Steve and Mary Payne, who you first met as residents of Tent City, a homeless camp under a Greenville bridge, are being given a home by United Housing Connections. Watch as the Paynes tour the home for the first time.


Steve and Mary Payne have not lived in a home of their own in 10 years.

Singularly and together, they've lived in shelters, with family and in a tent in an encampment under the Pete Hollis bridge known as Tent City.

Friday, they saw the two-bedroom, one-bath house with a glassed-in porch that, once renovated, will become their home for the next year.

It's available through a new program from United Housing Connections called Restore a Home.

"I still think it's a dream," Steve Payne said, standing in a large kitchen that was clearly his wife's favorite room.

"It's big," she said. "Won't be running into people."

"We used to have Thanksgiving and Christmas. The whole family," her husband said.

"Let's plan on that again," said Rick Ingram, the interim executive director of United Housing Connections who showed the Paynes the house, which is in the beginning stages of renovation.

Steve and Mary Payne were featured in a five-part series in The Greenville News last November that showed Greenville County has the second highest population of homeless people in the state after Richland, where Columbia is located. The series described life under the bridge, where the Paynes were new residents, where they celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary.

The newspaper found that people with unreliable income or on disability, as the Paynes are, couldn't afford a place to live, sending them into the streets, shelters and tent communities. The problem is exacerbated by low-paying jobs and limited public transportation.

The newspaper also found that while alcoholism, drug use and mental illness are prevalent among the homeless, the population is swelling with people whose lives tipped over from medical bills or lost jobs. The fastest growing segments are women and young people.

At the same time, violence is increasing, not only within the homeless population but from outsiders. It isn't uncommon for a homeless person to be jumped after cashing a disability check or to return to a tent to find belongings missing.

Home makeover

The house at 10 Zarline St. in City View on Greenville's Westside had been empty for some time when the owner donated it to United Housing Connections last fall. The copper plumbing had been stolen. The bathroom floor had rotted through to the subfloor.

"They come with a lot of work," Ingram said.

But overall, the house built in the 1930s was sound. Over the next weeks, the experts — plumbers, electricians, as well as volunteers — will begin the renovation in earnest. Installing new plumbing, wiring, patching holes, cleaning, painting, installing linoleum and new fixtures, appliances. In other words, it will become a spotless homeplace.

Ingram, who is heading the organization since Executive Director Mike Chesser left to pursue his own projects last month, said Chesser was instrumental in creating Restore a Home.

The difference between the Zarline house and the other 640 units United Housing Connections owns is the organization will have no monetary investment, allowing the Paynes and the families who will follow them to live there for the first four months at no cost.

For the next four months, the Paynes will pay a percentage of income, and the final four months the agency and the Paynes will focus on finding an affordable permanent home.

One of the biggest obstacles for homeless people is accumulating the required upfront money for housing, deposits for the property itself as well as utilities. Restore a Home will provide a financial cushion as well as offer budgeting help.

"It is very difficult to break that cycle, to stabilize their situation," Ingram said.

At the Zarline home, Jacobs Engineering has provided expertise and provided 18 workers for Hands on Greenville Day to demolish what needs to be replaced inside.

So far, the agency has received commitments from a plumber, electrician and a heating and air conditioning contractor to do the work.

Now, Ingram said he's looking for donations of an HVAC unit, which is expected to cost between $1,800 and $2,000. A water heater is needed as well as a refrigerator and stove. Plumbing and electrical work are scheduled to begin the week of June 23.

The bathroom was gutted but the kitchen cabinets were salvageable.

Ingram said the Paynes were selected for the first home because of the personal connection they had with the agency. They attended Upstate Homeless Coalition task force meetings and Ingram visited them in Tent City.

Hard times

The past six months have been difficult for the Paynes. Not long after the New Year, Steve Payne was attacked at Tent City by another resident. Community residents responded to The Greenville News series with more donations of clothing and other items than residents could use. Once that news was spread through the community, more people descended on the encampment.

Homeless service providers say Tent City's cohesiveness transformed into an overcrowded conglomeration of people wanting in on the wealth of donations, from tents to blankets to heaters and lots and lots of clothes and canned goods.

Payne said he still doesn't remember what happened, only what people have told him. He suffered a concussion in the attack, Mary a fractured hip trying to break up the fight. He spent five days in the hospital and Mary stayed with him. They had no place else to go so they went back to Tent City.

"We stayed one week," Payne said. "I was scared down there. I didn't know if I was sitting there talking to the guy who attacked me."

It was a cruel fate for Payne, who once considered it a blessing to be living there. He had lost his job and home after he was hit in the head by a tree limb while helping a friend do some tree work. One night, he passed out from low blood sugar at the QT gas station and, when he regained consciousness, a couple took him to Tent City, where they were living.

Hidden beside the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks in a scrub of brush and trees, the community isn't easy to find. It's either a long walk down a rutted dirt road or an illegal walk across the tracks. Payne had never heard of it before.

But residents gave him a tent and some food, made sure he took his medicine and checked on him when he had a coughing fit. Mary joined him a few weeks later.

At 64, Payne was among the oldest of the residents. He quickly became a leader. He talked with officials and spoke to the media. He managed the donations and made sure everyone had a propane tank and heater as winter pressed in.

"I've always had a burden for homeless people," he said. "God stuck me right in the middle of it."

But after the attack, he knew he and Mary needed to be elsewhere. Someone paid for them to stay in a motel for a week, then another person paid, and before long a church had paid for them to stay there for three months, the time it took for Mary's hip to heal.

They live on Payne's $557 retirement check from his job as an iron worker and $184 supplementary disability check. That's monthly. He walks with a cane because the tree-limb accident caused nerve damage in his neck that extends down his right side. He's 100 percent dependent on a pacemaker to keep his heart beating, he said.

He will know in a few months whether his disability income will increase once the federal agency determines the percentage of his disability.

Payne said while they were in the motel, he was frantically looking for a place they could afford.

"I told God I'd do the legwork if he'd do the rest," Payne said.

Nothing. They went back to Tent City. Still he looked. Two weeks later, they knew they needed to get out for good.

He went to the men's shelter at the Salvation Army. Mary, 56, went to live in Piedmont with her mother, who is in her 80s. The Paynes' daughter lives there as well. Mary had three daughters from a previous marriage who were young when she and Steve married in a courthouse wedding. Payne had a daughter from his previous marriage.

"I'd given up," he said.

Then he got a call from Ingram asking if he was interested in the house.

He had asked United Housing Connections for help back in January when he was in the hospital but they had nothing available.

"God can do anything," Payne said.

The Paynes have been apart for two months.

But Friday they were together again, looking at their new home. Mary went outside to look for a place for a picnic table. She found a shady spot with lots of grass beneath a towering pecan tree. She walked out front to see where she could plant flowers. She thinks she's better caring for greenery inside the house but wants to try some gardening.

"I'm thinking that bedroom," Mary said, pointing to the room at the back of the house. "It looks bigger." She talked about the dishes and glassware she could finally get out of her mother's basement. She thinks her pots and pans are probably ruined after so many years in storage.

Steve said someone at the Salvation Army told him he'd buy some linens.

Steve stood by, mostly quiet, watching his wife look around.

"I like it," he said.

"I like it, too," Mary responded.

If all goes as planned, sometime in August, they'll be home.


To donate to the Zarline home project go to


Homeless in Greenville: A five part series

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