Efforts to renovate South Carolina’s five regional institutions that house people with disabilities in the state will have to be dialed back. Poor planning, misspending and rising construction costs also played a role in the multi-million dollar shortfall. (File photo/Getty Images)
COLUMBIA — Efforts to renovate the state’s five regional institutions that house South Carolinians with intellectual and developmental disabilities are being dialed back.
The downsizing comes after the overseeing agency spent a chunk of taxpayer dollars meant for renovations on other things. Estimates that didn’t factor in the buildings’ ages, along with rising construction costs also played a role in the multimillion-dollar shortfall.
It was during a March 2024 visit to the Coastal Center in Dorchester County that state Sen. Sean Bennett saw firsthand how the regional campuses are in “dire need of improvement.”
“These are truly the most vulnerable people in our state,” the Summerville Republican said about the more than 500 South Carolinians who live there.
He said he remembered a time when the Lowcountry’s campus was a hub of the community, hosting youth baseball games. But today, its roughly 120 residents are largely cut off.
After the visit, Bennett successfully pushed to add a rule to the state budget that took effect in July 2024. It required the state’s disabilities office to come up with a plan to fix the long-neglected centers and use any available funding to get it done, starting with the center in Bennett’s home district.
But Bennett said he’s again frustrated to learn that $22 million designated for improvements went elsewhere. The agency, according to a spokesperson, used the money to cover rising costs of other expenses at the agency, including nursing contracts and facility maintenance.
The plan for the five centers — the others are in Columbia, Florence, Clinton, and Hartsville — called for $154 million. The state disabilities office funded $95 million of that using a combination of federal COVID-19 relief funds and Social Security income payments from the centers’ residents. Where the other $59 would come from was yet to be determined.
Still, the $95 million was supposed to be enough to cover all improvements at the Coastal Center and all but $2 million of the top priorities for renovation at the other campuses. But the estimates did not consider whether the buildings could be renovated to comply with current regulations. Nor did it budget for rising construction costs, according to the agency spokesperson.
Together that means the state has less money to cover projects which now cost more to complete.
Stepping into one of them is a sad affair, according to one disability advocate in the state.
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“They’re very old. They’re filthy. They smell horrible, and these are where we’re putting people that often need strong advocates behind them,” said Kimberly Tissot, CEO of advocacy organization Able SC.
More than 25 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court told states they needed to do more to move their disabled population out of walled-off institutions and integrate them into the community. To do otherwise was discrimination, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, the justices ruled in Olmstead v. L.C., a case that originated in Georgia.
The state has made progress moving residents out of these institutions. Across all five, 537 South Carolinians with disabilities still live there, down from 911 residents two decades ago, according to past agency budget documents.
Tissot and her organization do not want to see anyone else entering these institutions, which she said are ripe with abuse and neglect.
“The people who are there have suffered long enough,” she said. “So, I would like to see them look at improving them, but also making a plan to eliminate them as well.”
The problem, Tissot told the SC Daily Gazette, is state government and political leaders have made no such plan.
“They just continue to treat people with disabilities like third-class citizens, and it’s time for them to wake up and change,” she said.
Tissot said money would be better spent on providing services that allow more people to stay in their homes or in a four- or five-person apartment setting with caregivers on site. Those home-based options also cost less.
“They’re not doing that and then they’re not going to make the institutions better,” Tissot said.
That cost of care, whether at home or in an institution, is largely covered by Medicaid. The government-funded health care program is usually associated with coverage for poor families, but it also covers services for people with disabilities and elderly residents who need nursing-home-level care. Or they can get those services at home through so-called waiver programs.
The state spends about $3,000 per person per month for in-home care, compared to $6,000 for a nursing home, Eunice Medina, director of the state’s Medicaid agency, told House budget writers in January.
Institutions for the disabled can run even higher, according to Disability Rights South Carolina.
More than 40,000 South Carolinians rely on the state’s Medicaid waiver programs, two of which are designated solely for people with intellectual disabilities.
As of January 2025, nearly 11,300 people with disabilities were getting care at home through those two programs. But three times that wanted the services. Almost 36,000 people were on waiting lists for those waivers, according to an agency report.
The state Medicaid agency asked for an additional $47 million in state taxes in the upcoming budget for all home-based care waivers:
The state House, in its first budget draft, included only $20 million to maintain the existing level of services.
When it comes to the regional centers, staff of the Department of Administration discovered the funding issues after the agency was brought in to help with the merging of three of the state’s health related agencies: the state’s agencies for addiction, mental health and disabilities. The three joined, becoming a Cabinet agency renamed the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities under a law signed by Gov. Henry McMaster in April 2025.
Being a Cabinet agency, as is the Department of Administration, means its director answers directly to the governor. The prior Department of Disabilities and Special Needs was a stand-alone agency overseen by a seven-member board whose members were appointed by the governor, with the Senate’s input.
To make up a portion of the already spent Social Security dollars, the Department of Administration shuffled around $12 million of other agency funds.
But that still leaves the office with $10 million less than it had before.
As a result, the Pee Dee Center in Florence will see only about $16 million worth of improvements, rather than the $27.5 million needed for its top priorities.
The center will spend $3.3 million to update two of its 12 dormitories, each with 16 beds, in need of upgrades. The remainder will go to high-speed internet and improvements to shared spaces, such as the gym and therapy center, the kitchen, the medical services building and the work activities center.
The Whitten Center in Clinton, the largest and oldest of the state’s five centers (dating to 1920), is getting half of the money it needs for its top priorities.
Only two of its 14 residential buildings in need of repair will see upgrades. Several of those buildings, most of which had a dozen or more people living in them at the time of the study, had multiple issues including mold, exposed wiring, outdated plumbing, heating and air conditioning, poor water quality and outdated fire alarm systems. Staff and guest quarters also won’t be updated.
The Coastal Center will still receive all of its improvements. And the Midlands Center will upgrade all but one of its 20-bed dormitories that were deemed a tier-one priority.
There’s about $5.7 million available to cover any cost overruns.
Parent and advocacy groups associated with the several of the centers declined to comment or did not respond to messages from the SC Daily Gazette.
Bennett said he wants to see a system of checks and balances put in place to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again.
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Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
