“Working with 1000 Feathers has really helped our community go through a process that is truly transformative,” said Founding Director Hannah Jarrett. “It’s not a Band-Aid approach, but rather understanding what are the root causes, what does our community truly believe, what are we committed to.”

The seven organizations are United Way of the Piedmont, Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, Spartanburg Housing, OneSpartanburg Inc., the Faith Initiative to End Child Poverty, and both the City of Spartanburg and Spartanburg County governments. Their collective vision is to make Spartanburg a community where homelessness is recognized as a solvable problem and where everyone has a safe, secure place to call home.

“Our community understands the importance of being clear about where we’re trying to go and having the ability to look at current conditions to be able to create a strategy, a process that defines what it takes to get to where we’re going in a sustainable way,” said Deputy City Manager Mitch Kennedy.

Beginning in 2022, 1000 Feathers helped community leaders develop a comprehensive, multi-sector approach to align strategies, inform resource distribution, and identify opportunities to prevent homelessness. One of the key findings was that the network of services for people who are unhoused was disconnected, leading to a redundancy of efforts. Another finding was the community lacks adequate emergency and temporary housing for residents who are unable to afford rent or a mortgage.

For example, a 2024 housing assessment found that about a third of local homeowners and nearly half of homeowners spend more than 30% of their income on housing. This places them in a category termed “cost-burdened,” making them vulnerable to becoming unhoused.

An estimated 250 to 300 people are unhoused in Spartanburg County, according to the latest “point-in-time” count from January 2025. While this number may seem low compared with larger cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco, it places Spartanburg County in the top five counties in South Carolina for the number of individuals experiencing homelessness. Local experts also estimate the actual number of homeless individuals in the county is as much as 2–3 times higher than what has been counted.

By aligning short-term responses like emergency shelter with long-term solutions such as increasing the supply of affordable housing, and treating the issue as both urgent and solvable, communities can move the needle—when the right partners are at the table working together.

“Systems change requires the ability to work across sectors. You’re not going to have the ability to do that if you don’t understand the importance of relationships and social capital,” Kennedy said. “And having a collaborative spirit is also key, but you just can’t say that you’re collaborating. You’ve got to have a coach, a leader to walk you through it. And, so we’ve been so fortunate to have 1000 Feathers, a consultant that knows our community, has those relationships, and has the ability to connect the dots across sectors.”

Jarrett agreed: “Bringing in an outside perspective—a consultant who has worked extensively in other communities—to push our community to think about issues differently, was key to being able to have tough conversations and hear all the voices that need to have input into this work—even if that might not always be comfortable.”

As the effort now moves into its next phase of implementation, A Place to Call Home has become a fully staffed, fully funded entity, currently housed within the City of Spartanburg. Multiple exciting new projects have already taken shape and are about to officially launch including a rotational emergency family shelter operation among the county’s faith community and a newly constructed tiny home village for single women and women with children. 1000 Feathers continues to be involved in strategic planning, messaging and communications, and overall consultation.

“This is the ultimate success story,” said Forrest Alton, President of 1000 Feathers. “A community identified a challenge, we were able to step in and help them create a solution, and now they are implementing that solution and having impact at a level once thought to be impossible.”