Need $200K for rent? Hilton Head does. Here’s how they get it in coronavirus pandemic
Every time we have a disaster, I end up at two places on Hilton Head Island.
One is David Martin’s Piggly Wiggly at Coligny Plaza. The grocery store that provides the comfort of macaroni and cheese has been there since 1956.
The other is the Deep Well Project, which has been Hilton Head’s social services safety net since 1973.
I go to get the pulse of the real Hilton Head.
Deep Well knows how hard Hilton Head has been slammed by the economic shutdown of the coronavirus pandemic.
You’ve heard people say they’re one paycheck from the streets. That’s Hilton Head right now.
Executive director Sandy Gillis, who I worked with for many years at The Island Packet, said the human needs rushed in on three waves after thousands of workers abruptly lost their jobs in early March.
First, people were hungry and needed food.
Then the rent came due, and they couldn’t pay it.
“We have 8,000 clients in our data base,” Gillis said. “But 50 to 60 percent of the people we’re helping now have never come to Deep Well for a thing. They don’t know how to ask for help. These are likely our donors who raise funds for us with their Boy Scout troop or things like that.
“It’s been hard. These are self-sufficient people.”
The third wave has yet to hit shore: Money needed to pay utility bills after the state lifts a prohibition on utility service disconnections.
$200,000 and $500,000
Between March 1 and April 30, Deep Well helped 244 families make rent, or the mortgage payment. It has sent $191,216 to island landlords.
Normally in April, money is flowing through the hands of workers, with the Easter holiday and the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing PGA Tour tournament in Sea Pines.
“In March and April, we would normally spend $12,000 a month on emergency rents,” Gillis said.
The money has been arriving in the mail, unsolicited.
Like the clients, at least half the donors are first-timers, Gillis said.
“A $10,000 check came from someone we have no relationship with and had never heard of,” she said.
A lot of the money is coming from second-home owners, from hometown banks in Ohio, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Deep Well got $20,000 from the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry and $15,000 from a Charleston-based foundation.
But most of it has shown up in checks, large and small.
“The money just started showing up one day,” Gillis said. “It’s absolutely remarkable. I’m sitting here seeing it happen and still don’t believe it.”
They’ll need it to keep flowing.
In March, they projected a need of $500,000 to make it through the five months of April through August.
Food
In April, islanders gave 13,000 pounds of food to Deep Well.
Since the economy shut down, that has provided 30,618 meals for 1,458 people.
Among those holding food drives have been churches, Sea Pines Resort and the South Carolina Yacht Club at Windmill Harbour to help people now unemployed through no fault of their own.
David Martin at the Piggly Wiggly has bought food for them at wholesale prices.
Gillis said they’d rather have money than gifts of food from the grocery stores. They can make the money go further, she said, and it is less risky that way.
Utilities
Palmetto Electric Cooperative is working on a community-wide response to help people with utility bills, Gillis said.
That will help Deep Well’s money fix other problems, like keeping people from being evicted from their homes.
Rent
Help also has come from landlords.
All Deep Well payment goes directly to landlords. In confirmation calls from Deep Well, many landlords agreed to help.
“They’ve said, ‘Send me half of it and we’ll call it even,’ “ Gillis said. “Or ‘$900 will cover my mortgage, you keep the rest.’ Not everybody can be in that position.
“We sent an $850 check for April rent, and three days later the check was mailed back to Deep Well with an apology for asking for it, and saying they were going to forgive the tenant’s May rent.
“Is that beautiful or what?”
On the other hand, one landlord was going to charge the charity a late fee if the rent was not delivered that day.
This on an island where most workers are already spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing.
Gillis is concerned lower-income tenants will get pushed out to make way for someone who can pay a higher rent. That was going on pre-COVID-19, she said, and maybe it won’t happen now if housing demand decreases in the recession.
But right now, people with higher rents are turning to Deep Well for help, raising the average check the charity sends to a landlord from $650 to $765.
All clients are vetted, and that task is getting harder.
Now, clients have to show where they stand on getting unemployment benefits.
But for a number of Latinos, there will be no stimulus check and no unemployment compensation, Gillis said.
She said the “secret sauce” to getting through this crisis is “community.”
She believes Hilton Head’s high percentage of retirees helps because they can give, and want to give.
“Deep Well’s staff of five continues to work long hours and weekends,” Gillis said, “and our plucky band of 35 volunteers, working four-hour shifts at a time, pack grocery bags, load them into cars and answer 100 to 300 phone calls a day.
“The days are long and sometimes hard, and we certainly go home bone-tired, but it sure is a good tired, knowing we are helping hundreds and hundreds of our neighbors.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
