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From pipe dreams to reality
City program aims to make peninsula
By Dennis Quick
Staff Writer
Wilhelmina McPherson’s dream come true is her own house at 19 Dingle St.
She moved into her two-bedroom home nearly a year ago after enrolling in the city’s Homeownership Initiative program, which is aimed at providing affordable housing for workers of low, moderate and middle incomes.
It took about two years before McPherson, who works as a house cleaner and a child-care provider at First Scots Presbyterian Church on Meeting Street, received the keys to her new home. But McPherson’s patience with the paperwork and approval process paid off.
“People told me I was living a pipe dream,” recalled McPherson, a divorced mother of three grown children. “They said I’d never be able to own a house in the city.”
Their skepticism was understandable. In 2004, the average sales price of a peninsular Charleston home was $571,155, according to the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors. Today that figure is $642,779.
Since the Homeownership Initiative program’s birth about six years ago, the city has been on a mission to turn so-called pipe dreams like McPherson’s into realities.
The goal of the $22.5 million program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is to ensure peninsular Charleston provides a diversity of housing so employees who work there can also afford to live there, explained Geona Shaw Johnson, the city’s Housing and Community Development interim director.
That means homes for teachers, hospital workers, police officers, hotel and restaurant employees, and other workers whose incomes are not large enough to afford a market-value home on the peninsula.
Target areas
The city’s Homeownership Initiative targets five peninsular Charleston neighborhoods—the east side; the west side; Cannonborough; Elliottborough; and an area defined by H, F and I streets. These are designated HUD renewal communities and neighborhood revitalization areas.
To qualify for the city’s Homeownership Initiative, Johnson said, households must have an annual income between $28,200 and $67,680—50% to 120% of the area’s median income of $56,400.
Homes sold to qualified participants range from rehabilitated to newly built houses. Home prices generally range from about $114,000 to $182,000, with the average sales price around $165,000. Subsidies for homeowners striving for a first mortgage range from $40,000 to $45,000.
What’s available
Since 2004, when the Homeownership Initiative got rolling with the sale of four homes, 20 homes have been sold. Nine homes are available, and another 64 are “in various phases of development,” Johnson said.
All told, the program intends to provide 152 homes. When those homes are completed, the city plans to purchase more properties to provide additional affordable houses.
Condominiums will be included in the city’s affordable housing mix. On the peninsula’s west side, The Beach Co. plans to build 42 condos immediately adjacent to its Longborough development, where houses start in the upper-$500,000 range. The condos will be two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 900 to 1,200 square feet. Their architectural design will be similar to the Lowcountry style of the Longborough homes.
The Beach Co. will sell the condo community to the city, and the city will market the units. Construction will begin as soon as the city issues The Beach Co. a permit, according to Kent Johnson, The Beach Co.’s vice president of development.
On the affordable rental side, California-based Simpson Housing Solutions recently completed a $36.1 million renovation of Bridgeview Village, a 300-unit apartment community on Romney Street. Monthly rentals are $689 for a one-bedroom unit, $815 for two bedrooms and $1,011 for three bedrooms. All units are reserved for households earning a maximum of 60% of the area’s median income.
Simpson Housing Solutions partnered with the Charleston County Human Services Commission on the Bridgeview Village renovation.
Bridgeview Village is not affiliated with the city’s affordable housing initiative, but the city also is working to provide affordable apartments on the peninsula.
For now, however, the main push is homeownership.
“We have homes for sale and we’re looking for prospective homeowners who want to live the American dream,” Johnson said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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