Why Should Delaware Care?
The Hope Center houses many of Delaware’s most vulnerable people but a previously reported mold problem poses questions about the health of hundreds of residents and staff at the facility, which the county calls the East Coast’s largest homeless shelter.
Weeks after her 12-year-old son was severely wounded in a stabbing in southern Delaware, Kristyn Davis saw the New Castle County Hope Center as a place where her entire family could heal.
But, in September, after a month of living in the shelter, Davis said two of her four kids started having nosebleeds.
Wondering whether they were a result of mold in the building – which had been whispered about among residents at the facility – Davis said she began to take a closer look at her living conditions.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, she described stale air in the building. She said her bathroom floor tiles appeared discolored. But, most notably, she found clusters of black splotches around the surface of her room’s air vent.
“It was just weird. It had never happened before,” she said of her kids’ nosebleeds. “So, something told me to look at my vents.”
The discovery came weeks after an industrial hygienist found that mold existed within parts of the facility’s heating and air conditioning system, and at “elevated levels” within an unoccupied portion of the building.
In his report, however, the hygienist said testing of the mold returned no biological agents of concern, and so he concluded that it was not “immediately dangerous” for the hundreds of people who live and work at the Hope Center.
Despite the conclusion, two-and-a-half months after the report, the situation at the Hope Center has grown more contentious with county leadership emphatically claiming that the facility is safe, while Davis goes public with reports of potentially moldy splotches growing in the building.
Meanwhile, a high-profile lawsuit over who is at fault for past water leaks into the Hope Center building has been weaving its way through a Delaware court.
The legal fight features New Castle County government and a private hotel company blaming each other for the potentially moldy conditions, with the two sides each claiming that the other knew that moisture had been seeping into the facility, but did too little in response.
County asserts Hope Center’s safety
The fight, which has played out through competing legal claims in Delaware Superior Court, began with a lawsuit the county filed in September – just as New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer was campaigning for governor on a message that his creation of the Hope Center proved that he was a politician who could take on tough problems.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, Meyer’s Administration purchased a nearly 200,000-square-foot Sheraton hotel, located amid the Christina River wetlands near New Castle, and rapidly converted it into a facility to provide temporary housing.
County officials have called it the largest homeless shelter on the East Coast.
After the county filed its lawsuit in September, Hope Center staff alerted residents during a town hall meeting that their temporary home had become the subject of a high-profile legal fight, Davis said.
During the meeting, staff assured residents that the facility was safe, in an apparent reference to the industrial hygienist’s report. But, it didn’t ease many concerns, Davis said. Instead, the new information only reinforced rumors of mold that were already being whispered about in conversations out of earshot of staff, she said.
“Everybody was like, ‘See, this is what we were talking about,’” Davis said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that mold is ever-present in our lives, and most do little harm. There are many types of black mold, and only a few cause noticeable health effects, particularly a greenish-black one known as Stachybotrys chartarum.
Those black molds that do cause health effects typically result in upper respiratory tract issues, particularly in children, the elderly, and those with asthma or who are immunocompromised.
Davis shared video of her air conditioning vents in the Hope Center with Spotlight Delaware, which do show black splotches that appear to be mold inside the ducts. It is unclear, however, what kind of mold may be present and whether it is causing any health impacts.
On Tuesday, Carrie Casey – the New Castle County official who oversees the Hope Center – said categorically that the facility is safe for residents and staff alike, referencing the conclusions of the trained hygienist.
Casey said the entire building is in a “very good and clean condition” after being cleaned “top to bottom.” Furthermore, she said no resident or staff member has reported an illness from mold, and she further questioned whether any such moldy growth had even appeared in Davis’ room.
She did note, however, that Davis had possessed bleach in the room – an infraction for residents at the Hope Center.
“We’ve done everything we can to ensure it’s a safe building,” said Casey, who serves as general manager of New Castle County’s Community Services department.
Maintenance sparked lawsuit
Shortly after the industrial hygienist conducted his mold investigation at the Hope Center, New Castle County filed its lawsuit against Hersha Hospitality Management – the hotel company that operated the shelter until early this year.
In it, the county claims that Hersha seemed like “a perfect fit” to run the Hope Center when it opened in late 2020. The county lawsuit noted that Hersha’s affiliate was a major hotel company with over $2 billion in revenue.
The company also was the one that sold the Hope Center building to the county for nearly $20 million following an auction of the facility.
When it first took over the newly opened Hope Center, Hersha operated the facility well, the county claims. But, in later years, as the hotel industry recovered from the COVID pandemic, the Hope Center “became an afterthought for Hersha,” the county lawsuit claims.
Hersha ignored lingering problems, leading to water leaks, moisture and mold in the building, according to the lawsuit.
In particular, the county lawsuit points to four separate floods that officials say inundated rooms and hallways within the Hope Center in late 2023 and early 2024.
In all, the resulting “damage may cost the county in excess of a million dollars,” the lawsuit claims.
Hersha blames county inaction
In a recent legal response, Hersha denied the county’s many claims of mismanagement, arguing in particular that the floods in 2023 and 2024 were the fault of guests, or of poor maintenance by the county.
The company also contends that county officials had known about problems of water leaks for years, but “on many occasions chose not to act.”
In its argument, Hersha highlighted several instances of when it said it sounded the alarm to county officials about leaks at the Hope Center, including in 2021 when it claims it told county officials that the building needed a new roof.
In response, the county authorized partial repairs to the roof, according to court documents.
Two years later, Hersha again told the county that a new roof was needed “to stop leaks.”
It then provided the government with bids from two vendors. Those quotes cited “punctures and tears in the roof allowing moisture entry into the building,” Hersha said.
Such moisture underneath the roof further damaged the building’s structure, the company claims, causing “deterioration of the insulation, decking and roof system.”
This past spring, New Castle County approved a complete roof replacement for the Hope Center.
In a statement sent to Spotlight Delaware in September, a spokesman for Meyer said county officials only learned of the mold and water intrusion in May, after they had expelled Hersha Hospitality from the facility with an early termination of its contract.
Hersha says that early termination was unjust and has filed a counterclaim against New Castle County for $125,000.
When speaking with Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday, Casey said the county had terminated Hersha justly, citing what she said were the flooding incidents in the building and contractual breaches over the accounting of Hope Center funds.
Last spring, New Castle County’s auditor published a report that concluded that Hersha Hospitality did not properly report all money flowing into the Hope Center, and had failed to charge for certain services that had been provided.
Whoever is at fault for issues at the Hope Center, the end result is that some of Delaware’s most vulnerable people have become worried about their health living in a building that is designed to provide a lifeline. Still, without the building and the beds it provides, its residents would likely be facing more dire situations.
For Davis, she expects her family to be out of the shelter after their initial 90-day stay expires. She doesn’t know exactly where she and her four kids will go, she said, but they might return to Ohio, where she is originally from.
She doesn’t have family there anymore, she said, which is why she came to Delaware to find the stability of a new life. But, it hasn’t gone as she had hoped.
“I guess I picked the wrong place,” she said.
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