By Matt Bittle

DOVER — Legislation filed last week would allocate funding specifically to help homeless college students.

House Bill 240 would create a fund to assist “housing-insecure” undergraduate students attending a Delaware institution of higher education. The measure would provide $90,000 for the fiscal year starting July 1, with the monies to be administered by the Delaware State Housing Authority.

Under the measure, DSHA is tasked with developing the eligibility criteria and an application process.

“It costs about $7,000 per student for housing, and I’m working to create a steady funding stream to make sure there’s enough for this population of students,” House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst, a Bear Democrat who is the main sponsor, said in a statement. “No student should ever feel the burden of financial stress from emergencies that affect their ability to attend classes. The issue of housing insecurity in college is real, and HB 240 addresses it head-on.”

In 2020, The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice performed an analysis covering 200,000 students from 130 two-year colleges and 72 four-year universities and determined that 48% were affected by housing insecurity and 14% were impacted by homelessness.

The Hope Center in 2018 surveyed 1,741 University of Delaware students and found that 25% were affected by housing insecurity and 10% struggled with homelessness.

A 2017 Delaware Technical Community College study of 670 students concluded that 13% were affected by homelessness at some point during the previous year and almost 6% dealt with homelessness in the prior 30 days. Since March 2020, 395 DelTech attendees have requested emergency support to help with or prevent homelessness, according to the House Democratic caucus.

Delaware State University has provided assistance to more than 2,000 students in recent years.

“Delaware State University has a long history of working with homeless students, young people who have phased out of foster care, and students with housing insecurities. At the height of the pandemic, we found ways to keep 200 students safely on campus who simply had no place else to go,” DSU President Dr. Tony Allen said in a statement.

“The more resources we can access, the more effective we can be at helping our most vulnerable students change their life trajectories. We support it wholeheartedly, not just as the right thing to do, but as a profitable investment in our future,” he added.

The initiative would be called the Korey Thompson Student Emergency Housing Assistance Fund, named after the New Castle County police officer and Wesley College alumnus who struggled with finding housing while in school.

“My grandmother passed during my junior year of college and that’s when everything started to go downhill,” Mr. Thompson said in a statement. “From almost experiencing homelessness to graduating from college with a degree in psychology, joining the military in 2016, and then just completing my master’s degree in 2021. I would have never accomplished these things without help.”

The measure is set to be heard in the House Administration Committee on Wednesday.

Solar power

Also filed last week was a bill to promote community solar networks.

Senate Bill 2 would establish a legal framework for Delmarva Power customers to take advantage of solar power without needing to install solar panels on their properties.

Instead, they could receive credit on their electric bills by participating in a local community solar project, which could be developed under a variety of ownership, management and contract models.

“Solar power is clean, reliable and less expensive than the electricity produced by fossil-fuel burning power plants, and yet so many of our neighbors are excluded from this proven technology simply because they don’t have a roof to house solar panels or the means to pay for their installation,” Sen. Stephanie Hansen, a Middletown Democrat and the main sponsor, said in a statement.

“Community solar is one of the fastest-growing segments of the solar industry specifically because it allows neighbors, organizations, businesses and municipalities to overcome those hurdles and share in the benefits. This legislation, which was developed with tremendous stakeholder input over the last six months, will also ensure historically disadvantaged communities are able to benefit from the renewable energy revolution,” she added.

Delaware law has allowed for community-owned solar-generation facilities since 2010, when the shared solar concept was still being tested throughout most of the country. Today, there are community solar projects in at least 40 states.

The legislation would update Delaware’s existing law to reflect lessons learned in other states and remove outdated barriers currently preventing community solar from flourishing in the First State.

The legislation also would mandate that all community solar projects in Delaware serve a diverse customer base, including low-income and middle-class households.

A community solar project would be required to obtain a certificate to operate from the Delaware Public Service Commission, which would be tasked with developing the regulations around customer participation in conjunction with the Department of Justice.

“A church may want to build a solar array and share the credits equally among its parishioners without recouping its startup costs while a local entrepreneur may want to become the Johnny Appleseed of community solar and invest in making these projects a reality across the state,” Rep. Debra Heffernan, a Bellefonte Democrat, said in a statement.

“One of the key facets of this legislation is that it allows room for the market to innovate and find creative solutions to some of the final barriers preventing solar power from becoming the norm in Delaware.”

The bill has been assigned to the Senate Environment & Energy Committee.