Charleston-Area Employers are Buying Property and Building to Create Affordable Housing for Workers.

Area businesses are struggling to recruit new staff due to housing costs and some are taking matters into their own hands.

The Post and Courier recently reported that Cynthia Feldman of Sweetgrass Pharmacy who has looked for job applicants across South Carolina and into Georgia, stated. “The number one thing they all said is it’s too expensive to live here,”

The owner of Sweetgrass Pharmacy is now purchasing three townhomes in Twin Rivers Towns, just across the Wando River from Mount Pleasant. The homes start in the mid-$300,000 range. She will rent them to staff at below market rates and is considering buying more.

Likewise, Roper St. Francis Hospital is now soliciting proposals to build housing on its campus in northern Mount Pleasant to offer as an affordable solution. “The need is so pervasive,” said Roper’s interim CEO Megan Baker. “We do have a sense of urgency that’s palpable.”

Sweetgrass and Roper could be the first Charleston-area businesses to decide to buy or build housing in order to hire and retain employees, but they likely won’t be the last.

To be considered affordable, the cost of housing should not exceed 30 percent of one’s income. An annual income of $55,000, would translate to a monthly target housing cost of no more than $1,375, which is an amount that is getting harder to achieve.

In the tri-county area, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development now considers a salary of $58,900 yearly to be “low income.”  To put that in perspective, In 2023 The SC Department of Employment and Workforce reported that the average annual wage across all occupations in South Carolina was $54,250 (based on 2,080 hours of work in a year at an hourly rate of $26.08). This was up $3,600 from the average salary of $50,650 in 2022, a 7.1 percent gain.

“As residents are required to live further away from the communities in which they work and engage, more cars are on major roads for longer amounts of time, leading to increased traffic across the region,” the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce said in April. “As individuals and families spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing expenses, less money is available to be spread across businesses in our region.”

“It’s taken a while for the business community to come around, but they are aware that housing is a workforce issue,” said Josh Dix, who handles advocacy for the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors and chaired Charleston County’s housing task force.

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Gena Glaze