♪ ♪ Welcome to this Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson Since the start of the pandemic, many families across the state have struggled financially.

Some have even been evicted since a Federal Eviction Moratorium was removed in late August.

We talked with the South Carolina Housing Authority about SC State Plus, a program that assists those still facing financial hardships to pay rent and utilities.

But first, Lynn Teague, the Vice President of Issues and Action with the League of Women Voters joins us to talk redistricting and what it means for the citizens of South Carolina.

Lynn, thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me.

<Gavin> So, Lynn, just kind of give us an overview of this process, where the state stands right now, what we saw in the latest census figures.

and how this process works in South Carolina.

>> Okay, this is a process that's required every 10 years to bring our legislative districts into line with our current population.

...South Carolina's population has changed a great deal, as it turns out in the past 10 years.

There has been very substantial population growth on the coast, especially around Horry, Myrtle Beach and so forth, but all along the coast, and also south of Charlotte, in the northern part of the state.

Basically, bedroom communities and outliers for the city of Charlotte have come pretty far into South Carolina, and have produced major population change there.

At the same time, there are areas that have not grown.

The I-95 corridor, in general, has not grown and in some cases, it's actually lost a little population.

So, we are now in the process of having to make sure that all of our districts have roughly equal population, that's the one person, one vote principle, and at the moment, they don't.

So, the districts that are going to be redrawn are our U.S. House of Representatives and the South Carolina Senate and House.

The Senate and House have their separate processes.

They both do congressional maps and have to reach agreement on a map.

Each of them pretty much leaves the other alone on their own maps.

One specialist that we work with referred to this as the danger of mutually assured destruction, if they went after each other's maps.

<Gavin> That's an apt description right there.

>> Right.

>> Go ahead, Lynn.

The league regards this as the most fundamental thing that's happening, because to a large extent it determines whether our votes matter in November.

Tomography determines that too.

Just the distribution of population.

<Gavin> So, Lynn kind of walk us through this process like we've been seeing.

There's been hearings going on across the state.

Like you said, the summit happens every ten years.

The legislature gets involved in this in drawing these maps.

We got the 7th congressional district in 2012 as a result of the 2010 census.

That was a seat, we lost back in the 30s.

We didn't gain this seat this go round, but probably in 20 in the next census, we might, just based on the population trends and the growth.

...walk us through who makes these decisions, within the Senate and the House when it comes to re-drawing these maps.

>> The individual legislators working with map drawers, both Houses have hired specialists, legal specialists and technical specialists.

Everybody uses maptitude, which is a piece of software that the league also uses to draw our own maps.

...the legislators meet individually, with the map teams, generally, to look at their own districts.

...I will just say that we had hoped for an independent process, because legislators - self interest is deeply, deeply embedded in how this process goes; and it's very hard to put self interest totally aside and say what's best for voters.

...there is an inclination for incumbents to think of the districts as their districts, not the voters' districts.

>> ...and that's on both sides of the aisle, of course, but obviously, Republican controlled Senate and House, though but still everyone has their vested interest like you're saying.

<Lynn> Well, it actually is probably the most bipartisan thing that happens, ...in General Assembly.

<Gavin> Interesting.

>> Everybody, as one legislator put it to me.

Every man for himself, but that is in fact our concern.

You know, the League tries to do our homework and as part of that, one of our board members is, in fact, a math professor at Clemson and he oversaw a masters thesis on "Are our districts gerrymandered, now for partisan advantage?

", because everybody, a lot of people think they are.

After millions of simulations being run on a supercomputer, we found they're not.

There is a present, no, artificial partisan gerrymander.

There is a partisan bias, and it can be attributed, mostly to the distribution of population, because parts of the population are differently distributed in the state.

The other thing that's going on to make districts non-competitive is, in fact, that incumbent protection issue.

Everybody wants their district to be safe.

A safe district is good for incumbents and rotten for voters, because it means they don't have to pay any attention to the voter, really; and their election's over after the primary.

<Gavin> We've seen some big surprising upsets, too though, not even based on redistricting but also just, you know, demographic changes in the state, we can talk about in a moment.

I want to ask you about some big U.S. Supreme Court decisions recently in the past ten years that will affect how these maps are drawn and how they get approved.

Obviously, you know the Voting Rights Act was essential to a lot of these maps being drawn over the years since the 60s.

Obviously a big decision in 2013 was removing pre-approval by the Department of Justice, for states that had a history with racial discrimination, end voting to get federal approval, South Carolina being one of them.

That's no longer going to be an issue.

How concerned is the League about being removed and how that's going to affect this process.

We are concerned, lacking pre-clearance now.

It means that elections - you have to come in after the fact, if there's a problem.

You have to - You have to wait till the lines are drawn.

The pre-clearance process we believe, should have been retained.

We wish it would be restored.

While we don't see a lot of artificial partisan gerrymandering present in South Carolina, that doesn't mean it can't be done.

It certainly can be done and without pre-clearance that danger is greater.

There also other decisions of the Federal Supreme Court that affect us.

They have rejected trying to adjudicate issues based on partisan gerrymander.

So they're going to want to only deal with racial gerrymanders.

<Gavin> ...we've tried to, in the past, there have been lawsuits against that too, but they haven't really gone anywhere essentially.

They've been rejected.

Do you think that we'll be seeing some lawsuits regardless of what comes out of these maps going forward?

>> I don't think necessarily, regardless of what comes out of the maps, but there are some problems in our current maps that if they aren't fixed would certainly lead to some folks going to court.

Although I was recently kidded in a committee meeting by a senator about needing attorneys of my own.

In fact,we're not the ones with lots of attorneys for this issue.

There are fabulous organizations out there like the NAACP legal defense fund who are true experts on this.

...if for example District Six, Congressional District Six remains with a high level of minority population that it has now, that would likely provoke litigation, because it is not at moment, meeting the legal standard that it needs to be narrowly tailored to the Voting Rights Act requirement that minorities have a right to elect someone of their choice.

It's way beyond that.

<Gavin> Yeah, we're talking about them a packed district essentially, Jim Clyburn's district there.

...possibly a lawsuit to unpack that, like we've seen in some other states in the same Fourth Circuit District Court of Appeals, as we are.

...do you see that as a potential, like you just said, a potential ramification of what comes of this?

>> If the General Assembly doesn't unpack that district, the courts are very likely to do it for them.

Especially when you consider that they're multiple minorities in the state now.

Data on how people vote suggests that Hispanics and Asians and so forth, other smaller minority groups, than our traditional African American minority group, tend to vote in pretty much the same way in many ways, as the Black population.

...so, you have to consider all of them.

You can't ignore the fact that it's complex.

>> Lynn, when we talk about unpacking the 6th Congressional District, what kind of ramifications will that have for the surrounding districts...

It's the only - It's the only democratic district in the state.

Obviously, the First Congressional District is very close.

It's been very competitive, at least in 2018, 2020 with Joe Cunningham flipping that long held Republican seat in 2018, but then Nancy Mace getting it back in 2020.

Sounds like there could be ramifications since the Sixth and the First are right next to each other, in terms of how this could play out in the future, if there is a lawsuit based on this.

>> Yes.

Actually, it's interesting that the First and the Sixth are each currently off by almost exactly the same percentage of population.

The first has about 11 point something percent too much.

The Sixth has 11 point something percent two little; but if they were to ...I don't believe that the impact on surrounding districts will be to create a second voting rights district, a majority / minority district.

I don't think that's going to happen anywhere, but who knows.

But when it will certainly lead to a better voice for those minorities if their voices are diluted by being packed into one district, they should be able to both elect someone of their choice and influence legislation in the adjoining districts, if that's where they're appropriately placed.

>> Yeah, because right now you would think that before any lawsuit happens at the First Congressional District as a place where Republicans would at least want maybe shore it up and make it a stronger Republican district, just based on what we saw in 2018 to 2020.

>> Yeah, right.

I think both parties are going to take a huge interest in how the imbalance between six and one is resolved.

<Gavin> A good place to watch right there.

You guys - the League of Women Voters will be putting out maps soon.

I was wondering if you could tell us, what you ..are looking at in terms of ...the House or Senate Districts in the state or the congressional districts.

What are you guys looking at?

What's your criteria?

...the Senate and these other committees have their own criteria.

Are you in line with that criteria?

Or how do you guys mesh with what they're doing?

>> Our criteria differ.

We have National League criteria.

The League is very systematic about these things.

Our essential criteria are the legally essential ones of equal population and contiguity.

You can't just have a district made up of spots across the map, and protecting the voting rights of minority populations.

Beyond that though, we do not want to prioritize protecting incumbents or projecting a party.

So, our next order of magnitude is communities of interest, especially the ones that can be objectively applied without dispute, the county lines where we have county government administering a lot of what happens within an area, counties, municipalities, precincts.

We like to leave those whole, when we can, not split them up.

Communities of interest can be used as a wildcard.

We've heard communities of interest defined in terms of, "Well, people go to restaurants over there.

", but we think it needs a stronger argument.

You know, if something is a bedroom community for us, a bigger city, that is a serious community of interest but, there are various ways it would be defined.

As much as possible, the League wants to stick to those interests, if all else - if all those can be satisfied, then we would go to compactness, basically the aesthetics of the district.

don't bother.

They can look ... A good district can look pretty strange sometimes, and competitiveness.

We really think competitiveness is extremely important, but we didn't want to try to insert a lot of political data into our analysis.

And, so what we are looking for is not reducing competitiveness when possible, and we have a team of mathematicians who are going to analyze all of this for us.

Next week, we will be introducing our own maps and anybody who can sign up and go to the Zoom event to see our maps and hear how they were designed at our website which is www.LWVSC.org <Gavin> ...Lynn, just to clarify what you mentioned this too, not putting too much political data into those maps, when you're running these simulations.

It's non-partisan, essentially, the League of Women's Voter's non-partisan stance on this.

>> We are non-partisan and our maps will be entirely nonpartisan, and I can say since we're still working on some odds and ends on the House map, our Senate and Congressional maps are done, and I can say that there will be things for both parties to like and both parties to hate.

<Gavin> Oh, I love that.

We need more of that.

Don't we?

Really quick Lynn, just kind of wrapping up here, ...it seems like you mentioned early on about how everyone's kind of out for themselves.

It kind of works right now the way it is.

It's my understanding when we look back, seems like 2000 in the 2001 process was a big turning point for, you know, kind of, solidifying the current status quo.

Do you have a historical perspective on how this has been playing out in the past few decades in South Carolina?

And if this process, this go around going to be any different from what we've seen in terms of the deal making the self- preservation in these maps?

>> Well, I don't ...see any reduction in attempts to - we'll see what they produce, but deal making and self preservation are always going to be huge factors and... we're analyzing our own maps carefully.

We're going to analyze their maps carefully, and where we think they have artificially looked after themselves rather than the voter, creating a safe district artificially.

There's some places in the state that are always going to be safe for one party or the other, given current population, but there are other states that are manipulated.

When we see that happening, we intend to call people out on it.

We intend to make that public.

<Gavin> Very good.

With 30 seconds left, where does this go from here?

Obviously, the public input is still going on right now, but how is this going to play out in the months ahead?

>> Okay, well both House and Senate are very busy in the background there, and people are starting to work in the map rooms with the map drawers.

We expect the General Assembly to come back with their maps to the floor of the House and the Senate in December.

We had thought they were pushing for an earlier date.

President Peeler of the Senate has put out that they're going to talk redistricting in early October, but we don't think they're going be ready.

The House is certain not to be ready.

In the interim, there will be a point, at which they introduce their own maps... and we hope taking into account to the extent possible, the public inpu, that they've gotten any gerrys.

<Gavin> Very good.

Well, we'll leave it there, Lynn.

That's Lynn Teague.

She's the Vice President of Issues and Action with the League of Women Voters of South Carolina.

Lynn, thanks for that update and we'll be following along with you in the months ahead.

>> Thank you.

>> Chris Winston is the Chief Communications Officer at S.C. Housing and he's here to talk to us about the latest rental assistance program that his agency is administering.

Chris, thanks for coming back.

>> My pleasure, Gavin.

Thanks so much for having us.

>> ...Chris, the last time we talked was in February, and we were talking about a different rental assistance plan.

Kind of tell us, catch us up since then.

What happened with that plan and what we're doing with right now?

>> Absolutely, so the original plan, program was called S.C. Stay.

It was a HUD funded program that was helping South Carolina residents with rental and mortgage assistance.

The application window for that was closed in a very short period of time.

We had a lot of applications come in very quickly and that program, last time I saw - had distributed more than ten million dollars out to residents of South Carolina.

It was followed fairly quickly on the heels of another much larger program that we've fully been focusing on since May...that's the S.C. Stay Plus program.

This is Treasury funded more than 250 million dollars to assist residents in 39 South Carolina counties with rental and utility assistance.

So, we've really been working hard in the last few months to help thousands of people stay safely in their homes.

Since the eviction moratorium ended a few weeks ago, due to action by the Supreme Court, we've seen more than eight thousand applications come in.

So, it's definitely increased the urgency, just recently and we're working feverishly, right now to get as many people assistance as possible so they don't get displaced from their homes.

>> Chris,...tell us, who can qualify for this program.

Is it based on income?

Is it based on status?

What are the qualifications, here?

>> ...absolutely, so you just need to live in one of 39 South Carolina counties.

People who live in Anderson, Greenville Spartanburg, Richland, Horry, Charleston and Berkeley have their own programs.

<Gavin> Okay.

>> You can find out information about their programs also on SChousing.com but if you're one of the other 39 counties, some very large counties, Beaufort, Lexington, York, etcetera, we can assist.

You have to be a renter.

So, you have to show that you have some for rental arrangement.

A lot of people don't have formal leases, but you have to show that you've been paying someone at some point to live in a residence.

...then we have an income ...allocation that we ask you to verify that you're making less than 80% percent of the area median income.

There's a chart.

Every county has its own numbers, based on your household size, based on where you live.

So there is an income piece, but if you're a renter, if you've lost your work or been unemployed over the last 18 months then you quite possibly qualify.

- We courage everybody to come to SChousing.com and look to see if we can provide assistance if you're behind on your rent.

<Gavin> Gotcha and then Chris, ...you were talking about just how big this program is.

Congress approved 46.5 billion dollars in emergency rental assistance.

Only 5.1 billion dollars in aid has gone up by the end of last month.

19 million of the 272 million that came to the state of South Carolina has gone out.

It took a long time to get that money out the door, too.

...even by June, only 36 thousand dollars has gone out.

You have that other program going.

Tell us a little bit about why it took so long to get this money really rolling.

>> Yeah, South Carolina Housing was named the administrator of the program on April 16th.

Governor McMaster signed Act 17 to name us the administrator.

We launched our program three weeks later, the first week of May ...we've tried to follow very, very strict guidelines to ensure that just the people who needed help received assistance.

...so we initially asked for five or six different pieces of information from applicants, and what we realized at the end of June, is that people were struggling to come with all five of those pieces of documentation.

Treasury, at the same time, luckily for us on June 24th, I believe it was, issued new guidance encouraging states, encouraging municipalities to get funding out, and be more relaxed in their documentation.

So, by early July, we started changing.

We allowed more self attestation, or if you're housing insecure, if you're at risk of eviction, we'll allow self attestation ...if you've been impacted financially by COVID, and then what we did was, we identified 196 zip codes where we'll allow you to self attest to that income requirement, because the average rents and average incomes in those areas mean you overwhelmingly probably qualify for the program.

So, rather than you having to provide documentation, we'll allow you to self attest.

So, just moving from five pieces of documentation to two or three really allowed us in July, in August to start generating millions of dollars of payment out to landlords on behalf of tenants and sometimes the tenants directly, ...We're seeing that number grow.

I think we're over 22 million now.

I think we've approved maybe 24 million as of last week and so we're really seeing the doors open at the urging, urging of representatives, state government, federal government, the Biden Administration to get more support out to residents.

... Like you're saying - there is an urgent need for this.

This money to go out to folks affected by the pandemic, who are behind on their rent.

...I've seen some figures.

I wonder if you can... enlighten us, with some numbers, in what we're seeing, in terms of people who could possibly be evicted, especially since, like you said that moratorium for evictions was lifted at the end of August there.

>>...I think when you look at census data, ...survey...it's a very small number, but if you extrapolate that out there have been any number of range, from say, 80 thousand to 150 thousand households in South Carolina at risk of eviction during this time period.

People who reported to the Census that they were unsure that they will be able to make their next rental payments.

<Gavin> Wow!

>> ...you look at that kind of number, I think we've seen between 20 and 30 thousand applicants coming to our program.

I don't know the exact numbers, but you've seen thousands of applicants also come in through those seven large county government programs, as well.

So, I think what you're probably seeing is probably in that scale of 80 to 100 hundred some thousand, 120 and 140 thousand, who are behind on rent, who are now worried about being evicted or being displaced, and those are our neighbors and those are friends and those are relatives trying to help as many of... as possible right now.

>> ...Chris is a crisis at this point when it comes to possible evictions?

We're talking about upwards of 150 thousand people that could be affected in two months.

>> ...I think without these assistance programs and the great work that the county government's doing, state government.

You've seen, obviously other stimulus support get out and the child tax credit.

You've seen expanded and extended unemployment benefits.

You've seen people receive tax refunds that don't typically get them.

I think it very easily could have been one and it could still be one.

At this point, we think - there's funding obviously available through our program.

The counties have funding available, that we're doing everything we can to prevent it from getting to that point.

<Gavin>...are landlords reaching out to you, too?

Or is this primarily driven by tenants?

...I would assume, since they might, ...maybe they know more about what's going on with this always being in the news and such that they want to prevent evicting someone too, if they can get some of this assistance.

>> Yeah, we've seen tremendous support and partnership help with folks like South Carolina Realtor's Association, landlord groups and property groups, property management groups.

We have an opportunity on our website for landlords to recommend to their tenants, the program.

They can come in and start putting their own landlord information in, ...then that generates emails and information out for tenants to apply.

We've seen a lot of them really support their tenants, come in and help with paperwork, help with documentation.

Like you said, A) to keep from evicting folks, Something a lot of our property managers and landlords don't want to do.

...B) it's and opportunity for them to catch up on funds that they've had to go without for the last 18 months, in some cases, because of the different eviction moratory...in place.

>> ...We have about a minute left, Chris.

I want to ask you, just about those other programs.

Obviously, you guys are over 39 counties, but like you mentioned there are seven counties ...doing their own programs.

Do you know how those have been going, and if they've been suffering some of the same bottlenecks as you guys have?

>> You know, I think what you look at folks - like this week, I was on a call with Columbia Housing Authority and in Richland County.

...Mike King over there has done a tremendous job.

They've worked through a lot of their millions of dollars that they had already, really being in person, on the ground applicant support, which is a struggle when you have 39 counties.

Right!

Being everywhere in every county.

...just recently we've signed some deals with some nonprofit organizations, community groups, and here in the next couple of weeks we'll be announcing a lot more opportunities for in person applicant support.

So that people across the state, especially in rural areas, especially where people might be challenged with technology or online applications and get support where they live, and we're following the example of some of the great counties.

Like we've see Charleston and Richland have done a great job of getting, not only the word out about the program, but obviously assisting applicants.

<Gavin> Great a lot of work going on there too, and just in the nick of time it sounds like.

That's Chris Winston.

He's with the SC the Housing Authority.

You can find out more information at SChousing.com.

Chris, thanks for joining us.

>>Thanks so much for having me.

>> To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host twice a week ...you can find it on SouthCarolinapublicradio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina