Homeownership is key to safe and stable housing. Habitat for Humanity, among others, has found that the impact of homeownership goes beyond shelter. It has positive effects on financial stability, educational outcomes, health, safety and community involvement. They report being healthier and feeling safer. Children of homeowners have improved scholastic achievement are more likely to graduate from high school and attend college. Homeowners are more likely to vote and be engaged in civic and community activities. In our county, 30.7% of renters are in poverty, but only 5.1% of homeowners are.
In our county as a whole, Anderson has about 71% owner occupied housing. Out of our housing stock of 88,209 homes, 12.9% (11,411) are vacant. Another 21,717 are renter-occupied. Renters are distributed unevenly across the county. The city of Anderson, for example, is majority renter-occupied, unlike all the other municipalities of the county. Homeland Park has the highest number of homeowners – 1,457 in all – which reflects a 55.4% ownership rate. Other housing details can be found readily in the Housing topics of the annual American Community Survey – https://data.census.gov/cedsci/ to include owner and renter characteristics, age of housing, value of owner-occupied housing, and the percentage of income spent on housing. Households that spend 30% or more of their income on rent or a mortgage are considered housing-burdened, and have a hard time making ends meet each month. More than half of our county’s renters are housing burdened, as well as 14.7% of homeowners, which means they come up short, month after month.
When we look at the median wage associated with the top ten occupations in Anderson county, representing 92% of those employed full-time, we find that nearly 50% cannot afford to own a house at our county’s median mortgage price.
McDonald’s starting salary ($10), Aldi’s ($13.10) and that of public schoolteachers ($18.78) all leave homeownership out of reach.
Not all of our county’s housing is created equal: we have more than 3000 homes built in the 30s – and more than 25% of our homes are 50 years old or older.
In 2019, SC Housing published a housing needs assessment across all the counties of the state. In 2021, they published an updated report- https://schousing.com/home/Housing-Needs-Assessment – these reports help identify important statewide as well as county trends. It extends the housing analysis done in the SC Self-Sufficiency Standard, which defines the minimum income needed to support a household without any external assistance. https://www.uwasc.org/self-sufficiency-standard
These two recent studies highlight factors that contribute to people remaining in rental housing. For example, the SC self-sufficiency standard helps us understand that for families with young children in Anderson county, housing and childcare together can be as much as 44% of their budget. Since it has been conducted in 2016 as well as 2020, we know that the costs for a two adult household to meet basic needs have risen at least 21%. And the minimum wage isn’t enough: this family’s adults with young children would have to work 672 hours a month between the two of them at minimum wage (that’s just over 11 hours a day for EACH adult, every day) to make ends meet; a break even wage would be $13.82 for each adult.
The fastest growing demographic in Anderson County is adults aged 65 and older: on average, 6 people a day celebrate their 65th birthday in our county. Right alongside this trend is the 10% increase of households made up of just one adult, for whom the cost of basic needs has gone up over 16% since 2016. Over 9000 households have only a 65+ year old person in our county. Many of them rely on a car to get groceries and other basic needs; if they lose that capability, access to food and other supports is drastically curtailed. In a RAND study examining driver habits of adults 65+ compared to those 18-24 and those 25-64, they found that older drivers tend to avoid driving conditions that put them at greater risk, or give up driving voluntarily. The older drivers are just 16% likelier to cause an accident: youngest drivers are 188% more likely to do so. Older drivers are a danger mostly to themselves: 73 % of people killed in crashes involving drivers 70+ were either the older drivers themselves or their older passengers. In keeping with a population that is aging, Anderson county has added features in such as roundabouts, which reduce vehicle speeds and eliminate the elements of intersections most risky to older drivers; safety studies show that injury crashes decrease by 76% after the modification. Whether or not 65+ adults are able to keep driving, with the increased cost of basic needs, they may not be able to afford transportation, which account for about 20% of the expenses for a single adult.
While many in our county own their home, many of those homes are worth very little. Home-ownership of an exceptionally low value house does not provide the equity to “cash out” to move into a senior-focused community, forcing many Anderson county seniors age in place: a low value home means they also cannot get a home-equity loan to repair a roof or install aging-friendly modifications such as grab bars, showers with seats or widened hallways to accommodate mobility aids. Pelzer is a community with the oldest median age of homes, and not surprisingly leads the county in its proportion of low value housing.
Whether the growing population of older Andersonians can live safely and comfortably in their homes touches on the health of older people and is also a question of steep economic costs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that more than 1 in 4 people aged 65+ fall each year. Medicare and Medicaid pay the majority of these costs, with an average hospital bill for a fall-related injury totaling about $30,000. Older houses such those found in Pelzer and elsewhere in the county do not often enough have aging-ready features such as recommended by the CDC. Older adults may have difficulty climbing stairs, getting into the shower, or using kitchen counters. They may need sink handles or levers instead of knobs. Those 65+ in our county comprise ~20% of the population, but are dis-proportionally financially insecure: 33.7%. This makes it harder for them to afford age-ready adaptations to their home.