Palmetto State News

Calling it instrumental to "break the cycle of trauma" brought on by homelessness and poverty in the state, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette toured Greenwood Pathway House.

"I had a busy day yesterday in Greenwood, but wanted to be sure to highlight the multi-step actions that the Greenwood Pathway House has taken to help fight homelessness in South Carolina,” Evette tweeted. 

The Panola Avenue homeless shelter is the only facility to offer support group for children and adults in the seven counties of the Lakelands Region. The facility provides a holistic approach to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of its clients.

It provides shelter for men, separate shelter for women and mothers with children, shelter for families, a cold weather shelter, drug rehabilitation services, clothing and career and job location programs.

“As the only homeless ministry providing trauma-informed services for children and adults in the Lakelands Region, I’m grateful for their approach, offering holistic care — physical, mental, spiritual — helping people overcome homelessness successfully and permanently," Evette tweeted.

The organization’s website also said the facility offers its “Furnishing a Future” program, begun in 2014, teaching woodworking and refurbishing skills as well as work ethic training to local men in need.

Its cold weather shelter began during the winter of 2010-11, and provided a warm refuge for homeless locals when the temperature dipped below 40 degrees.

A report in the Index-Journal quoted the shelter's Executive Director Anthony Price, who called homelessness a “vicious circle” of trauma with people couch surfing, sleeping in their cars or selling their own bodies for a place to sleep. He added that Greenwood’s homeless problem often is under-reported including its impact on children.

“We’re somewhere between 800 and 1,000 homeless children in Greenwood,” Price said. “There is nowhere for them to go.”

Evette indicated that more focus needs to be given to children homeless families.

"When people think of homelessness, they think drug addiction, they think mental illness — they’re not thinking of children,” she said. “It’s wonderful to know this is only the second cottage village of its kind that’s happening in our country, and it brings to light a very real problem, which is child homelessness and what we need to do to break the cycle of trauma.”