More Beaufort Co. residents fearing eviction during pandemic. Here’s where they turn
In the 2 1/2 months since the coronavirus pandemic took hold, one area nonprofit group has spent more than double the amount it spent in all of 2019 to help Lowcountry families stay in their homes.
Since March 1, Bluffton Self Help has spent $362,000 to help 340 families with emergency rental assistance, according to Kimberly Hall, the group’s executive director.
The organization gave out $169,000 in all of 2019, she said.
The economic crisis caused by coronavirus has forced more area residents to seek help with paying rent.
Maya Redhead, 25, of Hardeeville is one of them.
She lost her job as a nanny in Hardeeville in March, and her husband, Andrew, 25, a firefighter with the Bluffton Fire Department, was no longer allowed to work his second job.
Redhead was fearful that getting another job outside their home could potentially expose Andrew Jr., their 15-month-old son, to COVID-19. But those concerns were almost beside the point, she said, because “nowhere was hiring.”
As the pandemic grew, so did the family’s financial problems.
Chief among them was April’s rent.
“There were some anxieties,” said Redhead. “You’re kind of coasting day by day. My husband and I are sitting there every night asking ‘what do we do?’”
“We did a lot of praying. God made a way for us,” she said.
Redhead said those prayers were answered when United Way of the Lowcountry, a housing group serving Beaufort and Jasper counties, stepped in to help.
The family had never asked for rent assistance before.
After reviewing her request, United Way gave the Redhead family $500 to help meet their $1,250 rent for April.
“They were very generous,” she said. “It was just that extra push that we needed.”
Not used to asking for help
Hilton Head’s major nonprofit helping with housing, the Deep Well Project, spent approximately $308,000 from March 1 to May 15 helping 383 low-income families make rent and mortgage payments.
The organization typically spends from $10,000 to $12,000 a month at this time of year, said Executive Director Sandy Gillis.
Gillis said at least 50% of the families Deep Well helped this year had never reached out to the group before.
Many of them came from the food and beverage and hospitality industries and had been laid off due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“These are not people used to seeking assistance,” she said.
The need has been enormous, according to Gillis, with the biggest spike coming from those seeking help with April and May rents.
The months ahead are also concerning, she said. She worries whether Deep Well will have what it needs to assist people as the pandemic continues.
“We’re really on pins and needles with what’s going to happen with June rents,” Gillis said. “With restaurants reopening, with some of the other services industries reopening, our guess is they’re probably going to need partial rent assistance. We’re marshaling our community donations to help with June.”
So far, donations to these organizations have kept up with the demand for help, according to both Gillis and Hall.
But the pandemic is far from over.
Evictions can begin again
Time is as much an enemy as illness.
The clock is ticking for some Beaufort County tenants. Landlords can now begin evicting tenants for nonpayment of rent, or other “non-emergency” reasons, after the S.C. Supreme Court’s stay on the process was lifted on May 15.
Additionally, evictions that had begun prior to coronavirus can now be picked up as if no time has passed, according to Gillis.
For example, if a court mandated a tenant had 30 days to pay the rent, and 10 days had passed by the time the moratorium on evictions began on March 19, the clock does not restart at 30 days. As of May 15 the tenant has only 20 days to pay the rent. Regardless of his or her new employment situation.
On Hilton Head Island, Gillis said the organization is “bracing” for evictions that she expects to happen in the next 30-60 days, though she notes many landlords have been largely understanding during coronavirus.
The cases, however, have begun to stack up in the county.
At least 24 eviction cases have been filed in Beaufort County since May 15, with eight coming from one rental company in Beaufort, according to state court records.
New safeguards
One protection afforded by the federal CARES Act is that those living in rental units that accept federal assistance or have received federally backed mortgage loans are safe from eviction for non-payment of rent until Aug. 23.
That means those living in Beaufort County’s public or Section 8 housing won’t have to worry immediately about eviction, according to Angela Childers, executive director of the Beaufort Housing Authority.
The agency is the one that would take tenants to court for nonpayment, and Childers said tenants usually are able to pay after appearing in court.
BHA would not evict tenants until they exhausted that option, and it’s unable to begin that process until late August, she said.
Childers said BHA manages 293 public housing units and oversees 605 Section 8 housing units. The agency, she said, has taken steps to ease the rent burden on many of its residents as coronavirus has forced people to leave their jobs.
BHA is able to lower rents for families who are struggling.
Since the start of coronavirus in the state, it made 72 rent adjustments for Section 8 housing tenants and 46 adjustments for public housing residents, she said. In both cases, the number of such adjustments have more than doubled compared to how often BHA made them for tenants before the pandemic.
“That’s the wonderful thing about public housing,” said Childers. “The rent is changed to match their income.”
‘For when life happens’
As the economic downturn from coronavirus hits all sectors of the economy, it’s created a population of workers who have never before needed help paying for housing.
They need that help now.
“They’ve never needed assistance before, and they don’t know how to ask for assistance,” said Dale Douthat, president and CEO of United Way of the Lowcountry. “The only thing they knew how to do was apply for unemployment. After that, they didn’t know where to go.”
“It took them awhile to know where to ask for assistance,” said Douthat.
The directors of Beaufort County’s housing groups stress that the money is not a handout.
It’s a lifeline.
“Rent assistance is for when life happens,” said Hall of Bluffton Self Help.
“Our goal is to stop the bleeding and get them back on track.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 4:30 AM.
