“People Walk by Like I’m Invisible:” How Community Impacts Homelessness

Written by Haley Springman, University of Delaware Student

Robin Cross remembers a conversation she had with a homeless man in Wilmington, Delaware about his intention to relocate to Newark. She told him he was making a good choice because he would have the opportunity to connect with more people.

She was surprised when the man responded in a way that she would never forget. He said to her that in Newark, “people walk by like I’m invisible. They don’t even see me.”

This was heartbreaking for Cross to hear.

Cross works for a Delaware non-profit called Friendship House, where she is the manager for the five Empowerment Center locations they run across the state.

“The root of homelessness is a lack of community,” said Kristen Reisor, Friendship House’s Community Engagement Director. The project’s mission is “to unite people facing homelessness with loving, supporting communities they can call home.”

Homelessness in Delaware rose 9% from 2023 to 2024, according to Housing Alliance Delaware’s annual Point in Time (PIT) report. On the night of the PIT count in 2024, 59% of the homeless population was Black, 45% reported living with a disabled condition, and 26% were under the age of 18. Other than 2021 and 2022, when COVID-era federal housing vouchers got people into residences and thus made them temporarily easier to count, 2024 holds the PIT Count record – 1358 – for the highest total number of people experiencing street-level homelessness in Delaware.

In response to the ongoing housing crisis, Friendship House places their clients in two different categories: “homeless” and “houseless.” On the group’s website, homelessness is defined as a “loss of one’s community” and houselessness as a “loss of one’s physical residence.”

When crises happen, Reisor said, “we’re gonna be [their] community until they can find that community for themselves.”

Friendship House’s main focus may be creating community within the homeless population, but they have also helped create a much more expansive community by connecting with the other organizations that serve the population.

“One of the things we think works well in Delaware is that there are a lot of nonprofits,” said Reisor, but “we don’t want to do what another nonprofit is already doing.”

According to Reisor, Friendship House was started with the intention of filling gaps in services that other organizations couldn’t provide. This allows these organizations to work together, using each other as a referral base for their clients to get a wide range of services that a single organization couldn’t provide by itself.

Some examples of the services that Friendship House provides is help with obtaining legal documentation, clothing, and employment, as well as appointment-only case management and financial assistance services. Additionally, in order to fill gaps in individual communities, each of the Empowerment Centers provide slightly different services. For example, the Wilmington location serves breakfast, while the Newark location provides lunch.

The walk-in services provided by the Empowerment Centers are completely reliant on community involvement. This is because Friendship House does not rely on government funding, which allows them to avoid regulations that would prevent them from being as flexible and efficient with their services.

“Our volunteers and donors [are] what keeps us going,” said Cross. “We would not survive without community.”

At the Newark Empowerment Center (NEC), for example, their lunches often consist of donations of leftovers from local businesses, such as pizza slices. They also offer ‘go-bags’, meals and snacks that clients can take with them for later, which are available only if they have been donated from the community.

Friendship House also runs programs called Code Purple and Code Orange. On nights where temperatures are too extreme, hot or cold, they partner with local churches who open up their facilities to give the homeless population a comfortable place to stay. On these nights, its volunteers who provide the meals and stay overnight with the clients.

“The situation and the issues that you see out on the street and anything you see here inside of Friendship House [is] a community issue,” said Cross. “It affects everybody.” Diana Simmons, a long-time resident of Newark, first got involved with Friendship House by volunteering for Code Purple.

“I think what stood out to me the most is how connected the homeless people in Newark were,” Simmons said. “How well they knew each other. How they stood up for each other [and] protected each other.”

She recalled a conversation she once had with a homeless man in Newark about being at the eligible age to live in a housing complex in Wilmington, and the surprise she felt when he expressed disinterest.

“I would rather be homeless than stay somewhere I don’t feel safe,” he told her. “I know where to find help [in Newark]. I know people have my back here.”

Simmons remarked that she had felt this compassion personally when she was volunteering, and described the way it has changed the way she goes about the world.

When she was younger, Simmons held a certain amount of fear of the homeless population, but that has completely changed, she said. Volunteering “gave me a very new idea of who the unhoused were and how it takes very little to become unhoused.”

Cross said that a lot still remains to be done to address the roots of homelessness.

“We have to come together and make affordable housing,” she said. “We have to do better.”

Sources:
Housing Alliance Delaware 2024 PIT Report:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I6p0TitcvD5LWxNxfA-L8U303X_6uGSA/view

Friendship House Website:
https://www.friendshiphousede.org/