Commentary: Charleston Housing Costs are Out of Control, But There Are Heroes Among Us

Over the weekend I spoke to someone who told me that they had just rented their carriage house for $5,000 a month. I knew the tenant who lived in the carriage house before this person bought and renovated it, and I knew that they paid 150%+ less just a few months before, and so I blurted out, “That’s gross.” I think I stunned the person, and so I added, as if trying to make her feel better, “but housing in Charleston is insane right now, so I get it.”

But the truth is, I was stunned, both that this person felt that $5,000 a month was a reasonable number to charge—though clearly the Charleston market can currently bear it—and that there are people willing to pay $60,000 a year in rent, which to me says that they must make over $100,000 a year before taxes just to pay for their housing, not to mention all the other things they need to live.

The next day I had cocktails and a charcuterie board while sitting on a blanket with a friend who lives in a big home that’s split into condos a block from the College of Charleston. While eight people currently live in the condos there, the home was sold to a neighbor who has informed them that they will all have to move and that he plans to convert the property to an upscale single family home. All eight of them, architects, nurses, and teachers—occupations we need to make this city work—are panicking.

“If I can’t find something for $1,500 a month soon I’m going to have to move,” my friend, Jessica, said. Jessica is no stranger to insane housing. As an architect, she moved to Charleston from Manhattan. And yet, she feels, that housing in Charleston almost seems worse.

I told my friend two things.

I told her that first, I’m in this with her, and I’m personally going to get involved to help her find housing. I told her that I’d already lost friends who couldn’t afford to live in Charleston anymore (some homeowners and some not), and that I didn’t want to lose her, too.

“If you leave, I’ll be sad. I’ll lose a friend, and I’ll feel slightly less willing to invest in the next friend because they may have to leave, too.”

Miraculously, I remembered a close friend who rents apartments downtown in her price range and connected the two of them on the spot.

Then I quoted to her a verse from the Bible that I do not feel gets enough air time.

“Woe to you who buy house after house and land after land,” the prophet Isaiah says, “until everyone is evicted and you live alone in the land.”

“Wow,” she said, because she could feel the injustice in that verse deeply. I told my friend that just because something is legal, like renting an ADU for $5,000 a month or as much as one can charge, doesn’t mean it’s moral.

I knew about that verse because, not by choice, I’m the son of a minister. And while I love my father deeply, as much or more than anyone else in the world, I didn’t listen to his preaching (I watched his actions). As a child forced to sit through church, I read the only thing available to me most Sundays, The Bible. And I settled upon two dominant themes for the kingdom of Heaven.

First and foremost, it’s a communal event. It’s a banquet, a wedding, a feast, a huge party, and everyone is invited. But then, despite receiving the invitation, people come up with their own reasons not to come. They are too busy doing other things, they have business to attend to, they think that they are too good for the other people that are going to be there, or they think that they are not good enough.

There’s nothing that divides people more from others, and in turn the kingdom of Heaven, more than housing. Every time I see a sign that says, “homes from $500,000 and ups” it’s excluding people who don’t fit that socio economic status, oftentimes people who are older or whose incomes are low, or people who have a disability. If I’ve learned anything from my experiences with human connection—like living voluntarily homeless for a year or driving a car from Mongolia to London—it’s that when we start to exclude and silo people away, in my view, we also lose the beauty of life and the kingdom of Heaven.

The second most common way the kingdom of Heaven is expressed is as a vocational journey. The kingdom of Heaven is like a man who found a jewel in a field and in his great joy sold everything that he had and bought that field. This guy didn’t diversify. He didn’t hedge his bets. He found a vocational journey he loved and went all in.

Here, too, housing is one of the fastest things that pulls us away from that journey and in turn the kingdom of Heaven. For too many of us, we abandon our vocational journey to pay for the worries of the world, which often times, first and foremost, is our housing.

Hell, according to C.S. Lewis, is a place where people push others away in a lack of trust and hold their little pile of things tighter and tighter. If they must part with those things, they would gouge as much as they possibly can, even for something like housing that people need simply to survive like food and water, to make sure that they have enough money to satisfy their own unquenchable fear. In the US, people have naturally expanded their borders and pushed their neighbors away over the last 50 years by doubling their average home size, and today housing prices are higher than ever.

—

But there are heroes in our midst.

Earlier in the day, before my conversation with Jessica, I met a homeowner on Daniel Island through CoLife, a startup that matches the massive demand for attainable housing to the massive supply of people with extra space in their homes (24 million single homeowners nationwide live in a 3 bed 2 bath house alone and millions of homeowners have auxiliary dwelling units that they could rent). The homeowner rents her very nice ADU to grad students, young professionals, a retired couple, for a very reasonable $1,000 a month.

She says she uses CoLife because of the background and credit check and the entire process that makes her feel safe and gets her the perfect match. She says that the extra income is really nice, but she’s quick to add the deeper, real reason, that she rents her ADU.

“My husband and I remember when we were young and could hardly afford housing,” she said, “and so we know what it’s like.” She has a desire to make a difference and give back. “I feel greedy having this space and not offering it up. I’m an active church goer. I feel an obligation to open it up and help others. It’s a no brainer to offer space we don’t use.”

And when she said this I was suddenly reminded of Thoreau who says “The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.”

I was reminded of an interpretation of the book of Proverbs which describes the righteous as those who believe at their core that they are here to better and give to their community, and the wicked are those who are constantly taking as much as they can. In fact, the early Christians used to leave an open room in their home with a loaf of bread and bed and candle for the wandering Christ in need. They took the words of Jesus literally when he said, “when I was naked you clothed me, when I was hungry you fed me,” and applied it to housing. When over time they began to send the wandering Christ in need away from their homes and down the street to the government or local non profit, their early critics were very confused and wondered if that was their way of saying that they were no longer Christians.

I was reminded of the famous activist Jane Jacobs who prevented an interstate from being built through the heart of Manhattan. In her famous book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” she suggests that to prevent cities from canibalizing themselves, that landlords should voluntarily charge less than they might be able to get for critical businesses and workers. It’s bad for both the rich and poor when restaurants or Lowes close, when trash cycles get missed, when teachers switch professions, because they can’t afford to work and live.

It’s also how half of Americans in cities used to live up until World War Two by renting rooms in boarding houses, a center for flexible, reasonably priced, relationship oriented housing, and how the majority of humans around the world live today. In fact, three of the homes on Colonial Lake, where I’m sitting as I write this, used to be boarding houses, including the one where I currently live.

And as I spoke to this homeowner I couldn’t help but feel that she was a righteous woman, and that in the process she was experiencing a small taste and a bit of the kingdom of heaven.

This, too, is nothing new for me. As the founder of CoLife, I’ve watched homeowners get sober in part through the human connection offered by a CoLife guest. I’ve watched sweet little old ladies build little families and have wine and movie nights with their guests. I’ve watched single moms live together and help care for each other’s children. I’ve watched 30 year olds be able to return to school to pursue their dream to become a nurse. Our homeowners are nearly always doing things to indicate that they believe that this world is about more than themselves. One of them, in her late 60’s, who both invested and volunteered on CoLife for free for over a year, just left for Poland to help with the Ukraine crisis.

The first match I made was with my retired white high school teacher with a mid 20’s African American male who was saving for an engagement ring (both who went to The Citadel) in a town outside of Charleston where I believe that even as recent as the 90’s or 2000’s still had KKK rallies. I cried when I made that first match, when I realized that all of my ranting about the importance of integration was trumped by one small act of entrepreneurship, kindness, and courage. My retired teacher texted me after he attended his former CoLife guest’s wedding.

“It’s quite a special thing you’ve started here,” he said. I suspect they will be friends for life.

Yes, the housing matters for teachers, nurses, hospitality and retail and city employees and grad students. Yes, retired therapists in South Windermere whose property taxes have skyrocketed need extra income to avoid having to move. Yes, I believe that most of our biggest social problems are first and foremost human trust and connection problems, and that’s the thing I’m obsessed with. But beneath all that, I’ll be honest with you, I just think it’s beautiful. I think it is an expression of the kingdom of Heaven that I want to make real life, a way for me to scratch my own deepest itches of desiring relationship and a vocational journey, that having tasted it, I know is good.

In my opinion, it’s very hard to get people to care about a problem that isn’t their own. But when someone does cares about about a problem that isn’t their own enough to do something about it, whether it’s saving a child from a fire or offering someone a place to live, we call that person a hero, a Good Samaritan, or more. And I just want to say that if you’re renting a room in your home or your ADU, or a second property below market rates, thank you, because you are a hero, and we need heroes now, more than ever.