South Carolina homelessness agency working on new rehousing program

ROCK HILL, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Justices with the nation’s highest court recently ruled cities can enforce laws blocking homeless people from camping in public areas — even if they have nowhere else to go.

More than 1,000 people in York County lack stable housing. Local organizations like the Catawba Area Coalition for the Homeless (CACH) in Rock Hill are urgently moving to get those people in homes quickly.

“We don’t have affordable housing, and people can be arrested for not being able to afford housing,” said Melissa Carlyle, CACH executive director.

“Then it just becomes this vicious cycle where people are either criminalized or they’re fined. Then it makes it even harder for them to remove themselves from the situation of homelessness.”

Carlyle is one half of the homeless response system in York, Chester and Lancaster counties that includes advocacy work and outreach programs. They educate the community on homelessness and perform data reporting. This includes a street outreach program where they visit encampment sites, the downtown areas, and other areas where people are known to frequent.

“We’re just now starting a rapid rehousing program where we’re going to be transitioning people from homelessness into housing by providing rental assistance for up to 12 months,” Carlyle said.

CACH was working on that before the recent Supreme Court ruling granted cities the power to enforce laws banning homeless people from sleeping in public places.

Grant funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development will help them with their rapid rehousing mission.

“It provides a subsidy for security deposit, utility deposit, as well as a rental subsidy for individuals to live in a market rate unit quickly so they can quickly get out of homelessness,” said Corinne Sferrazza, the community development coordinator for the city of Rock Hill’s Housing and Community Development Department.

“They’re all in different stages across the three counties. In York County, you see a lot of shelters, but the shelters still aren’t enough. We have over a thousand people experiencing homelessness in York County that we know of and we’re sure that there are many more hundreds if not thousands more people that we don’t know that haven’t entered our official homeless system,” she said. “So York County is really trying to focus on switching to a housing mindset where we’re increasing the supply of affordable housing, where we have housing programs in addition to our emergency shelters.”

Chester and Lancaster counties don’t have true emergency shelters. Carlyle says they’re working to implement facilities in those areas so there’s a place for people to go. Simultaneously, they’re trying to expand housing services to those counties to provide more options.

“During our point-in-time count this year, we had almost a 26% increase in the number of unhoused individuals,” Carlyle said. “We actually saw unsheltered homelessness go down. But I think that’s actually just because it’s gotten harder to locate individuals who are unsheltered. And part of that kind of ties back to this ‘Grants Pass’ issue of, if people are worried about being fined or criminalized for sleeping outside, then they try to stay hidden from, not only community members but from law enforcement.

“They might be fearful to reach out for help if they’re worried that they’re going to be arrested,” she continued. “So that’s part of the reason we implemented the street outreach programs.”

It’s all about access to affordable housing, Carlyle explained. In Rock Hill, that means individuals don’t pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

“It’s also hard for people to hold down jobs or to access employment if they don’t have stable housing. They might not have an address that they can put on application forms,” she said. “They might not have transportation to get to work every single day. We have some people who are unsheltered simply because of their work schedule, they get out after the shelter is closed.”

Rock Hill has several affordable housing developments either waiting for permits and zoning or nearly complete. The city’s housing and community development department has housed at least 19 people so far this year.

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