♪ (opening music)♪ <Gavin Jackson> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Almost one year ago, our state, nation and world was changed forever with the outbreak of the coronavirus and now with spring break right around the corner.

We talked with SCPRT Director Duane Parrish about the state of tourism, our top industry in the state.

And we hear about a new housing initiative to help people affected by the pandemic.

But first, more from this week.

<speaker> Corning not guilty.

<Gavin> The week started off with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham discussing the future of the Republican Party following the second acquittal of former President Donald Trump.

<Lindsey Graham> He's ready to move on and rebuild the Republican Party.

He's excited about 2022 and I'm going to go down to talk with him next week, play a little golf in Florida.

And I said Mr President, this MAGA movement needs to continue.

We need to unite the party.

Trump plus is the way back in 2022.

He's mad at some folks, but I understand that.

My goal is to win in 2022 to stop the most radical agenda I've seen coming out of the democratic presidency of Joe Biden.

We can't do that without Donald Trump.

He's ready to hit the trail and I'm ready to work with him.

<Gavin> While national attention was on the future of the Republican Party, in Columbia, the focus was on strengthening it.

Thanks to a major legislative victory with the passage of the so called Fetal Heartbeat Bill by the House and signed by the governor on Thursday.

The law outlaws abortions as early as six weeks when many women don't even know they're pregnant.

There are exceptions for the life of the mother, fetal fatal anomaly and rape and incest, though victims of the latter two will need to have their physician contact the county sheriff about the alleged sexual assault.

After three decades worth of attempts it took only six weeks to go from the bill's filing to it being signed into law thanks to a strengthened Republican Senate.

<speaker #2> Sure, I'd like to have that exception out of the bill just as you, just as probably a majority Republicans.

If I asked you to show your hand right now, you'd probably say, "Yeah, I'd like those exceptions to be out of that bill."

This is what we got.

This is where we are.

But I can tell you this, we're coming back and we'll try to get those exceptions next.

Representative Magnuson, you got my full support to help get those exceptions out.

You know why the Senate passed this bill, first?

You know why it's S-1?

Because we put the pressure on them the last three years sending an abortion bill over there that they didn't have the guts to take up That's why it got passed in such a hurry.

>> House Democrats staged a walkout during the bill's debate on Wednesday saying that more important matters were put on hold to make way for the bill that is already facing a lawsuit and injunction in federal court.

>> In this very body, we serve with people that believe that the government should not make people wear masks, it's a form of mind control.

They don't want the government to tell them what to do with their health care.

Yet we sit here today proclaiming, life.

A Senate bill which is number one.

For those of you that don't know number one means, that was a first bill up, the first bill they dealt with, not 8 thousand deaths, not 12 hundred deaths because of opioids but the Fetal Heartbeat Bill.

The Democratic Caucus is here to proclaim that we are tired of it.

That we are tired of the hypocrisy.

<Gavin> Despite the restricted nature several Republicans didn't feel the law went far enough due to the rape and incest exceptions.

That lead Townville Republican, Representative Jonathan Hill to storm out of the House Chamber Wednesday after cloture was invoked by his party, throwing his amendments in his wake as he went.

But before he signed the law, McMaster said this is just one step against abortion.

<Governor Henry McMaster> I asked the citizens and I asked the General Assembly, to send me a bill.

Send me the heartbeat bill and I would sign it.

And you have and now I will.

(applause) >> The leisure and hospitality industry in the state is still reeling from the pandemic but the future looks bright.

To discuss the state's tourism industry I'm joined by Duane Parrish.

He's the Director of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

Duane welcome back to This Week in South Carolina.

<Duane Parrish> Thank you Gavin, glad to be here.

>> Duane we talked all last year but give us a recap about just really unfortunately how bad 2020 was for the state's top industry.

<Duane> Worst year at least in my lifetime for tourism ever.

We had the shut down in mid-March.

About six to eight weeks, things started to slowly re-open.

We picked up some steam.

As we moved through Memorial Day, cases rose again around July 4th.

Had to almost pull back.

You know, one step forward, two steps back sort of thing and that's kind of been the pace through the rest of the year.

Came up a little bit in the Fall.

Of course, late as the Winter started, cases rose again.

a slow back down.

Of course this time of year - and I say this time the Winter, January, February is a slow time of year anyway.

Tough time, but I will say if you're in the tourism industry, go tell your restaurateur if you got through these last few months you've got brighter days ahead.

So, 2020, worst year but something's have done well.

The silver lining has been golf, outdoor recreation, boating, hiking, fishing and the like.

There have been some silver linings, but overall tough year for hotels.

Tough year for us.

<Gavin> Did you have a dollar amount you can pen on just how much we saw last year?

>> Sure.

Normally we're about a 24 billion dollar industry.

We lost somewhere between six and seven billion last year.

Don't have the final numbers yet.

Like I said, it was some successes like golf, short term rentals did fairly well during this time.

They offered more square footage a kitchen privacy that hotels did.

Hotels lost about the 29, 28 maybe 35 percent of revenue somewhere in that range.

Don't have the final numbers, but somewhere in that range.

So restaurants, tough time probably the hardest hit in our industry and then attractions.

A lot of things have been closed and they're still some things that are closed, but bad overall but a few good things in there.

>> I know we're looking ahead towards getting more people vaccinated.

We're going into three months now, this roll out, but I'm just wondering what we look at like, you were mentioning a lot of those folks that are so heavily towards independent rely on those high seasons that revenue to get them through these winter months.

Could we possibly see more losses going forward, some restaurants, some attractions or hotels I mean what's the feeling right now before we get to spring break or the summer?

>> Well, you've seen some restaurants closed during this time.

You'll see some reposition themselves as a different type of restaurant.

You'll still see a few more of those.

Some hotels may enter bankruptcy, but you won't necessarily see it.

The hotel is a large asset and typically the lender would not allow it close but some of that will happen.

But, the good news is if you've gotten through this time period, people now see vaccinations ahead.

In our focus groups, people are intent to travel in the next 12 months.

It's the highest it's been since the pandemic started.

And I think that's a combination of cases coming down now, a combination of vaccines taking place.

I think as the CDC travel warnings hopefully subside through the spring, I do expect sort of crescendo in the summer of warm weather the intent to travel because cabin fever is at all time high.

And people I think we'll start to make those reservations and we'll see that through the summer and really I expect a good Fall.

<Gavin> And we've been here from state economists talking about the job situation.

It sounds like we're about 88 percent back to pre-pandemic jobs, but the big laggard of course is leisure and hospitality for obvious reasons.

Any idea about when we can maybe see those numbers really start to tick back up.

Is it going to be before Memorial Day maybe this summer when we just see possibly a crush of tourism happening in the state?

>> Those numbers will subside.

At it's worst we get about 50 percent unemployment in leisure and hospitality.

We're now down to about 16 percent unemployment, still well above the statewide average.

I think as the spring weather gets warmer and more people start to travel, I think in the summer those numbers We'll come in line with the state average at that time.

We'll catch up.

We're just going to be the last industry to catch up from this pandemic in terms of the economy.

>> And Duane what about communities that rely heavily on like hospitality taxes too.

How are they faring?

What are they doing to get by?

Talk about Myrtle Beaches, Charlestons and other parts of the state too.

What's it like for them?

>> It's been a difficult time for them.

A lot of - as you mentioned those particular coastal areas rely a lot of combination of hospitality taxes and those numbers have been very low compared to normal times.

They figured out how to do it so the good news is a lot of the smaller operators in the cities and the counties were able to have a little bit of a rainy day fund to get through this time.

I think they see light at the end of the tunnel happening this calendar year and just sort of but somethings will just projects are underway and we have to wait to get finished at a later time.

>> Looking ahead should people be traveling at this point?

We did see a lot.

We saw a huge spike in January as a resultfrom Thanksgiving, Christmas, all holidays.

Do you feel confident in the safety of folks coming to this state at this point or do you want to see more vaccinations take place?

What's the feeling right now in the hospitality industry?

>> Well there's over 50 percent of the people are traveling now I think there's a lot more knowns about the virus today than they were say 6, 9 months ago and so people know how to better accept it how to better manage around it.

Protocols are in place in most businesses.

The mask ordinances, the six foot distancing.

People are smarter about how to do things today than they were before.

You can safely travel now.

Certainly as I mentioned over half the population is.

You just have to be smart about it and what you do.

If you're at risk, you should not travel.

If you're comfortable and you're safe doing it, certainly from an outdoor activity standpoint, it's out there.

A lot of great things going on, but if you're just not comfortable doing it, I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

But if you are, yes, you can travel.

Honestly, there are great advantages out there to traveling.

There are lower discount fares.

There are lower hotel rates right now than normal.

If you're apt to do so it's a great time to take advantage from a financial standpoint.

<Gavin> When will you start to notice how things are shaping up for this year?

Do you guys put a lot of emphasis on what you see for your spring break crowds coming?

Do you have any early indicators of what that might be looking like at this point?

Last year that's when everything went off the rails and we had to shut down immediately, hotels, short term rentals, but what do you look at going forward as specifically this year, this early season?

<Duane> Well, we'll sort of monitor websites if you think about our website, for example, travel and tourism websites.

Websites like Expedia, as their traffic ticks up that will show you the intent to travel is there.

Even though people may not travel as soon as they get a vaccination, I think that they will shortly start thinking about it more than they are today and maybe even book trips as we go forward throughout the spring, whether that's summer or fall, just depends on where they fall into the In our focus groups, it's become different reasons for people wanting to or willing to take that trip.

Some say they want their own vaccinations.

Some say they want cases to go down.

Some will say they look at vaccination rates in the area they're traveling to.

And some have even said they want to hear from Doctor Fauci that it's okay to travel.

It doesn't happen overnight, sort of a slow build, over three or four months but I expect it to take place during the spring and early summer when people are booking for the late summer and fall.

>> Are you starting to see that demand?

What about things like conferences and those type of activities?

>> A few more conferences take place.

We just had our governor's conference on travel and tourism.

We had about half of our normal people attendees that would come, which was somewhat expected, but that's a sign that people are willing to travel and go out and do those things and meet.

Business travel will catch up behind the leisure, I think.

While ZOOM will never replace travel, it is certainly from a business perspective has been another tool to sometimes not have to take a trip.

But the groups will come back.

Weddings have been postponed.

Leisure groups like that.

They'll come back.

It's going to be the fall or the spring of 2022 before it all comes back.

<Gavin> You guys got a lot of money last year too from the state and federal, as well to help with branding, to help with advertising, especially if you talk about those nearby areas the drive market.

Have you been seeing any return on investment right now?

What's it been like and are we hoping to see some those seeds grow into fruition this coming season?

>> The good news is, we were ahead of the United States in occupancy and for the first time in decades.

The bad news is it was the worst year for occupancy for the country as a whole.

As I've said before, our job is to maintain or increase our share of the pie, if you will.

The pie has shrunk, but we've held on to our piece, if you will.

And so our job moving forward is similar.

It is to maintain or increase market share of the people that are willing to travel.

The willingness to travel is the highest it's been since the pandemic started.

And I just think it's a matter of time, weather, and willingness to go out and do those things and government officials and health care officials will say it's okay to travel for people to pull the trigger to go out and make that true.

>> Just to wrap up Duane, I want to ask you about international travel and how that relates to the overall tourism picture.

When do you see that coming back online?

How does that fit in with talking about people coming from nearby states as well?

>> Sure.

I think domestic travel is back first particularly, the drive market, air travel is down about 60 percent.

That will come back next, particularly on the domestic side but international travel is still probably a year away.

In regard to the European market, we lost that flight, our first direct Transatlantic flight from Charleston to London with British Airways.

I don't anticipate that coming back in 2021.

But I think it'll come back in 2022.

But I do believe international travel overall is about a year behind the domestic travel in terms of going back to normal levels.

>> That's cheers to a brighter future here going forward for the state's tourism industry.

that's Duane Parrish.

He's the Director of Parks and Recreation and Tourism.

Thanks Duane.

>> Thank you, Gavin.

>> Joining me now to discuss affordable housing in the state and a new rental assistance program is Chris Winston.

He's the Media and Market Manager for SC Housing.

Chris thanks for joining us.

<Chris Winston> Thanks for having me, Gavin.

I appreciate it.

<Gavin> Chris, let's start with some good news.

A new program you are rolling out this week and that's a 25 million dollar rental assistance, mortgage assistance program throughout SC housing.

What can you tell us about it?

Who can apply?

What's the good news here?

>> Yeah, the great news is that from CARES Act funding last year, CDBG funding coming to the state allowed us to open up this program.

We spent the last couple months dotting all of our I's, and crossing our T's and preparing the application process.

We know there's pain and hurt.

A lot of folks who are potentially facing evictions and foreclosures and we're doing our best to get this program rolled out.

It should be open for business at SChousing.com for folks to come in and apply.

So, obviously with much of our federal funding, there are some income limits that we have.

If your household needs to make less than 80 percent of the average area income and we have that chart on our website.

But that includes a lot of folks in South Carolina.

So, it allows us to offer anyone who's been impacted by COVID so you have to have a decrease in your hours or job status or maybe you've been away from work to care for yourself during this pandemic or a loved one to qualify for it.

So, if you meet the income eligibility and you've been impacted by COVID then if you're behind on your rent and mortgage payments and hopefully, your lender or your landlord is willing to participate in the program.

The payments go directly to the lender or the the landlord.

It's for up to six months of help or 75 hundred dollars are the caps for that.

And we hope this brings a lot of people up to good standing in their rent to stay in their housing.

This is not the time that people need to be worried about how to find new housing or moving with other folks or moving out of their current living situation.

<Gavin> Chris, you're saying up to 75 hundred dollars, six months.

Does this work for back rent for people who might be late on the rent or had experiences because of COVID-19, maybe they're trying to catch up now.

>> Yeah, it goes all the way back to last February, since the outset of the crisis.

So, if you show that you've missed monthly payments during that time period, you can request up to 6 months of the those payments.

There are other programs out there that may help you with other months.

Some folks may be more than six months behind and we know that.

The important thing is that you keep those programs separate.

If you're asking for the six months of funding from SC housing then ask for a different set of funding for different months from another source.

Obviously, there are there things in place to keep folks from being able to ask for help for the same months.

That may jeopardize both programs if you're not careful about which months you're requesting help from.

<Gavin> How soon can people see money going to the landlords if they request this?

<Chris> Our hope is that less than 30 days.

Our hope is that there's an initial application on our website, then there's additional paperwork that needs to be filed.

There's processing agencies who have partnered with us from across the state.

We have one in each county that will be reaching out to kind of to collect the final piece of paperwork and final information from you.

Then our plan is to have that money given straight to the mortgage holder, the lender or the landlords as soon as possible.

<Gavin> I want to talk about some more that SC Housing does.

You mentioned that maybe some lenders, some landlords might not be participating or might not be willing to participate.

What's kind of the rub there?

What's the situation between that?

>> I think we asked landlords and lenders to help work with their tenants or with their borrowers is as much as possible and there's some challenges people have.

Honestly, some landlords may, when the moratorium on evictions from the CDC ends at the end of March, they may be more interested in kind of moving on and having to the opportunity to evict rather than getting the back pay.

We believe and we've heard from a lot of the landlord associations and apartment associations that they would absolutely take part and we believe most folks in South Carolina will be willing to participate >> Chris, how does this differ from the other programs that SC Housing provides to potential homeowners of renters in South Carolina?

>> Absolutely, so usually, we have a couple different programs.

Right.

We're the section 8 voucher program administrator for several counties in South Carolina who don't have their own Housing Authority, housing agency.

Lexington County, for instance.

So we run that program in several counties who don't have their own.

At the same time, our development organization works to increase the amount of low income housing available in South Carolina, taking federal tax credits and programs to work with developers to build rent controlled, income based housing so folks across the state can afford the rentals.

And most of these are apartment complexes and apartment buildings that are privately owned and managed but they agree to a kind of a rent stability program in order to increase it's affordability for all people in South Carolina.

Finally we have a mortgage program that helps folks move into first time home buyers.

People who may be, have the income and be able to own a home but just haven't had the opportunity to build up a down payment.

We have a lot of programs that have a forgivable loan for down payment assistance.

Maybe 6, 8, 10 thousand dollars of assistance to help people get into that home and then we work with local lenders and real estate agents to make them aware of that and then we're able to help move thousands of folks every year into their first homes.

<Gavin> Chris give me an overview of how affordable housing, in general in South Carolina has been affected over the past year from the pandemic and then what the state of it is essentially now.

I'm assuming we don't have enough affordable housing in this state, but how have things really shaped over the year.

>> It's a challenge.

So, if you go back two years, South Carolina was already known as the epicenter of the eviction crisis.

A lot of things lead to that.

Right?

It's fairly easy in South Carolina to file an eviction, for landlords to file eviction notices.

So, you see some cases where large numbers of evictions are filed for specific apartment complexes or buildings across the state.

So, South Carolina was already in crunch there from an affordability standpoint.

And several things contributed to that.

We're a very popular state for folks to move, to relocate.

We're very popular for seniors to come in retirement.

We have some very popular cities that folks like to move to.

Columbia drives people here.

The university, obviously and other programs.

Greenville, Spartanburg's been a great hot spot in people moving for a number of years.

Obviously along the coast, we have Myrtle Beach and Charleston driving folks moving and wanting to build and develop housing.

It just puts pressure on the affordability piece when people who own land or people who own homes or developers can get a certain amount of money for their property, it can be difficult to convince them to consider more affordable housing units or opportunities because the demand is so high in those areas.

<Gavin> I'm guessing we're going to see even more pressure as a result of the pandemic with lots of people moving from bigger cities to more affordable cities like several that you just listed in our state.

How does that happen?

Are you guys worried about that?

When you look at incentives for affordable housing, you just mentioned how it can be difficult to do that.

Are there enough incentives out there to get people to mitigate some of these affects of gentrification especially down the Charleston peninsula and that surrounding area?

<Chris> Yeah!

So we see, obviously we have a number of federal programs we work with through HUD primarily, but then the the state of South Carolina has also been working with us to help look for tax credit opportunities to make it affordable for developers and make it attractive for developers to create and build more affordable housing.

You mentioned over the past year with the COVID crisis, obviously we've seen the economy impacted in a number of ways, a lot of folks are able to still work from home and maintain their jobs and do what they do remotely while caring for their children, while doing other things.

We have a huge amount of folks in South Carolina who work in hospitality or restaurant or tourism retail, whose lives have been completely turned upside down by the pandemic.

We see that pressure coming on at the same time.

We see these two things happening, there's not enough affordable housing.

Some of the housing have been in more rural areas of South Carolina are aging and the stock is getting older.

So, we have programs in place to help folks get rehabilitation assistance and funds to help them rehab a house that's unsafe to live in.

Maybe, work on their roof or an HVAC system.

So, we have programs in place to help aging homes but also hopefully as quickly as we can, work with developers to build as many affordable housing units across state as possible.

<Gavin> We have less than a minute, I want to ask you quickly, maybe you know, maybe you don't, but just how many people might be homeless as a result or might have seen a major shift in their living situations?

If you guys can quantify that in any way.

Also what we might be able to see done at the state level or at the legislatures or anything that could be pushed through to help with affordable housing during this time?

>> I think from the studies have suggested that when the CDC moratorium which is currently slated to end at the end of March, when that comes up I think the estimations are that as many as a hundred thousand households in South Carolina could be at risk of eviction.

So, I think you see that's the wave coming that we're trying to prepare for as much as possible.

See how many people would get up to date as soon as possible.

In South Carolina, we're working with lawmakers all the time to help their constituents understand the need for the housing.

Sometimes folks don't understand what affordable housing means that when it comes to my area what that's going to mean for my area or why you would want to build down the street from me.

Folks who live in affordable housing want to have the same access to the jobs and good schools and natural amenities as people who don't live in affordable housing.

So the demand for those areas is really high.

We're working with lawmakers every day to help get the word out about that and hopefully expand the understanding and knowledge of affordable housing and how it can be a benefit to everyone who lives in an area.

<Gavin> Thank you Chris Winston.

He is the Media and Marketing Engagement Manager at SC Housing and you can find out more about SC Housing by going to schousing.com <Gavin> Thanks Chris <Chris> Thank you very much.

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

It's a podcast I host multiple times a week.

It could be found wherever you find podcasts or on South Carolinapublicradio.org.

For SCETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.