City of Charleston rolling out grant program to help with affordable housing

Live 5 WCSC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The city of Charleston is rolling out a new grant program that could offer more affordable housing.

City officials are planning to use $200,000 to incentivize homeowners to build accessible dwelling units, or ADU’s, on their property. The unit is an independent living facility for no more than two adults, which acts like a tiny home in a person’s yard or a garage apartment.

The goal with the program is to facilitate additional workforce and affordable housing in single family neighborhoods throughout the city of Charleston. The money would go towards construction of ten units, which would be rented out as affordable housing.

“What we wanted to do in providing the $20,000 per house for the construction of the ADU’s. is use that as an incentive and use that as an opportunity to bring people to the table so that they would see this as an opportunity for themselves as well as a benefit for the community,” Charleston Housing & Community Development Director Geona Shaw Johnson said.

Alum’s work rooted in call to help low-income

CSU Magazine

Bernie Mazyck ’81 helped found the South Carolina Association for Community Economic Development in 1994. He is currently the president and CEO of SCACED. Previously, he worked with a number of local grassroots nonprofit organizations who were working in low-income communities trying to help them develop affordable housing, create jobs, start businesses,  and attract capital to create economic opportunities for the residents. These organizations recognized there needed to be a statewide organization that could assist them in succeeding in their work, and the result was the creation of SCACED.

Mazyck is a native of Summerville where he currently lives and worships at Murray United Methodist Church. He is an ordained deacon in the S.C. Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, serving as the Convener of the Advocacy Work Area at the state level as well as the Charleston District level and is currently helping roll out a Response to Racism effort.

Calling to Help Low-Income

My work with SCACED is rooted in a calling to help the poor. My guiding and calling Scriptures are Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:16. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…” Even before the formation of SCACED, I worked for Coastal Community Foundation, leading a program called The NEW Fund. This program was established to work with and help empower low-income and African American neighborhood leaders to improve the conditions of their community. Our tools were leadership development, small grants, and connecting them to decision makers and funders. The most important and hardest efforts were to convince residents in low-income communities that they were worthy of a better life, and that they could play a significant role in changing the systems that keep them oppressed. This is “The Good News to the Poor…” SCACED grew out of our work at CCF and spread throughout the state.  

In rural South Carolina, a groundbreaking broadband project takes root

CQ Roll Call

It was Christmastime and Henry Youmans, the former town administrator of Allendale, S.C., hoped to video chat with relatives he hadn’t seen since the start of the pandemic. But doing so in Allendale, where a strong internet connection is rare, would be difficult.

Luckily, Youmans was part of an under-the-radar coalition of public officials, private sector stakeholders and educational institutions attempting to bring high-speed, affordable broadband to Allendale. And right around Christmas, he was asked to test out the public Wi-Fi signal emanating from a new hub attached to a local elementary school.

“It was just like turning on a switch and lighting up a whole area,” Youmans said. “I must’ve sat there for about an hour, two hours, Facetiming and updating my phone and doing all of these things I couldn’t normally do.”

Youmans used his smartphone to video chat with relatives in Michigan, New Mexico and North Carolina who he hadn’t seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alternative Financing Does Not Have to be Predatory

Greenville Business Magazine

By Tammie Hoy Hawkins

CEO, CommunityWorks

It is no surprise that there is a large part of the population that does not have strong relationships with traditional financial institutions (banks or credit unions). Look no further than the recent Covid-19 relief program, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), where story after story pointed to business owners, particularly minority businesses, unable to access the PPP because they did not have strong banking relationships.

Even before the pandemic, low-income communities and individuals have experienced disproportionate access to traditional financial products. In South Carolina, 26.1 percent of the population is considered unbanked or underbanked, despite a large need for credit or financing (Prosperity Now SC Scorecard).

Alternative lenders and finance companies, like payday lenders, auto title loan companies, buy-here pay-here lots, and check cashing places are common options for individuals with poor credit, no credit, or lack of a traditional banking relationship.

Cradle to Career plans new digital equity initiative

Live5 WCSC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A Lowcountry non-profit is planning to launch a new initiative to get technology and internet to families in need on the peninsula.

Tri-County Cradle to Career CEO Phyllis Martin says technology and internet access is no longer just nice to have, it’s necessary to have. During the pandemic she says it’s become even more necessary for students, which is why Cradle to Career plans to help provide all families in the East Side Community with access to these digital necessities.

“We can’t change educational outcomes for children if we’re not impacting the systems that surround children and families,” Martin said.

With their new pilot program, which they are presenting to the Charleston County Finance Committee Thursday afternoon, they plan to provide computers, internet, and other digital essentials to families who are without.

Martin says they are joining up with the East Side Community Development Cooperation to make it happen.

Union Heights residents work with SC Ports Authority and others to monitor air pollution

The Post & Courier

In an area called “the Neck” — a cluster of small neighborhoods and industrial sites that straddle the border between Charleston and North Charleston — residents must cope with all sorts of unneighborly challenges.

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The Neck was home to a pretty big neighborhood that was split into two — Union Heights and Rosemont — by Interstate 26 when it was constructed in the 1960s. Through this low-income residential area, around 120,000 vehicles pass each day.

That number is about to increase now that the State Ports Authority’s Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal is open for business. The terminal is less than half a mile east of Union Heights and Rosemont, and the new Port Access Road connects to I-26 exactly between the two neighborhoods.

The SPA estimates that, once the terminal is at full capacity by the early 2030s, around 7,000 diesel trucks will use the access road every day. This has raised concerns among residents and health advocates that increases in air pollution — specifically the particulate matter spewed by diesel engines — will put people already at a disadvantage at further risk.

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But a collaboration among residents, the SPA, Palmetto Railways, government officials and the Medical University of South Carolina could help mitigate the looming problem. The air-monitoring project is spearheaded by the Charleston Community Research to Action Board, the environmental arm of the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Communities.

State-Wide Collaborative Unites Rural Communities to Advance Digital Equity

SC Public Radio

On a windy afternoon earlier this month, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn along with about 50 stakeholders from across the state celebrated a successful broadband pilot project in Allendale, South Carolina which created internet access for 1,000 homes in 61 days.

Jim Stritzinger, the broadband coordinator for South Carolina, said the Allendale Broadband Pilot Project is the first of many similar projects aimed at advancing digital equity in South Carolina.

“My goal is to solve broadband in the state of South Carolina in three years,” Stritzinger said. “Everybody all in, digital equity for all in three years.”

Digital equity is making the internet available and affordable for everyone. But across the United States, millions of people live in places where broadband internet access doesn’t exist.

In South Carolina, roughly 193,000 households struggle to connect. According to Stritzinger, that number is shrinking fast because of federal investments. But deploying physical infrastructure is only one part of the process, the real key to advancing digital equity is making sure the technology is adopted.

W. Kamau Bell: Few things say 'the US economy is broken' more than this

CNN Opinion

As many of us excitedly toss off our masks, freshly vaccinated (or freshly faking being vaccinated), and in a hurry to get back to "normal," there is something decidedly "not normal" going on. We're in an era of historic job loss, and yet there are jobs available. Except it looks like no one wants them.

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Hearing about how all these super wealthy people are working so hard to keep so much really made me question the nature of American capitalism. Other countries have rich people, but they also have free healthcare and free or inexpensive higher education. They have a social safety net that keeps people from falling off the economic cliff. They have things like state-sponsored childcare and parental leave. And let me be clear, I'm not talking about the super wealthy people of one particular party. All the billionaires are complicit here, from the right-wing ones to the left-wing ones to the ones who get to host "Saturday Night Live" for no good reason.

One person who I talked to about this is Germaine Jenkins. Germaine runs Fresh Future Farm, a farm that is smack-dab in the middle of an economically struggling neighborhood. Germaine didn't start this farm to be rich. She started it to help people like her, people who don't have access to affordable and healthy food. And she really cares about her people. During the height of the pandemic when her customers weren't leaving their homes, Germaine and her crew would drop off care packages of not only food but toilet paper and PPE. And here's the key part: It was all free. She even helped with financial assistance. And again: It was free.