The city of Charleston’s Hope Center, an organization helping those who are chronically homeless or at risk of homelessness, held a groundbreaking ceremony Oct. 12 to celebrate its new building in the peninsula’s Neck area.
The Hope Center initially opened its doors downtown on Meeting Street in June 2022, and the Charleston City Paper first reported about the new location in November. Construction will begin in spring 2024, said LaTosha Jenkins-Fludd, the center’s director. She said until the group officially moves, services will continue at its current Meeting Street location.
Jenkins-Fludd said she has high hopes for the future as the organization “continues to grow” and “to do more great things.” She said she’s proud of how far the Hope Center has come in such a short time: To date, it has offered immediate material resources and referrals to external community organizations to more than 2,000 people.
Jenkins-Fludd credited the center’s expanding reach to the city’s progressive leadership in confronting homelessness — and said Mayor John Tecklenberg is “personally committed to” this issue.
“I wouldn’t be able to do the great work that I’m doing at the center without community partners and without having a great leadership team behind me to support those efforts.”
The center’s growth, she added, coincides with “an increase in the amount of individuals that have become unhoused” in the Charleston area due to underlying factors like unemployment, mental health issues, domestic violence, substance abuse and the rising cost of living. And a South Carolina Interagency Council on Homelessness 2022 report found an 18% increase in individuals seeking services between 2020 and 2021.
She said the center was working to ensure “we’re not putting a Band-Aid on the issue of homelessness, but that we’re really addressing it holistically” — which means tackling root causes and immediate needs like laundry or a warm shower.
Looking ahead
Jenkins-Fludd also spoke about how to reduce recidivism and incarceration among the unhoused moving forward.
“Sometimes [unhoused people] engage in self-destructive behaviors that cause them to become incarcerated,” she said, especially if they’re dealing with trauma. “So being able to address … mental health … and having those services available is going to be key to reducing this epidemic [of people in prison].”
She told the City Paper that with the new building, the center will “impact the community in different ways” by collaborating with new groups and strengthening existing relationships. It might, for example, start a partnership with an owner of multi-use affordable housing or continue to build its relationship with the Department of Social Services to help youth at risk of homelessness.
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