Yesterday afternoon, Greenville City Council + Greenville County Council participated in a joint session to review a presentation by Thomas P. Miller & Associates (TPMA) of a 10-year Affordable Housing Strategy launched by the Greenville Housing Fund (GHF) and the Greenville County Redevelopment Authority (GCRA).

Throughout Greenville County, there are “50,000 cost burdened households who pay more than 30% of their income towards housing, some of which are substandard.” As a reminder, Affordable Housing was a Top 10 priority identified by City Council at the beginning of the year. It was also selected as the fourth most important of these ten priorities by ~1,000 GVLtoday readers.

Population overview statistics | Chart via Thomas P. Miller & Associates

Over the last year, TPMA worked to gather data about affordable housing in both the City of Greenville and Greenville County. The strategic plan they created both analyzes this data + proposes innovative solutions to some of the problems identified. (You can get an executive summary of the plan here.)

Here are some of the main strategies discussed to address housing barriers (along with the page number to reference in the strategic plan for further details):

Increase affordable housing preservation through acquisition of naturally occurring affordable housing with a goal of 3,000 units over ten years (page 31)
Increase production of affordable housing through leveraged private + public investment with a goal of 10,000 units over ten years (page 35)
Identified locations for affordable housing (close to services, employment, education, transportation) (page 39)
Housing finance tools such as utilizing local, state and federal tax credits and incentives, land banking, opportunity funds and innovative partnerships (page 43)

This strategic plan will be executed by the 46 members of the Greenville Affordable Housing Coalition (GAHC) – “a collective impact group working toward the production and preservation of affordable housing units in Greenville County.” Members of GAHC include non-profits, neighborhoods, government leaders, and private development organizations such as the six municipalities in Greenville County, Habitat for Humanity, Greenville County School District, Macmillan Pazdan Smith + more.

Additionally, the Greenville Housing Fund will soon be launching an online dashboard stakeholders + concerned citizens can use to monitor affordable housing development in our area. The dashboard will include metrics such as affordable unit baseline (by income cohorts), unit profiles, total cost per unit to build, annual investments (by private, public, and non-profit sectors) + more.