Charleston is struggling to meet the demand for affordable housing.
The cost of being able to live affordably in the Charleston area is out of control, a housing crisis just as real as rising sticky temperatures, climate-induced flooding and expensive prices just about everywhere.
But Charleston housing authorities, nonprofit organizations and the city of Charleston are trying desperately to increase affordable options amid growing demand.
“If you move to Charleston, you’re taking a risk of not being able to afford housing,” said Arthur Milligan, CEO of the Housing Authority of the City of Charleston, in a probing interview with the Charleston City Paper.
What’s considered “affordable housing” are dwellings below market rates, from low-income to workforce housing. In a market where the cost to buy a house has skyrocketed in recent years, that makes what’s affordable even harder to find.
Affordable housing is technically defined as housing priced at or below 30% of the pre-tax household income for households making from 0% to 120% of the Area Median Income, according to the city’s Affordable Housing Dashboard, which shows all proposed and existing affordable housing options in Charleston County.
As of July 1, there were just over 5,800 existing affordable units in the city and 815 proposed units in active development. But that’s way short of the city’s goal of having more than 15,000 units to meet its goal of eliminating affordability gaps by 2030, outlined in the city’s 2021 strategic plan.
Residents keep on waiting
Affordable housing is a stress across the county. Due to high demand, Charleston County Housing and Redevelopment Authority’s waiting lists for public housing and Section 8, a subsidized housing program, are closed, according to Angela Childers, the authority’s CEO. She said once thousands of applications get processed, which could take months, the waiting list will reopen.
The waiting list to receive affordable housing has also increased at the city of Charleston’s Housing Authority (CHA), Milligan said.
“We have about 2,200 to 2,900 people on the waiting list right now, and it’s going to continue going up,” he said.
Milligan said there are several reasons for this, mainly because Charleston’s population keeps growing. Between 2013 and 2023, Charleston gained around 28,000 people, according to Google’s Data Commons. In that same period, 16,000 houses were built.
Charleston’s key industries, such as aerospace, automotive and tech, have also attracted high-income earners, creating more competition in the city’s housing market, Milligan said. But many Charleston natives don’t want to move out of their city, even if housing is cheaper elsewhere.
“For a lot of people, Charleston is home, and they still need someplace to live,” he said. “We try to help with that, to make sure they are not outside, living in the woods.”
Milligan said the blame can’t be pinned on anyone. It’s just what happens when a city grows as fast as Charleston has.
“It’s not anybody’s specific fault; it’s the fact that businesses come here because we have a nice location,” Milligan said. “Charleston is really expanding and will continue to expand.”
When asked if developments are keeping up with the need for affordable housing, Milligan said, “Oh no, it’s not even close.”
What can be done
The most important thing the city can do to help, Milligan said, is give more tax incentives to developers. That might cause them to be willing to build more affordable housing, he said.
Nevertheless, Milligan said his agency is dedicated to continuing to build for the people of Charleston. CHA has seven active development projects in the works, totalling an additional 1,500 units, and four more are planned.
The need for more affordable housing options is quite visible, Childers said.
“When we see our Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) participants having a hard time finding a unit that is affordable to rent, that definitely shows a need for more affordable housing units,” Childers said.
But the county is making progress toward making affordable housing more accessible, even if it’s one unit at a time, Childers said.
“Every little step is progress,” she said. “If somebody is building two affordable units, we’ll take it. If someone is building 200 units, we’ll take them.”
Senior citizens in need of housing
Demographically, there has been a growing senior population in need of affordable housing, Milligan said.
“Charleston attracts a lot of people, and you’re seeing elderly people move to Charleston,” he said. “More and more people are aging out … so we’re starting to see more and more senior housing that’s just reaching its limit, and that people have gotten to a point where they physically can’t work.”
Juanita Dochterman, a senior who has lived in Charleston for three years, said she applied to many affordable housing options before getting her current home at St. James Place in James Island. She was on a waiting list for nearly 16 months.
If she didn’t have relatives to support her, Dochterman said she would have had to go back to Georgia or face homelessness.
“I was fortunate. I had family to stay with, but it was difficult because nobody really wants to have an extra person hanging out,” Dochterman said.
And while Dochterman said she loves her small, one-bedroom house, which costs 30% of her income, she doesn’t think the city is doing enough to encourage more affordable housing for seniors and families. She feels many of the affordable housing options are in unsafe neighborhoods and are too outdated.
Milligan offers a different perspective. He believes the city is trying its best to fix the problem and is doing more than other cities facing a similar situation.
“The city of Charleston is very interested and feels like it’s important to do affordable housing, and that’s not always the case,” he said. “You go to a big city, its first priority is bringing in developers or businesses that will hire more people. But here, the government is very concerned about trying to get affordable housing.”
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