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Greenville County is confronting a mounting eviction crisis.

Our CEO Mario Brown was interviewed about this situation by the Simple Civic Podcast, but we want to explain more about what is happening.

According to eviction filings tracked by the Legal Services Corporation, more than 66,000 eviction cases have been filed in Greenville County since March 2020. That’s more than 900 a month on average. Data from Princeton’s Eviction Lab shows that over the past 12 months one in five renters in Greenville County has had eviction papers filed against them (roughly a 20% filing rate). That rate is three times the national average and places Greenville among the highest‑eviction counties in South Carolina

What’s driving rising evictions?

Several structural trends are fueling this crisis:

• Rents are soaring faster than incomes can keep up. Many residents who spend more than 35% of their income on rent are described as cost-burdened. Nearly a third of county renters now fall into that category.
• Stagnant wages and unexpected costs (such as medical bills or auto repairs) push tenants behind on rent and into eviction.
• Legal disadvantages, In South Carolina, eviction is a civil case, not criminal, so tenants seldom have legal representation. Nearly 99% of renters facing eviction have no lawyer, severely impairing their ability to defend themselves.
• Evictions remain on the public record, even if the case is dismissed or settled, making future housing access extremely difficult.

Community‑led response

In early 2025, more than 300 residents and local clergy rallied under GOAL (Greenville Organized for Accountable Leadership) to push action on housing affordability and eviction reform. Their Nehemiah Action campaign called for two major reforms:

1. Establish a Greenville County Housing Court by 2025–2026 that is modeled after successful programs in Charleston and Richland counties and will offer free legal representation for income‑eligible tenants and mediate landlord‑tenant disputes.
2. Support state legislation (Senate Bill 56 and House Bill 4270) to allow eviction filings to be sealed from public record when tenants prevail or settle favorably.

In addition, groups such as the Greenville Homeless Alliance, Catalyst Consulting, and United Way/Furman University have advocated a layered set of solutions:

• Legal representation/right to counsel: A statewide program funded at around $7.2 million per year could save $21 million in social costs, for every dollar spent yielding nearly three dollars in savings.
• Tenant & landlord education: rent‑responsibility workshops, landlord “lunch‑and‑learn” events, credit counseling, and guidance on Fair Housing laws.
• Expand affordable housing supply: liberalizing zoning, allowing denser development, building more mixed‑income housing, especially near downtown and transit corridors like White Horse Road.
• Financial assistance: prioritizing rental aid using predictive tools that identify high-risk households can prevent evictions proactively, rather than reactively.

Our take on it:

This is a social problem, but it’s also an economic problem that, for those of us in tune with the vibrancy of Greenville, the small business community, if we care about our service workers and our baristas, we care about our children’s teachers, the folks that actually need to access attainable housing, we should care about this issue because this impacts them. The issues, the cost that they incur within housing, 100% is reflected in the cost of the cup of coffee that we buy every morning.