After 40 years, rising housing costs finally push this Hilton Head islander to the mainland

David Vincent Young’s family has 200-year-deep roots on Hilton Head Island. Since Union troops took the island during the Civil War, the Gullah chef’s family has remained. His grandmother, he said, now has 145 grandchildren.

Young’s love for his home island is apparent to everyone who knows him, especially those who recall his efforts to help residents impacted by Hurricane Matthew. Despite his family’s long legacy and his nearly 40 years of living on Hilton Head himself, the rising cost of housing has finally pushed him off the island.

“The last thing anyone wants to do is spend half their income every month on rent,” Young said.

Young and his girlfriend, Darcie Jones — who has lived on Hilton Head for about 20 years herself — recently bought a house in Pineland, South Carolina, over an hour away. The newly built home comes with about 4 acres of farmland, where Jones and Young said they’re hoping to raise pigs and chickens.

Most importantly, they’re buying all of it for a fraction of what they’d pay to rent a much smaller apartment on Hilton Head.

“I’m buying the place for less than I’d be renting on Hilton head,” he said. “We looked and looked (to stay on the island), but eventually it’s the choice of, do you want to spend $2,600 just to live in a spot or pay a third of that and have the life you want?”

The island’s housing struggle has disproportionately impacted low-income residents, including the 300 Hispanic residents suddenly evicted from Chimney Cove this month. The apartment complex is occupied almost exclusively by workers on the island. The owner has said he is selling to a company that plans to rehab the apartments and charge more rent.

The Town of Hilton Head on Friday issued a statement acknowledging the evictions and inviting islanders to a special Town Council meeting Sept. 6 to “brainstorm short- and long-term solutions.”

Young and Jones said their situation shows even locals with relatively higher incomes are being pushed off Hilton Head. Combined, Jones said she and Young make around $175,000 a year.

Jones said they were forced to move out of their old apartment in Shipyard Plantation’s Colonnade Club because the owner wants to use the property as a short-term rental instead. They had been paying about $1,500 a month for several years with no increase.

When the property owner first told them about her plan, Young said he offered to pay more in rent but she declined.

“Everybody’s chasing after those tourist dollars,” Young said. “The place will sit empty for three months, but everybody would rather get $1,500 a week than rent for $1,500 a month.”

During their search for new housing around the island, the couple quickly realized staying on Hilton Head wasn’t worth the cost. Even in nearby communities like Bluffton, Jones said the price points were well above what she was willing to pay.

“Even in Bluffton, we’d be paying more than $1,000 each a month for a cardboard box,” Jones said. “These options were so small. I have two dogs and I want the dogs to be happy, too, so I’d rather them run around a big four-acre yard than trap them in an apartment complex for money I don’t want to shell out.”

One of the few places the couple was able to find on Hilton Head was a two-bedroom apartment at Summer House, a property on Marshland Road. Young said they paid the application fee and were prepared to move forward with renting, but ownership later informed them they were entered into an applicant pool to bid against other renters.

“That wasn’t disclosed in the beginning,” Young said.

Monthly rent compounded by application fees, credit checks, utilities, cable, and internet costs eventually amounted to so much money each month the couple gave up on staying on the island.

The push from some landlords to serve only tourists is short-sighted, Young said. As more locals are priced off the island, fewer services will remain for tourists in the long term.

“You want to cater to tourists, but you’re pushing out the locals that help serve the tourists,” Young said. “So it’s the same people that go after the tourists’ dollars pushing out their own workers, and then people get upset that you have to pay workers more because there’s not enough (employees).”

Common to see friends move away

Young and Jones both said over time, it’s become more common to see friends moving away from the island for a better quality of life elsewhere. Now that he’s left Hilton Head, Young has also started working off the island as an executive chef at Oldfield Golf Club in Okatie.

As a bar manager at the Harbour Town Yacht Club on Hilton Head, Jones said she enjoys her job too much to leave. Now she makes the hour-long commute one way, but said the loss of service workers like herself and Young, and due to housing costs will catch up to the island if action isn’t taken.

“All of the people who like these luxury things, like restaurants or getting your nails done, getting your car fixed, or as a bartender, getting your drinks, you won’t be able to once there aren’t places for workers to live,” Jones said.

Tax incentives from the town of Hilton Head could be one way to convince property owners to rent long-term rather than short-term, Young said. A regulation on how much rent can be charged or how much it can increase over a certain period of time could be another step.

“There needs to be some kind of advocacy for the people here,” Young said.

The town has acknowledged the need for town-backed housing initiatives. Town Manager Marc Orlando said Hilton Head is selecting a firm to carry out a public-private partnership to build workforce housing on the island’s north end, but construction on those units won’t begin until 2023. Details like who would be eligible for the housing are still up in the air.

On Jan. 1, the town’s short-term rental ordinance will also go into effect. The law aims to regulate short-term rentals on Hilton Head by requiring property owners to buy a permit for every short-term rental property they lease each year, and establishing rules for renters for things like parking and noise.

If housing on the island continues on its current course, Young said, the people and culture that makes Hilton Head distinct won’t survive the rush for profits.

“My family has been here for 250 years, so I guess (newcomers to Hilton Head) don’t have the same view and feel to the island that I do,” he said. “You’re erasing the whole mystique of Hilton Head by not embracing the culture and people that make the island work.”