For 50 years, Dorothy Williams’ refuge had been the home she rented on North Leach Street on the west side of Greenville.

She and her neighbors grew up in the community and have spent decades there in a row of rental houses. Now, they have been forced to find refuge as residential development drives up home prices and rental costs in neighborhoods near downtown Greenville.

Williams, who lives at 213 N. Leach St., knows she has to move but the destination is up in the air.

“There are no more affordable houses out there for us,” Williams said.

The five “quasi-mill village” houses at 209-217 North Leach are on less than an acre in West Greenville, a rapidly changing part of the city that has lost longtime residents as it has become fertile ground for developers. Williams and others have noticed the changes around them, but now they're experiencing it.

The owner of the North Leach property, Shawn Thomas of New City Real Estate, said in an email that four of the five houses are under contract from a buyer. Thomas said he has no immediate plans for the one remaining house.

“I cannot speak for the buyer of the first four homes, other than I think they plan to renovate them," Thomas said. "Given the condition of the homes and the current market in the downtown Greenville area, renovation or development is a possibility."

What’s not a possibility is that tenants who’ve lived in those houses will remain in that neighborhood.

They were notified about the impending eviction via certified letter stamped July 5, telling them they have 45 days to move. So far, most of those who’ve found new places to live have moved to the vicinity of Nicholtown, a historically black community with rent prices on the lower end of the spectrum in Greenville.

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Alice Gary, a 71-year-old retiree undergoing breast cancer treatment, lived at 217 North Leach for 25 years. She said she was able to find a unit in Nicholtown, but will be paying more than $600 a month as opposed to the $425 she paid for years.

Debbie Walker, another former resident of the block, said she is on disability following two hip replacements. She and her husband, who has cancer, lived at 211 North Leach. They’ve found a duplex off Laurens Road. Walker said her family doesn’t have a lot of funds. Their new rental, though, is “manageable and within our finances.”

Williams, Walker’s sister and neighbor on North Leach, is a retiree, a widow and a mother of four children. She was undecided recently about where she’d go.

Her children are helping her find a new place to settle.

Changing face of the community

The Rev. Patrick Tuttle and his congregation at nearby St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church have watched more and more neighbors leave the community. Tuttle said it hasn't been easy to see them displaced because of growth and redevelopment in West Greenville.

Upscale apartments and a QT convenience store are going up on Academy Street less than a mile away from North Leach. Also within a mile, on South Hudson Street, luxury apartments are being built. On the other side of Academy Street, on Perry Avenue, construction is underway for more than a dozen new and renovated homes.

Just a block away, on South Leach toward St. Francis Hospital, are pricey homes that not too long ago were similar to the row of houses residents are being evicted from on North Leach, Tuttle said.

Thomas said the original owner of the five houses on Leach Street rented the homes for $300 to $400 per month. Rising market values result in increased rents, Thomas said.

“The intent is not to take advantage of the poor, but to continue the new growth we’ve been seeing,” he said.

Parts of West Greenville are among the last neighborhoods “ripe for the picking in inexpensive housing and land to acquire near downtown Greenville to flip for significant profit,” Tuttle said.

“We don’t mind, as a parish church, people who buy empty lots, people who buy uninhabited homes," he said. "What we have a struggle with is the displacement of people who live in the homes. Oftentimes they’re elderly poor, oftentimes they’re the working poor.”

Living close to downtown Greenville is a wonderful thing, Tuttle said, and “we don’t want to stop that.

“We just do not want it to ever be on the neck of the poor. That’s wrong. That’s got to stop if we are the Greenville we think we are.”

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Affordability is a moving hurdle

Tuttle said the church also will continue to advocate that the city keep some level of competitive activity in the area for the part of the market that needs to be cheap.

Ginny Stroud, the community development administrator for the city, said in an email that every resident plays an important role in making Greenville a special place to live, work, play and learn. That’s a reason the city and its partners — including Homes of Hope, Allen Temple Community Economic Development Corporation, the housing authority and others — have created nearly 200 new and preserved affordable homes in West Greenville since 2004.

St. Anthony also partnered with Homes of Hope, Greenville Area Interfaith Hospitality Network, United Housing Connections, and other nonprofit housing organizations to create 10 homes in West Greenville to reserve there for the working poor in 10 years time. Tuttle said the church is working on contracts for three more houses.

The parish buys the houses, rehabs them and gives them to a partner agency, Tuttle said. The parish's work is contractually linked to the agency, keeping the rent down to a certain level.

Tuttle's congregation is concerned that more new houses costing $200,000 will be built, causing the rents for existing low-income residents to spike and eventually push them out of the neighborhood.

“The owners won’t want their cost to ramp up if their revenues in rent collection aren’t ramping up," Tuttle said. "They know their people. They know they can’t pay a lot more so those homeowners get stuck in the middle between market forces and the people they are renting to."

Thomas, of New City Real Estate, said the houses on North Leach have a market value of about $75,000 apiece. He said houses with a minimum purchase price of $155,000 will be built in their places.

"While the condition of the homes is not ideal, the market value is well above $75K in their current state," he said.

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The price of growth

Thomas said Greenville’s rapid growth has increased the cost of living to more than the cost of living in the Columbia metro region.

The median price of a home in greater Greenville was up 5 percent in the year’s first quarter, rising to $177,500 from $169,000 in the same period in 2016. In the Columbia area, the median sales price was up 2 percent in first quarter 2017, increasing to $155,000 from $151,990 in 2016.

Lack of inventory, rapid economic and job growth, the threat of increasing mortgage rates and over-regulation by local government equals higher home prices, Nick Kremydas, CEO of the S.C. Association of Realtors, said in an email to The News.

“We’re seeing this formula repeat itself in every expanding market in the state,” he said.

There have been nearly 80 property sales in the West Greenville community since 2012, according to information from the Greenville County Tax Assessor’s Office. The sales prices have varied from a low of $3,300 on Pack Street in 2012 to $600,000 for a property on Pendleton Street in 2017.

From July 1, 2012, through July 1, 2017, there were 635 residential properties listed for sale in West Greenville, according to the Greater Greenville Association of Realtors. Of the 75 sold, the high was $827,363 and the median sales price was $50,000.

The property with the row of five houses on North Leach sold for $430,000 altogether, according to the tax assessor’s report.

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Stroud said an increase in sales prices may result in an increase in the rents on adjacent properties. That’s why the city partners with organizations that can support its efforts to acquire and redevelop property in neighborhoods like West Greenville, she said.

The organizations develop affordable homes and maintain the rents at an affordable rate, she said.

She also said that offering good, quality affordable rental units usually requires assistance in the form of one or more of the following: reduced land costs, financial assistance for construction, or ongoing assistance to bridge the gap between the amount of rent that can be paid and the cost of developing and operating the home.

Faith and favor

Back in the day, Williams said it was "favor" that helped her get and maintain affordable rent rates.

The owner of that property with the row of homes, which had been duplexes at one time, was the late Sam Francis, she said.

Francis, who was 80 when he was found shot to death in his home in 1995, was renowned for his civic activities, which included helping lead the campaign to build St. Francis Hospital and working to save Sirrine Stadium.

Williams was born and raised on Markley Street. She had admired the house on North Leach since she was a little girl. She told herself that she was going to move into it one day.

When she moved in, she said she was on hard times. She was in the midst of a divorce and was caring for her four small children. She had worked in the school system for 13 years before her husband walked out.

“I was doing the best I could. It was hard,” she said. “I had a nervous breakdown and then God restored me.”

But Williams, who spent years working in a local kidney dialysis center, fell behind on her rent.

She remarried and her second husband helped them get caught up on rent payments. Francis was impressed, Williams said.

He told them to “take care of the house like it’s yours. He gave us favor,” she said. "He was a good man."

He remodeled the house, but she and her new husband took care of the maintenance and “the extras,” Williams said.

Williams said she continued to work and didn’t slow down until her husband got sick four years ago. She quit work and stayed home to take care of him.

“All of my life savings I had to use on him,” she said. “When he died, I was penniless. I lived by faith.”

She’s relying on that faith to start a new life away from North Leach.

She's beyond the point of worrying. Williams said that she had one sleepless night. That was when, she said, her rent was collected and two days later, she returned from a trip with the seniors at her church and found a "for sale" sign planted in the front yard.

Nothing lasts forever, she said, while sitting in her living room surrounded by ceramic angels, ceramic dogs, flower arrangements, knickknacks and other gifts she'd received from former patients and friends over the years.

Her eyes began to tear as she reflected on the years spent in the house and the place where she could sustain herself after her husband died.

"It was home," she said. "God has taken care of me right here."

Moving on

Gary, the resident at 217 North Leach, is also leaning on her faith.

A native of Clinton, she moved to Greenville years ago with her two small boys to find work.

For a while, she cleaned houses in the mornings and worked third shift in a nursing home. She later worked at the former Claussen Bakery for 25 years and “had a good time there.”

Her sons are in their 40s now. One lives in Berea. The other lives with Gary and is her caretaker.

She and her neighbors found out in the last three months that their homes have a new owner, their rentals are sold and the clock is ticking for them to move.

While the neighborhood was "at war" with the news of the evictions, Gary fought to maintain peace within her spirit and her household.

“I’m trying to get on through because trouble don’t last always," she said. "I’m not trying to hold it in my heart. I’m going through breast cancer and praying to God that it’s all right."

Gary said she enjoyed every moment of living on North Leach. But now, like her neighbors, it’s time to go, she said. Her front yard flower garden and the statue that she'd decorate according to the season have moved on.

She initially questioned why she and her neighbors have to leave. She, too, grew up in West Greenville, having lived on South Leach before crossing over to North Leach.

Like Walker, who lived next door, Jenkins believes that a change will be good.

“I was raised here and I raised my daughter here," Walker said. "This home was great but I feel like our season has come for us to make our move. I’m just thankful that I had enough ambition to take and do what needs to be done."

#UNSEENGREENVILLE

This story is part of ongoing coverage by The Greenville News focusing on neighborhoods in the shadows of our community and the people who live there. Largely bypassed by economic progress that is transforming Greenville and facing challenges of transportation, economic opportunity, education, health care and gentrification, they are the Unseen Greenville.