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Evictions in South Carolina signal dire straits for renters nationwide as homelessness looms - NBC News
Aug 10, 2020 3 mins, 1 sec

Sineeka Latimer said she has vacillated between tears and prayer since she learned late last month that she was being evicted from her home in Greenville, South Carolina, where she lives with her four teenagers and her mother.

"Cost of living here is just so high," said Latimer, who has gone through a period of homelessness before.

Latimer is one of thousands of people who face or will face eviction as the economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic has led millions across the United States to find their housing situations complicated or to miss their housing payments.

The eviction notices for those homes in South Carolina and other states will go out Aug.

Before the pandemic, South Carolina already faced a long-term housing crisis, and it had the highest eviction rate in the U.S., nearly twice that of any other state, according to Princeton University's Eviction Lab.

In South Carolina alone, 52 percent of renter households can't pay their rent and are at risk of eviction, according to an analysis of census data by the consulting firm Stout Risius Ross.

About 185,000 evictions could be filed in the state over the next four months.

Rental assistance needs will grow to nearly $835 million to cover those at risk in South Carolina this year, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Thirty-two percent of South Carolina households struggle to afford basic needs, such as food, clothing and transportation, because of high housing costs, according to the South Carolina Housing Needs Assessment published in August 2019.

After the state's temporary eviction and foreclosure moratorium, which was issued by state Supreme Court Justice Donald Beatty, expired in May, landlords began filing eviction notices for the rent they missed in March and April.

The number of eviction notices filed in April jumped from 40 to more than 4,500 in May and over 6,000 in June, according to court records.

Advocates say the number of evictions will return to the level before the pandemic soon — there were more than 162,000 eviction filings in South Carolina last year — and they are bracing themselves for it to become much worse, as the state economy hasn't rebounded and the few safety nets protecting people have been removed.

"Particularly because of COVID, we are preparing for a tsunami of folks," said Lorain Crowl, executive director of United Housing Connections, a South Carolina housing aid organization.

Advocates say that there needs to be another moratorium but that Congress also needs to go further and provide rental relief funds and access to counsel to help those who face eviction.

Those who face eviction in South Carolina and those advocating in their behalf don't have a lot of faith in the state government's filling those shortfalls, however.

While nearly half the cases were settled in 2019, according to South Carolina court documents, magistrates sided with landlords more than 44,000 times last year — about 27 percent of the time.

He said he worked out payment plans with many of his tenants rather than file eviction notices, but he said the moratorium drained his company's resources so much that it struggled to make repairs, forcing it to turn to a nonprofit to help replace an air-conditioning unit a tenant needed fixed.

But as Marco Corona, the shelter's chief development officer, said, the next few months aren't the worry.

Corona said that the shelter is providing millions of dollars in housing relief to its 800 to 1,000 clients but that it's just a drop in the bucket of the greater need across the state.

"It's hard to conceive of how dramatic the effects will be," said Bryan Grady, the chief research officer of SC Housing, the state housing authority

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