Elusive Dream

Bryan Grady knows there's more than 8 billion reasons for state leaders to take a long look at improving the affordability of housing in South Carolina.

"There's not even close to enough affordable housing to go around," said Grady, chief research officer for SC Housing. "And when people are struggling to afford a place to live, that leads to all kinds of other problems."

A recent report compiled by Brady and published by SC Housing found that 32 percent of all state households — and more than 50 percent of all renters — are burdened by high housing costs that force them to come up short on other basic living needs. That includes food, clothing and transportation, Grady said.

Grady said that shortfall can be defined as "shelter poverty," a cost hit of roughly $8.4 billion that's borne by public assistance, private charity and some South Carolina residents going without.

"When you come up with a number like $8.4 billion, because people can't afford the housing they live in, that's a big deal," Grady said. "That's almost as much as the entire general fund budget. When you can put that kind of price tag on the housing crisis, this is not just a feel good issue, this is an economic well-being issue."

SC Housing's metrics found that more than a third of Spartanburg households from 2013-2017, and nearly 27 percent of Spartanburg County households over the same time span, experienced shelter poverty.

Between 32-35.9 percent of Cherokee and Union County households fell in that category over the same time span.

Grady began crunching data for SC Housing in January, helping the agency compile its first comprehensive statewide assessment since 2002.

BY THE DATA

SC Housing's analysis found that more than 23 percent of Spartanburg County renters, or more than 8,100 households, face a "severe cost burden," defined as spending more than half their gross income on rent, or have no income at all. Spartanburg County is among 41 of 46 counties statewide where Grady said the average renter cannot afford a basic two-bedroom apartment without overextending their budget, according to the data.

The study tracked the gap that exists between the average per hour wage a renter earns and the average per hour wage that same renter would need to earn to rent a two-bedroom apartment at market rates without spending more than 30 percent of their monthly income. Statewide that gap was more than $4 per hour hour, though only $1.07 per hour in Spartanburg County.

The wage gap climbed to $2.41 per hour in Greenville County, $2.62 per hour in Cherokee County and $1.76 per hour in Union County.

Lee Close, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Spartanburg, said metrics like shelter poverty and renter cost burden can help illustrate why it's hard for some individuals to move into more sustainable housing situations.

"It's really a way of identifying and understanding why it's hard to build any kind of cushion in these scenarios," Close said. "When you're in that situation, one bad experience can wipe you out."

Grady said a confluence of factors have created the situation in South Carolina and around the country.

"When you have wages that are not keeping up with inflation and rental costs that are outpacing them, you're simply going to have a decreased ability to afford the housing that is out there," Grady said. "There's also another question as to whether enough housing is being built, so there are sort of twin issues."

He said there's also an urban/rural divide that creates different problems for people who live in either.

"You see this nationwide but also in South Carolina as well where you have this system where more resources are going to be located in metropolitan areas," Grady said. "That's replicated on a smaller scale in South Carolina, where areas with an existing economic base are growing faster than the rural areas surrounding them. Housing prices may be more affordable in rural areas, but you don't necessarily have the job and wage growth to allow people to take advantage of that."

OFFERING HOPE

Close said the local Habitat affiliate has built houses across much of Spartanburg County, both inside the city limits and in more rural areas. Program participants represent a relatively narrow slice of the area's residents in poverty, he said, owing to the fact that Habitat has stringent requirements related to income, debt ratio and job history.

"But poverty is poverty," Close said. "When you don't have the ability to meet your daily or monthly needs the details don't matter so much. You might be able to go without a car in certain portions of the city, but then you're still walking or you have to live on a bus line. The nature of the cost structure might be different, but the effects are similar."

Close said there are success stories, and singled out Habitat homeowner Cindy Johnson among them.

Following a traumatic divorce, Johnson found herself and her three sons, Jared, Noah and Brett, searching for a new place to live on the fly. The four moved from New Hampshire to South Carolina in 2011, but Johnson said the family struggled through a series of substandard hotels, churches, transitional housing and even a campground.

"It's been such a long road to where we are today," Johnson said.

She worked to keep her family together and to provide her sons with the stability she knew they needed, driving them to Boy Scout trips and ferrying them across town to keep them in a school district — despite the family's constant moving — where the trio had settled in and made friends. Johnson said she sometimes struggled to provide for her sons on a single income, but said groups like the Spartanburg Interfaith Hospitality Network helped her along the way. She was later approved for Section 8 housing.

"It was something I thought I'd never need because I was always the person who was work, work, work, and here I found myself on the other side of that," Johnson said. "But I had to suck it up and go for it because I wanted more than anything to make sure my kids were going to be in the best place possible."

She started volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in 2013 and formally began the process to earn her own home in 2016, after her son's medical issues progressed to a level that would allow her to return to work full time. After hundreds of hours of "sweat equity" and training, her family moved into their own Habitat home last summer.

"We've worked hard for this," Johnson said Wednesday. "And you still have worries. There are things I still haven't unpacked from my trunk and brought inside, because sometimes it just doesn't feel real. But the boys are doing great. They can ride their bikes out here if they want and feel safe. We celebrated our first Christmas here last year and strung lights all around the porch, which we've never been able to do before."

JUST THE START

Close stressed that programs like Habitat can only help individuals in specific circumstances, but noted that Johnson's willingness to seek help and use temporary options until securing longer term solutions was key.

"In the entire housing and poverty area, one of the most substantial needs we see is the need for case management," Close said. "Somebody that can take someone and help them navigate relative to their personal situation and find the resources that might be available."

Grady said SC Housing's assessment is only the first step in understanding ways to improve access to affordable housing in South Carolina. He said the organization hasn't fully determined why South Carolina's eviction rate is the highest — by a wide margin — of any state in the nation, for instance.

"But we're working on fully understanding why that is," Grady said.

Grady said the larger reality remains that South Carolina has just a fifth of the low income housing that it needs statewide.

SC Housing is responsible for allocating low-income housing tax credits, so Grady said many of its possible solutions are geared toward increasing investor interest in such programs, and encouraging greater use of non-competitive 4 percent LIHTC paired with tax exempt bonds and better integrating the agency's programs with "emerging and potential outside sources of financing."

Other possibilities, like encouraging the development of workforce housing within statewide "opportunity zones," could be a possibility, Grady said, along with inclusionary zoning ordinances and allowing the production of more housing units in "areas of high demand and/or near employment centers."