If you think prices of houses in Charleston have gone sky-high, take a look at a home ownership’s cousin — the rental. Since 2020, rent in the city of Charleston has gone up 33%, according to the Historic Rent Estimates report by Apartment List.
Across the state, the average rent cost has gone up 30% in the same period. The average one bed-room apartment in the Charleston metro area in 2020 was $1,111. In 2022, the same sized apartment would have cost you $1,475.
The problem is not that Charleston does not have enough housing, officials say. Its problem is the city does not have enough affordable housing.
“Often for us, a gauge or barometer for ensuring rent is affordable is that it does not exceed 30% of an individual’s or household’s income,” said Geona Shaw Johnson, director of the city of Charleston’s Department of Housing and Community Development. “When you are paying more than 30% of your income on rent or a mortgage, we call it ‘house-burdened.’ ”
According to a study by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), about half of the nation’s renters are spending at least 30% of their pre-tax income on housing due to the recent rise in rent prices — meaning half of renters are house-burdened. This proportion remains true when looking specifically at Charleston. With 101,000 renters in the city, more than 48,000 pay 30% or more of their income on housing, 40,000 of whom spend more than 35%.
Two jobs to live downtown
The high cost of rent means people often have to hold more than one job to be able to live downtown.
Ariana Angelis, a 22-year-old who has lived in downtown Charleston since 2019, works as a server and research assistant to afford the Holy City’s high cost of living.
“My first apartment was more centrally located, had more amenities and I paid $925 — including utilities and parking,” Angelis said. That apartment was nearly 700 square feet. Only four years later, she pays “$1,200 a month, not including utilities, and my apartment isn’t as nice, and we have fewer bathrooms and bedrooms.”
Despite switching apartments to try and find a more affordable option, Angelis could not escape the significant rent increase, now having to pay 25% more than she did in 2019.
“I graduated from the College of Charleston and am applying to medical school while working a full-time and part-time job — adding up to about 70 hours a week — to barely afford the cost of living in Charleston,” Angelis said. “I think the increase of rent cost in the last few years has really changed my perspective regarding how ‘worth it’ it really is to live here.”
The historic part of Charleston is not the only area of the city suffering from the rise of rent costs.
“Usually, if you were willing to be above the crosstown or off the peninsula, you could easily find a newer-build for cheaper [than downtown], but that isn’t the case anymore,” Angelis said.
Jacob Fritz, who now lives on James Island, said he used to play the downtown rental game.
“I’m pretty blessed as my friend owns the house I live in now, but when I lived downtown in an apartment, the rent prices were pretty nuts for what I was paying for,” said Fritz. “Prices in the Charleston area are all over the place. There are good, affordable places out there, but they almost always have a catch.”
It feels like a new apartment complex appears every month, but because Charleston’s population increase over the last few years, Angelis said she believed “the housing market has also gotten much more competitive. A few years ago, if you were looking for an apartment in April — with the intention to move in August — you would have had options. This year, we struggled to find anything at all and have been looking since October.”
Looking for new angles
When asked about Charleston’s challenge with affordable housing, Marion Hawkins, president of the Cannonborough Elliotborough Neighborhood Association, said various apartment complexes seemed to be looking for new angles.
“In 2016, I got a two-bedroom apartment on a six-month lease, and then it was month-to-month after that. I was paying like $2,000 a month during the lease, and then when it came time for month-to-month, [the landlord] wanted $2,800, but they were still listing it as $2,000 for new residents.”
Charleston’s Department of Housing and Community Development states under their Affordable Housing Dashboard that the “City Plan approved in 2021 found that [Charleston residents] need an additional 16,351 affordable units to eliminate affordability gaps by 2030.”
Johnson said the city is working relentlessly to help the house-burdened.
The housing department also has rehabilitation programs in place to work with people to make renovations to their living spaces to open them for new housing opportunities.
“We work with developers with smaller amounts of property to help facilitate redevelopment of those sites for the purpose of providing rental options or rental opportunities for persons in the market,” said Johnson.
To avoid building more complexes that disrupt the style and architecture that makes Charleston so attractive, Johnson added, “We look to preserve, we look to create, and we look to fund housing in order to help meet the need.”
Charleston needs more affordable housing units, but at the same time has more than 15% of housing rentals vacated, according to data.
The Holy City ranked first among the 75 largest metro areas in the United States for rental vacancy rate according to Census-HUD study. The national rental vacancy rate is 6.4%. But, the Charleston-North Charleston metro area has a 15.3% rate. The same report states that the median monthly rental price for Charleston is $1,804 which is more than $200 a month than the national average.
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