caused Delaware Health and Social Services Secretary Rita Landgraf to last week form an informal coalition with the Foundation for a Better Tomorrow, Code Purple and others in an attempt to find a solution.

The Milford Community Center, which is a Code Purple shelter, will allow about 50 people to stay there during the events. As a backup, the state also is looking at the Army National Guard Armory in Smyrna. Jennifer Cohan, Delaware's transportation secretary, has also offered transportation from Dover to shelters, Landgraf said.

"It's still very fluid, but what we are trying to ascertain is what is the need," said Landgraf, who is scheduled to again meet with the coalition Tuesday.

A part of the problem is that there is no historical data on how these events have affected sheltering in Dover.

"Hopefully, as work transpires we'll actually know what the need is and what the interest is," she added.

Advocates said they noticed that Dover had run into a "housing crisis" about May 26 – shortly before last month's NASCAR fans flocked to the state's capital. That's when several hotels/motels raised their rents, tripling lodging rates in some cases, and stopped taking vouchers, Gordon said.

Homeless advocates learned this would again occur this week as close to 90,000 people arrive in Dover for the Firefly Music Festival and continue into next week as the Big Barrel Country Music Festival could draw about 30,000 people.

State officials said they will find shelter for about 70 people who sought and qualified for emergency housing. The remainder are people who don't qualify for state assistance or who don't seek emergency housing from the state.

Some of these folks tend to get help from such services as a Better Tomorrow or Code Purple. This would include people such as 22-year-old Chelsea Dukes, who has been homeless more than a year but has day-to-day housing. Dukes and her boyfriend would spend nights with friends or in apartment laundry rooms. Over the winter, Dukes started getting help from the Foundation for a Better Tomorrow and Code Purple Kent County to get back on her feet. The groups helped enroll Dukes in a GED program that started June 9.

"(My future) is going to be better than it is now," said Dukes, who despite being homeless finds a way to bathe and dress appropriately as she looks for work. "Because I'm going to go to school and I'm willing to get a job. And when I get that job, I'm going to keep it."

Code Purple and the foundation have been raising money and have been able to keep her with a roof over her head, until race week. That's when Dukes was told she could not stay at the Capital Inn.

"It is heartbreaking for us to see someone who is trying their hardest to better themselves repeatedly be knocked back down like this," Gordon said.

Earnest Gulab, owner of Capital Inn, said they are honoring state vouchers through the music festivals, saying he had about 15 rooms occupied by people with vouchers.

"We try to keep them here," Gulab said despite being able to make more money during weeks when there are events in Dover.

The events bring big money to Dover and the region.

More than $68 million was added to the regional economy last year thanks to Dover's Firefly Music Festival, according to a University of Delaware study – the first official study of its kind examining the festival's economic impact. It's not known how much Firefly, combined with Big Barrel, will bring in this year.

To many of the homeless, these events are a double-edged sword.

Eric Rombalski, 39, and Brandon Ricks, 28, said they and other homeless people will sometimes mix in with campers during NASCAR weekends.

"They don't know you're homeless, but I think they kind of know," said Rombalski, who is originally from Georgia, but now currently staying under a bridge in Dover. "But they see you and then they give you free stuff. You hang out with them and they feed you."

Rombalski said they will sometimes sleep nearby until police wake them up and tell them to move on.

The events can also provide temporary jobs.

Rombalski said last year he was hired to help build stages for Firefly, earning about $13 an hour.

"They feed you three meals when you're working," he said.

"It kind of gives us hope if we can get the jobs to work there," Ricks added. "But then if we can't, there pretty much isn't anything we can do. You just have to walk around and see who will give you a helping hand."

Ricks said he feels "horrible" having to live this way, but he is thankful that there are events like this.