City of Greenville: Balancing Prosperity and Housing Affordability in Greenville

Inclusionary development has not been embraced, so parts of the City…remain poor and disconnected from the city’s new vibrancy.

As recent as 2000, Greenville had excess of low-cost rentals ($500 in today’s dollars)

TODAY: The City is short by 2,500 units.

The gap between what is affordable for a worker at minimum wage and median rents in Greenville is about $250/month or $3000 per year, the equivalent of about $1.50 an hour in wages.

Affordability challenges have begun to extend well above the bottom of the income ladder. It now reaches the middle of the income ladder, including teachers, Aloft Hotel desk clerks, Harris Teeter store managers, BMW line workers, and Panera employees.

8500 households in Greenville today (3.2% of all households) make less than $25,000 per year and would be considered cost burdened at median rent ($739)

Median Household Income: $41,147

Median Monthly Rent: $739

Median Value of Owner-Occupied Home: $205,000

The percentage of low-cost rentals(under $500 per month) in this entire downtown and near-downtown area declined between 2010 and 2014 from 44% of all rentals to 34% while the percentage of high-cost rentals ($1000+per month) increased from 13% to 20%.

Roughly 40% of renters have incomes below $20,000 and another 10% have incomes between $20,000 and $25,000.

In 2014, there were over 2,500 more low-income households than available low-cost rentals in Greenville.

In 2014 there were nearly 3,000 more households than there were apartments at a price they could handle ($1,250+). Instead of renting within their price range, these households end up renting lower-priced units, thus increasing competition for those units, which raises rents further and which further crowds out lower-income households.