Nurses leaving town due to housing costs. New Beaufort homes could help them stay
.png "Townhouses and single-family homes are part of the workforce housing that Beaufort-Jasper Housing Trust and Beaufort Memorial Hospital are working on. It is located on Reynolds an Elliott streets off of Ribaut Road in Beaufort.")
New housing for nurses is coming to Beaufort, and Beaufort County is doing its part to make it happen.
On Monday, the Beaufort County Council agreed to donate five parcels of county-owned property to the Beaufort-Jasper Housing Trust (BJHT). Working with Beaufort Memorial Hospital, BJHT plans to develop the sites with “attainable housing” for medical staff.
The properties -- 114 Elliott St., 111 Elliott St., 109 Reynolds St., 874 Ribaut Road and 870 Ribaut Road -- are located near each other just north of the hospital and the Technical College of the Lowcountry.
BJHT is planning 26 units at this time, said BJHT Executive Director Claude Hicks said.
Architectural renderings included in the County Council packet show 25 two-bedroom townhouses and four three-bedroom houses at the property locations.
“It’s a great partnership with Beaufort Memorial to try to get medical staff to staff here,” Hicks told County Council members.
The vote approving the transfer of the land was 10-0 and followed its second reading. A third vote is required for final approval.
Nurses would be given first crack at the housing followed by emergency responders.
Finding affordable housing challenging for nurses
County staff identified the five parcels in Beaufort after being approached by the BJHT and the hospital about developing the Beaufort County-owned land into attainable housing for hospital personnel.
BJHT is a not-for-profit whose mission is to provide more workforce housing in the Lowcountry.
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Even with $5 million in recent pay increases to its employees across the health system, the hospital said in 2025, employees are leaving because of rising housing costs.
Last year, BJHT’s Hicks heard about the challenges nurses were having finding affordable housing first-hand. It came when he visited Beaufort Memorial emergency room for a medical issue. He now shares that experience when discussing the issue.
“We’ve known it’s an issue for a long time,” Hicks said in a story Beaufort Memorial shared about Hicks’ hospital experience. “But it’s made real when you have people in front of you, treating you, talking about how difficult it is to live here and how there are very few housing options.”
Hicks says health care workers make up a big part of the “missing middle.” That term refers to members of the workforce who do not make enough money to afford the median rent or home costs here but earn too much to qualify for assistance.
“I think there are people who would like to live here long term but cannot either rent or buy a home close enough to the hospital to make it feasible,” Hicks said.
This story was originally published April 28, 2026 at 8:35 AM.
