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Natalie Sabb and her daughter Destiny will be evicted on September 1, despite Sabb working five days a week to support her kids.
On September 1, Natalie Sabb and her two children will be evicted from their Fairfax apartment. Despite Sabb working five days a week and contacting every social service group in the area for help, her eviction is near certain.
“I’m praying and hoping that God come through and make a way for me,” Sabb said. “I’m praying. I’m not the type of person to sit on my behind and not work; I get up and I go to work. Everybody gets in that state sometimes where you trying to keep your car, keep a roof over your kid’s head. Sometimes, being a single parent gets hard.”
Sabb is one of many working parents in Allendale County confronting America’s rural housing crisis head on. Being rent burdened means to be spending 30% of one’s income on housing, as defined by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. According to the Lowcountry Rural Housing Task Force (LRHTF), a project of Together for Hope, a rural development association, 24% of renters in South Carolina are rent burdened. However, in Allendale County, the least populated county in the state, 42% of renters are rent burdened.
Being someone who grew up in Allendale, eviction and the resulting displacement is a painful experience for Sabb. For years, Sabb has moved from apartment to apartment in the area, never managing to find stability. However, two years ago, she made it through the public housing wait list and settled into her apartment at the Union Apartments complex in Fairfax, a quiet community where she feels safe letting her kids go outside to play.
“I love my place, I love it here,” Sabb said. “I like the spot where I’m at. It’s a good environment for my kids.”
In Allendale and the surrounding counties, public housing resources are stretched thin; so thin that the wait list for public housing is five years long, according to Beth Overton, deputy director of South Carolina Regional Housing Authority number 3 (SCRHA).
“It’s frustrating, it really is,” said Overton, who works to bring state and federal resources to Allendale, Barnwell and other surrounding counties.
In the 1930s, the United States Housing Act was passed, which contained Section 9, a law that began the construction of public housing across the country. However, since the 1980s, public housing has increasingly been turned into a complex voucher system that benefits private landowners. This system is run under Section 8 of the U.S. Housing Act. Over the years, spending on public housing has flatlined when adjusted for inflation, according to the United States Office of Management and Budget.
Practically, this has meant less resources for maintaining existing public housing, building new units and helping people in crisis.
“To take care of our wait list and the needs of public housing in Barnwell and Allendale counties, [we would need] millions,” Overton said. “It’s federal funding, and with the money that we currently receive there’s not a lot of wiggle room for building new units.”
With not nearly enough federal and state resources to go around, housing authorities and local elected officials are left to fight amongst each other for the funds that do exist. However, in a rural area like Allendale that has an estimated population of 7,579, very little can be done to outcompete urban areas like Charleston and Columbia, which have larger populations and thus, more people in need of public housing.
“Just because the numbers aren’t high doesn’t mean our people do not need housing,” said Allendale Town Council member Marlon Creech, who serves on the housing committee. Currently, Creech is working on two grants, one public and one private, that could bring 85 small new homes to the Town of Allendale.
“Small towns are always overlooked,” Creech said. “It’s always frustrating to run into that type of roadblock because you’re seeing these people you’re living with need [housing], but they can’t get it because they don’t live in a city or a bigger, populated area. They can’t get the resources and the help that they truly deserve. I’m obligated to give my best and I will continue to keep pushing.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the housing authority and other local social service groups began to collaborate, Overton said. Additionally, in 2022, Together for Hope, a rural development association sent its Lowcountry Rural Housing Task Force into impoverished lowcountry counties like Allendale to survey citizens on their housing needs. During the survey, none of its 121 participants, which included participants from Allendale, agreed with the statement “we have sufficient housing to meet our community’s needs.”
The lack of housing within financial reach for residents of Allendale County also affects the county’s economy, which has been in a downward spiral, as described by Allendale residents in the survey.
Currently, Sabb is looking for other places in Allendale County to live, however, the cheapest place she can find is a private trailer. Unlike her current apartment, which has a foundation, trailers are more exposed and dangerous to live in during intense weather (like oncoming Hurricane Idalia), which will increase in frequency and intensity as the climate continues to change.
Additionally, Sabb says the trailer is more expensive than her current apartment and in an area that she feels is less safe for her kids. As a result of her experience, she has felt continued frustration with the political system.
“It’s been like this since I’ve been small,” Sabb said. “I’m from Allendale. I been here all my life. Born and raised. It’s like nothing has changed.”
