Greenville donates land worth $8 million for affordable housing near Unity Park

Greenville News

The city of Greenville has donated land valued at $8 million near Unity Park to be dedicated to affordable, workforce and senior-citizen housing. 

The city donated 5.7 acres near downtown Greenville — parcels on Oscar, Nassau, Meadow, West Washington and South Hudson streets — to the Greenville Housing Fund, a coalition of affordable housing resources, in February. The housing fund is now pursuing financing for the project, which entails "complicated layering of public investing through the tax credit program," president Bryan Brown said at a City Council meeting in February. 

The tax credits are a valuable asset as one of the challenges to affordable housing in Greenville is the value of land, Brown said. 

"The fact that the city is contributing this land is certainly remarkable and something to celebrate," Brown told City Council. 

Two of the sites will have 148 units of affordable housing for senior citizens, and the housing fund is collaborating with residents and community partners to plan for other sites of workforce, affordable and market-rate units, Brown said. 

Quintin's Close-Ups: Interview with Bernie Mazyck

Holy City Sinner

Quintin Washington of Quintin’s Close-Ups recently spoke with Bernie Mazyzk, CEO at the South Carolina Association for Community Economic Development. He is involved with  the new Opportunity Center on Rivers Avenue in North Charleston. You can see the interview below.

After you watch, be sure to check out Washington’s other interviews here.

Greenville Housing Fund receives $250K from TD Bank to help families living in motels

The Post & Courier

Before the coronavirus spread to the Upstate, the Home Again program was working with families living long term in two substandard motels in Greenville County.

Since the onset of the pandemic, that number has grown to 10.

The Home Again program, a partnership of United Way of Greenville County, the Greenville Housing Fund and United Housing Connections, provides financial support and coaching to families who have been forced to live in motels after pitfalls such as job loss or credit issues. The goal is to allow them to move out of unfit living conditions and into long-term rentals that better meet their family’s need and to lay a ground work for self sufficiency in the future.

The economic toll of the pandemic has significantly increased the number of families forced into unfit living conditions in Greenville County, according to Greenville Housing Fund CEO Bryan Brown.

“Even though there’s been an eviction moratorium and all the rest of it, the numbers don’t lie,” Brown said. “We have more families in this situation than we had before.”

To help address the growing scope of the problem in the Upstate, the charitable arm of TD Bank awarded $250,000 to the Greenville Housing Fund to support the program. GHF was one of 32 organizations to receive support from TD Charitable Foundation’s Housing for Everyone grant program this year.

Charleston area groups aim to address homeownership disparity between Blacks, Whites

The Post & Courier

LADSON — Filled with joy as she walked outside her new home, Stella Dukes lifted her hands in the air.

It was her latest expression of praise that she’d been demonstrating throughout the day spent touring her new house.

“Freedom!” she said. “I can’t stop praising the Lord. You have to excuse me.”

Dukes, 70, and her husband, James, 62, are first-time homeowners. They rented properties throughout their 41-year marriage and just moved from a house in Park Circle, where rents and home prices have increased as new development took shape.

But now, their new one-story house in Ladson will be a place they can call their own. The house will likely serve as a wealth-generating asset for their descendants, putting the family on a path toward financial freedom.

Though the Dukes have been able to realize their dream of homeownership, many African Americans still struggle to reach that mark, especially when compared with the number of White Americans who own houses.  

The homeownership rate for Black Americans is almost 30 percent less than the rate for Whites, according to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors. The association reports 42 percent of African Americans own their residences compared with a rate of 69.8 percent for White Americans.

Data paints a similar picture in South Carolina.

The homeownership rate for Whites in the Palmetto State is 77.5 percent and for Blacks 51.3 percent, according to a 2020 report by Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Prosperity Now.

Lowcountry housing advocates and those in the real estate market argue the disparity illustrates a lingering effect of centuries of discrimination. They say it’s also the result of injustices toward Blacks still taking shape. Nonprofit, municipal and real estate industry leaders are working to increase the number of African American homeowners in the Lowcountry.

…

A key way to help more African Americans obtain homes is by making available more houses affordable. Affordability has become a crisis in the Lowcountry, where rents and home prices have skyrocketed over the years.

The national Individual Development Account program funded efforts by the South Carolina Association of Community Economic Development to create housing. The program incentivized people to save money for a down payment, and SCACED would match the savings three to one.

Between 2001 and 2019, the organization was able to help 121 people buy their homes, a majority of whom were African American, said Bernie Mazyck, CEO of SCACED. The program ended in 2015.

Commentary: How SC Legislature could help provide justice through economic equity

The Post & Courier

As a nation, state and community, we find ourselves at a crossroads and a time of transition. Our nation’s history has seen transitions forward and transitions backward to times of oppression and injustice. To ensure forward motion, we need to anchor ourselves to ideals that elevate our moral center.

One such worthy ideal comes from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. During his speech at the National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, he said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” And from a more contemporary leader, Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama: “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.”

As we consider the cornerstone on which to build a “more perfect union,” a moral center of “justice” seems appropriate. And there is no more critical a time than now for people of goodwill and moral conscience to assemble our collective capacities and do justice.

SC’s only Black-owned bank receives multi-million equity investment from Wells Fargo

The State

South Carolina’s only Black-owned bank, which traces its history to 1921 recently received a $3 million investment from one of the world’s largest banks.

Wells Fargo announced equity investments in Optus Bank of Columbia and along with five other Minority Depository Institutions nationally.

With the capital from Wells Fargo, Optus Bank can be more equipped to help local minority communities by offering more small business loans, mortgage loans, financial education and a larger deposit-taking capacity. This growth can help meet the bank’s mission to serve those previously unbanked, underbanked and historically underserved.

“This is a catalytic, transformational investment,” said Dominik Mjartan, president and CEO of Optus Bank. “Every loan, every investment we make with that capital hopefully gets paid back and gets revolved into another business, so this is not a one time impact.”

Five small businesses seeing relief through the City of Charleston and Charleston LDC based loans

WCBD News 2 Charleston

CHARLESTON S.C. (WCBD) – Some small businesses said they are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. On Tuesday, the city announced the five recipients of the revolving fund through Charleston LDC. A meeting was held to praise the businesses for holding on rather than just for making announcements.

Mayor Tecklenburg thanked the small businesses for persevering as he stated they are the fabric of the city. Soon after, he sang a tune we’ve heard before, but with a different ending.

“If we can keep our numbers down and remain healthy, our recovery will be more robust. But it needs help.” - JOHN TECKLENBURG, CITY OF CHARLESTON MAYOR

That help is coming in the form of funds authorized by the CARES Act and the Charleston LDC. The City of Charleston said in a statement that they were awarded an $850,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, authorized by the CARES Act. That money was to be used as capital for a revolving loan fund to aid such businesses.

Non-profits combine for Opportunity Center

The Times & Democrat

NORTH CHARLESTON -- Four South Carolina based charitable organizations have announced their partnership in creating and operating a new concept for non-profit led economic development; this innovative concept will be called the Opportunity Center.

The four non-profit partner agencies have combined experience of 75 years of working in the community economic development field. The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, Increasing H.O.P.E., Homes of Hope and the S.C. Association for Community Economic Development will be using the Opportunity Center not only as their headquarters, but as a training center and a business incubator all under one roof.

A ground breaking to kick-off construction was held Jan. 25. The facility is located at 8570 Rivers Ave. in North Charleston.

Buoyed by a $2.7 million grant awarded from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to Homes of Hope Inc. this past May, the former 31,250 square-foot furniture store in North Charleston is undergoing the transformation into the Opportunity Center. In addition to the $2.7 million EDA grant, the Coastal Community Foundation (CCF) has provided an $800,000 equity investment from CCF’s Place-Based Impact Investing fund. Other partners to date include Wells Fargo and Trust Bank, who each invested $100,000. The group is currently working on securing additional investments and donations of $1 million to fully complete the project.