We study the existence, multiplicity, and certain qualitative properties of solutions to the zero Dirichlet problem for the equation $$-\Delta _p u = \lambda |u|^{p-2}u + a(x)|u|^{q-2}u$$ in a bounded domain $$\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^N$$ , where $$1<q<p$$ , $$\lambda \in {\mathbb {R}}$$ , and a is a sign-changing weight function. Our primary interest concerns ground states and nonnegative solutions which are positive in $$\{x\in \Omega : a(x)>0\}$$ , when the parameter $$\lambda $$ lies in a neighborhood of the critical value $$\lambda ^* := \inf \left\{ \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^p \, dx/\int _\Omega |u|^p \, dx: u\in W_0^{1,p}(\Omega ) {\setminus } \{0\},\ \int _\Omega a|u|^q\,dx \ge 0\,\right\} $$ . Among main results, we show that if $$p>2q$$ and either $$\int _\Omega a\varphi _p^q\,dx=0$$ or $$\int _\Omega a\varphi _p^q\,dx>0$$ is sufficiently small, then such solutions do exist in a right neighborhood of $$\lambda ^*$$ . Here $$\varphi _p$$ is the first eigenfunction of the Dirichlet p-Laplacian in $$\Omega $$ . This existence phenomenon is of a purely subhomogeneous and nonlinear nature, since either in the superhomogeneous case $$q>p$$ or in the sublinear case $$q<p=2$$ the nonexistence takes place for any $$\lambda \ge \lambda ^*$$ . Moreover, we prove that if $$p>2q$$ and $$\int _\Omega a\varphi _p^q\,dx>0$$ is sufficiently small, then there exist three nonzero nonnegative solutions in a left neighborhood of $$\lambda ^*$$ , two of which are strictly positive in $$\{x\in \Omega : a(x)>0\}$$ .