Restoring Housing Opportunity

Across the Upstate, people are being priced out of the housing market. Whether buying a starter home or renting an apartment, housing costs have risen so quickly that many people with full-time jobs can no longer afford to live near where they work. Corporate investors often purchase homes and land before local families even have a chance to compete.

Since 2017, average earnings nationwide have increased about 43 percent, while home prices have risen 81 percent and rents 54 percent. South Carolina also has one of the nation's highest eviction rates, due in part to laws that allow landlords to remove tenants quickly. Evictions disproportionately affect women, particularly Black and Hispanic women.

Developers and corporate investors naturally seek the highest returns, leading to the construction of more expensive homes and luxury apartments while fewer modest homes and lower-cost rental units are built. In one of the nation's fastest-growing states, we need housing for people at every income level. Teachers, first responders, nursing assistants, janitors, service workers, and many others should be able to live in the communities they serve. Without action, rising housing costs will continue to push working families out of the housing market.

Eunice's plan to restore housing opportunity includes:

• Pass a National Tenants' Protection Act to limit excessive rent increases, guarantee the right to counsel in eviction proceedings, and prohibit no-cause evictions.

• Increase funding for the Federal Home Loan Banks to expand access to housing.

• Create a federal awards and grant program that recognizes communities—such as Greenville—that successfully expand housing opportunities through partnerships among local government, businesses, nonprofits, and faith organizations, and help replicate those models elsewhere.

• Create grants to convert abandoned hotels, schools, dormitories, office buildings, and warehouses into apartments.

• Provide tax incentives and grants that help churches and nonprofit organizations build housing on underused property.

• Fund smart-growth projects that build housing near jobs and public transportation while incorporating child care centers.

• Encourage multigenerational housing developments where students, seniors, and working families live together near colleges and in urban areas.

• Keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under public oversight rather than privatizing them.

• Increase funding to build housing for people with disabilities, chronic mental illness, and those experiencing homelessness.

• Support community land trusts, especially in rural areas, to help stabilize land costs.

• Limit the ability of large corporate landlords and private equity firms to purchase single-family homes by eliminating tax advantages unavailable to individual homebuyers.

• Increase funding for USDA Rural Housing Service loan programs.

• Encourage employers and local governments to offer first-time homebuyer assistance, including closing-cost assistance, as an employee benefit.

• Provide down-payment or closing-cost assistance for first-time homebuyers who are teachers, first responders, and health care workers living near their workplaces.

• Increase grant funding for community development lenders such as CommunityWorks South Carolina, which provides financing in underserved communities.

“The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home." - Confucius