ROCK HILL — A flood of funding and new employees is helping local nonprofits tasked with solving the homelessness crisis in York County and beyond find more people a safe place to stay.
The Housing Development Corporation of Rock Hill and the Catawba Area Coalition for the Homeless have worked hand-in-hand for years to address housing insecurity in the Piedmont region by adding to the supply of affordable housing, supporting shelters and directing people toward available resources.
Now, armed with a windfall of more than $1.6 million and three new hires, the agencies are helping as many people in a week as they once could in a year.
Through Rapid ReHousing, nine previously homeless households — 10 adults and 11 kids — have found a stable place to stay since July 1. The newly added Rapid Reset program has provided moving assistance to another five households.
The goal is to support more than 100 households making the transition from homelessness to permanent housing over the next year.
It’s an ambitious plan that would have a sizable impact in York County, where a point-in-time count tallied 291 people living in shelters, on the streets, out of cars or couch-surfing as of January 2025. Nearby Lancaster and Chester counties also benefit, where another 131 people are homeless or at-risk.
Behind the endeavor is a rapidly growing team of social workers supported by $1.67 million in grant funding funneled through the city of Rock Hill, the federal government, and local partners to CACH and HDC.
Alexandria Newberry, Carilee Johnson and Chrissy Jones, all recent graduates of Winthrop University, were hired in recent months to lead a specific role navigating the housing process for people facing instability.
“It’s been amazing for our response to our community members because when someone calls in an emergency or in need of housing you know exactly who to go to,” said Corinne Sferrazza, executive director of the HDC. “Everyone has their part of the puzzle.”
Sferrazza was leading efforts to get people out of homelessness when Rapid ReHousing began in this area in 2019.
A three-year grant gave the HDC about $30,000 annually to build the program from the ground up. Sferrazza estimated they housed fewer than 10 people in the early years. She said there were constituents who wanted the program disbanded, believing it was too difficult a task to make work.
“It was very overwhelming because it was not something anyone in the whole community had ever done,” Sferrazza said. “We didn’t know how to work with landlords, we didn’t know how to get to work with individuals experiencing homelessness.”
Since then, CACH joined in supporting the program and the team has developed a repeatable structure that is making a tangible difference.
In the 2024-25 funding cycle, 41 households — 75 people, including 28 children — were transitioned into permanent housing through the Rapid ReHousing program, and homelessness in York County decreased by nearly 10 percent, according to the annual point-in-time count.
“If you’re not in the work, a lot of times you don’t realize it’s going on,” said Newberry, who spent the last year interning with CACH before being hired full-time this summer.
The social workers often face skepticism from local property managers or stakeholders who are unsure about taking on the perceived challenges — eviction history, poor credit or low income — of someone experiencing homelessness.
But the work the team does speaks for itself. The social workers said landlords who started with concerns have become long-term partners after seeing the program and its residents succeed.
“It’s like having a generic tenant with third-party support, and really at that point, how could you say no?” Jones said.
Any person who is accepted into the Rapid ReHousing program receives rental assistance and support services, including case management, for up to a year to help the participants achieve long-term stability.
Many of the clients leave the program holding down a stable job that allows them to afford rent on their own, but that isn’t the only measure of the difference the program makes.
“I say every client is a success because you never know where they came from,” Johnson said. “They now have a place to live, a place to call home and a place for safety. …That’s your new life, that’s your dream.”
Even through exponential growth, the program operates in uncertainty. Grant funding is secured for the next year, but after that, there’s no guarantee they’ll have the same support.
“We won’t stop even if there’s not an influx of funding, we’ll still figure something out,” Sferrazza said. “We work with what we have.”
HDC and CACH employees seek out new funding opportunities daily, a task that has become easier as they have more hands to focus on providing day-to-day services the community needs.
Instead of worrying about its own future, the team’s focus remains on its goal of putting a roof over the head of every person in our area.
“Every day we come to work to hopefully work ourselves out of a job,” Sferrazza said. “The hope and dream is that we don’t have to have the job we have, that there is enough housing for everyone.”