Mold, bugs, and saved possessions are scattered around Jerline Green's new apartment. Must permeates the air as she sits down on one of the only chairs in the room. She moved here last October, after her previous apartment was destroyed by October's devastating flood. This was the only place that could handle her three kids and keep them at the same school -- at least, that she could afford. Cooper McKim reports on the increasingly unaffordable state of affordable housing since the flood.
Jerline Green is a 52 year old mother of four. Three of them still live with her -- at ages five, six, and ten. Green has a bedroom to herself, while her children all currently share one. They're still not used to the new home. "The kids always asking when can I sleep in a bed again, " Green says. She explains they're getting new beds and furniture soon from a non-profit called Flood Hub, where Beth Medlock coordinates, but, "bedbugs took 'em over. I had to throw 'em out. Then House in a Box helped with some bedding, then the same thing happened, cause we were here." The apartment was crawling with bed-bugs and cockroaches, and she didn't know how to deal with it.
Green is trying to move, but rents have gone up since the flood -- there was no safety net for her since she didn't have insurance or qualify for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) assistance when the flood hit. Jennifer Moore, a Senior Director with United Way of the Midlands, says Green's situation isn't uncommon, "What we're hearing stories over and over, is that people would move into a new apartment, but the only one they could find had a higher rent -- a fifty, seventy, one-hundred dollar increase."
Green says she tried talking landlords down from their high prices by explaining her situation, but she found little success. There are fewer homes on the market now and more people looking, so naturally prices have gone up. That's what Brian Huskey says, the Executive Director of the Midlands Housing Trust Fund. He says South Carolina already had an affordable housing crisis that was just made worse by the flood, "because nothing changed about the supply of housing as a result of the flood, except that there was a lot... that got damaged that's uninhabitable. That tightened the market up even more. So if you were already struggling and extremely housing cost burdened, there's just not that much housing to begin with."
Green works as a customer service representative for a local TJ Maxx. She makes just above minimum wage. A report came out recently from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, saying someone in Green's position would have to work 82 hours per week to afford the average fair market rent in South Carolina. For a two bedroom apartment, that's $772 per month.
Recently, Green found a case manager that's helping her sort out her housing situation. She hopes housing will open up soon enough.
Newest Statistics on South Carolina's Affordable Housing Market
Links
National Low Income Housing Coalition