A small rural town and a growing crisis: Why homelessness centers in Georgetown

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Georgetown has increasingly become a focal point for homelessness in southern Delaware, particularly within Sussex County’s rural landscape. The town’s role as the county seat, and the concentration of services that come with it, has shaped why people experiencing homelessness are more visible there than in surrounding municipalities.

A recent study surveying 247 people between October 2024 and May 2025 estimates that between 1% to 2% of Georgetown’s population may be experiencing homelessness, a rate significantly higher than that of similarly sized towns. The data was collected through sustained street outreach efforts largely in Georgetown and minimal additional outreach in the coastal and western side of Sussex County.

A glimpse into the data

Stephen Metraux, a professor of public policy at the University of Delaware who analyzed the survey data, said the findings confirm what service providers have long observed on the ground.

“Georgetown’s really gotten slammed with homelessness, as homelessness in Sussex has increased,” he said. “Georgetown did become kind of a hub, kind of more of a regional hub than a magnet.”

While more than 200 people initially engaged with the survey, many opted out before completing it, making the final dataset smaller than the total number of people contacted. Even so, Metraux said the results were striking, particularly looking at Georgetown’s population.

“Based on that data, we’ve got conservatively between 100 and 200 people on the streets at a given time in that survey database,” he said. “Of course, that survey database misses people. When you figure in people that she’s missed, you’re talking about 200 or 300 people, which is kind of the estimate that people are using for homelessness in Georgetown,” he added.

With Georgetown’s population at about 8,098 people as of 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Metraux said that estimate places homelessness at roughly 2%, a figure that stands out even when compared to major cities.

“And you do a comparison with the city of Philadelphia or any like larger cities, and a comparable percentage there is less than 1%,” he said. “You have a small town that’s slammed by homelessness right now and that was surprising.”

The data also shows that people experiencing homelessness in Georgetown are often long term. More than half of respondents reported being unhoused for over a year, a trend Metraux said is closely tied to a lack of housing availability and affordability.

“In Sussex, you have most of the housing construction at the higher end, you have zoning that makes it much harder to build a kind of multifamily housing,” he said. “Even lower-end housing, wages haven’t kept up with rising rents.”

An aging unhoused population is another growing concern. About 16% of respondents reported being homeless for more than 10 years, a pattern Metraux said reflects broader national trends.

“That’s not just in Delaware, but that’s nationwide,” he said. “A lot of them are receiving disability benefits, but those benefits are not enough to have sustainable housing unless you have some kind of a housing subsidy along with that.”