Greenville Together: A Home for All — a communitywide effort to make homelessness brief, rare and nonrecurring — set an ambitious goal to achieve by the end of 2025: Rehouse at least 80 households experiencing homelessness within the city of Greenville.
On July 3, the group launched its housing surge, a concerted effort to get people off the streets and into homes quickly. Within 10 weeks, 20 households were placed into housing, comprising 32 people who no longer have to worry where they will eat, sleep, shower and just be.
The North Greenville University basketball players volunteered their time to help move furniture into the new warehouse that the City of Greenville provided.Cody Carver, director of Greenville Together: A Home for All, said participants include a domestic-abuse survivor who had lived in a tent for two years, and a 72-year-old man who had been without stable housing for almost 30 years. A working family, parents with children ages 14, 10 and 7, had been living in their car for nearly a year before finding housing through Greenville Together.
“Just before move-in, they discovered all their belongings, including their children’s bikes, had been auctioned off because they couldn’t pay the rent on their storage unit,” Carver said. “Thanks to our partner Village Wrench, they were able to get new bikes when they moved into their home.”
Carver said the process has been streamlined to move people from intake to housing in fewer than eight days, showing promise that the coming months could bring stability for increasing numbers of people.
“We’ve made incredible progress so far,” Carver said. “This success is grounded in the collaborative nature of the initiative. We have brought together an entire community to tackle this complex problem: nonprofits, local government, landlords, business leaders and those with lived experience, working with one shared goal.”
Launched in August 2024, Greenville Together developed a one-year action plan grounded in national best practices and tailored to the community’s unique needs. By early 2025, the task force expanded its partnerships to include landlords, housing providers and developers, and began implementing strategies that address both urgent needs and long-term solutions. These include rapid housing placement for the most vulnerable residents, strengthening data systems, building a sustainable pipeline of permanent supportive housing and improving Greenville’s overall response to homelessness.
Move-in day for a Housing Surge participant, with help from Swamp Rabbit Moving.Beyond housing, Greenville Together is also advancing efforts to raise public awareness of the systemic causes of homelessness, expand day services, provide more support for front-line providers and track outcomes to ensure accountability.
“At the same time, we’re building for the long haul — creating a true pipeline of permanent supportive housing, with real plans to fund it, build it and make it available to those who need it most,” Carver said.
Helping to shape these plans and priorities are the voices of those who have lived without shelter.
“Our Lived Experience Council has been at the table from the beginning, helping us think differently,” Carver said. “The most important thing is not getting housing, but keeping them housed, with wraparound services, life-skills training and a sense of community to support them through their housing journey.”
Greenville Together is a collaborative effort led by a diverse group of community partners, including United Way of Greenville County, United Ministries, and Triune Mercy Center. For more information, visit greenvilletogether.org.
