Renting in Calhoun Falls? Here's What You Need to Know Before You Sign

Calhoun Falls Rental Market Overview

Calhoun Falls is a 3.46-square-mile town in Abbeville County, sitting at the junction of South Carolina Highways 72 and 81 about 3 miles east of Lake Richard B. Russell on the Savannah River. Research for this guide, checked September 2026, identified 3 rental communities inside town: Hunters Blind Apartments (101 Eastgate Drive), Waterford Place Apartments (100 Waterford Ln), and Main Street Apartments (listed only by a Main St/Lee St/Hester Dr cross-street area). A public affordable-housing directory lists both Hunters Blind and Waterford Place as Section 8 voucher-accepting and income-based, each with a short wait list and accessible units, while Main Street Apartments is listed as subsidized housing without a stated program type or unit count -- and none of the three publishes a specific rent figure. Checking Hunters Blind's and Waterford Place's addresses against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder confirms both sit inside the incorporated Town of Calhoun Falls; Main Street Apartments' listing wasn't specific enough to check the same way. The same directory separately claims "220 income based apartments" operate in Calhoun Falls overall -- a figure this guide could not reconcile with only 3 identified named communities in a town of 1,727 residents, and which, consistent with an aggregator pattern found in other small South Carolina towns this guide has researched, more likely reflects a search radius wider than the town itself than actual in-town supply.

Common Lease Terms in Calhoun Falls

No community in Calhoun Falls publishes a full lease, application, or open-market fee schedule, so terms have to be pieced together from a public affordable-housing directory and Census verification rather than a single primary lease document:

• Hunters Blind Apartments (101 Eastgate Drive) is listed as Section 8 voucher-accepting and income-based, with a short wait list and accessible units; no rent figure is published. Confirmed inside Calhoun Falls town limits via the Census Bureau's public geocoder
• Waterford Place Apartments (100 Waterford Ln) carries the same program listing -- Section 8 voucher-accepting, income-based, short wait list, accessible units -- with no rent figure published. Confirmed inside town limits
• Main Street Apartments is listed as subsidized housing by the same directory, but its program type, unit count, and a specific street number aren't stated, so this guide could not run an independent jurisdiction check on it the way it did for the other two
• The directory's claim of "220 income based apartments" operating in Calhoun Falls doesn't reconcile with only 3 identified named communities in a town this size -- worth treating as a wider-radius aggregate rather than confirmed in-town supply
• Income-based and Section 8 programs price by household income rather than a posted market rate, which is consistent with why none of the three communities publishes a specific figure

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but Calhoun Falls may have additional local ordinances that affect your lease.

• South Carolina law preempts local rent control statewide (S.C. Code §27-39-60) -- no South Carolina city or county, including Calhoun Falls, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• This guide could not locate a codified Town of Calhoun Falls ordinance on Municode, eCode360, or American Legal as of September 2026, and calhounfalls.com -- the domain most likely to be the town's own -- resolves to a lapsed, parked listing rather than an active town website
• Checking Hunters Blind Apartments and Waterford Place Apartments, the two identified rental communities with a specific enough address to check, against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder found both inside the incorporated Town of Calhoun Falls
• Calhoun Falls is an incorporated town, not unincorporated Abbeville County land, so the Town of Calhoun Falls -- not the county -- is the confirmed governing jurisdiction for the two rental communities checked for this guide

For full South Carolina statewide tenant rights, see our South Carolina tenant rights guide.

Mandatory Fees at Calhoun Falls Communities

No fee schedule could be independently verified for any of the three identified Calhoun Falls communities, as of September 2026.

• The public affordable-housing directory that lists Hunters Blind Apartments, Waterford Place Apartments, and Main Street Apartments states program type and unit features for two of the three, but publishes no application fee, pet fee, or deposit amount for any of them
• No rent figure is published for any of the three communities -- income-based and Section 8 programs price by household income rather than a posted market rate, and this guide found no source stating either
• The town-wide ACS median gross rent estimate ($630/month, city-data.com 2024) is a statistical average across all renter-occupied units in Calhoun Falls, not a fee or rent figure for any specific community or unit
• South Carolina law sets no statutory cap on application fees, pet fees, or administrative fees -- whatever a specific lease states is what governs

A community with no independently verifiable pricing isn't automatically a red flag in a market built almost entirely on subsidized housing -- but it does mean every figure, program type, and wait-list status needs confirming directly with the property before signing anything.

Population Decline, the Calhoun Mills Story, and Lake Russell's Second Act

Calhoun Falls was founded in 1891 at the junction of the Savannah Valley Railroad and the Georgia, Carolina and Northern Railroad, and takes its name from James Edward Colhoun (Calhoun). Within a couple of decades, Anderson-area investors backed by Williamston textile manufacturer J.P. Gossett built Calhoun Mills, which began operating in 1909 and grew a mill village around it -- a school, a library, and a gymnasium that doubled as a community center -- as workers relocated for jobs at the plant. The mill changed hands several times over the following decades before its final owner, WestPoint Stevens, closed the facility in 2006, eliminating about 400 jobs. The U.S. Census Bureau's own decennial counts show the town's population decline sharply accelerating in exactly that window: 2,328 in 1990, 2,303 in 2000 (-1.1%), 2,004 in 2010 (-13.0%), and 1,727 in 2020 (-13.8%) -- a cumulative 25.8% drop since 1990. This guide could not independently confirm the mill closure as the sole cause of that acceleration, but the timing lines up, and the decline has continued at a similar pace in the decade since. City-data.com's 2024 estimates put median household income at $40,405 (up from $21,728 in 2000) and per-capita income at $26,750 (up from $10,412 in 2000) -- real growth, but still well below South Carolina's $72,350 statewide median household income, with a 16.6% poverty rate and an April 2026 unemployment rate of 3.8% against the state's 3.6%. Manufacturing remains the town's largest reported employment sector at 33.2% of the workforce (retail trade is next at 13.8%), though this guide could not confirm a specific present-day manufacturing plant operating inside Calhoun Falls' own 3.46-square-mile limits, distinct from the historical Calhoun Mills site itself. Abbeville County's own economic-development data (as of Q3 2023) lists the City of Abbeville, Erskine College, Hardee's, Ingles, Prysmian Group, Sage Automotive Interiors, and Wayfair among the county's largest employers -- none confirmed as a Calhoun Falls address specifically.

What has followed the mill's closure is a slower, still-unfolding shift toward the lake. Lake Richard B. Russell, a 30-mile reservoir on the Savannah River about 3 miles west of town, was created in 1983 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the 210-foot Russell Dam; together with Lake Hartwell and Lake Thurmond it forms a nearly 120-mile chain of reservoirs along the Savannah River, and its shoreline is protected from private development under the Corps' own conservation management. Calhoun Falls State Park, about a mile from downtown on the lake, is a locally popular fishing and camping destination, and the town itself sits at a highway junction -- SC-72 was rerouted around downtown as a four-lane bypass -- connecting toward Atlanta to the west and Charlotte to the east. As of this guide's research, no rent, employment, or population data yet shows a measurable lift from the lake's recreational draw; it functions today as a nearby amenity, not a documented economic engine for the town's own rental market.

Common Issues Renters Face in Calhoun Falls

These are the most frequent considerations this guide's research turned up for renters in Calhoun Falls:

• No community identified in Calhoun Falls -- all three point toward income-based or Section 8 housing -- publishes independently verifiable market-rate pricing, so comparing "Calhoun Falls rent" to a neighboring town's published figure isn't possible from public sources alone
• Calhoun Falls' population decline is real and has accelerated across four decades of Census data (1990-2020), lining up with, though not proven to be caused solely by, the town's namesake mill closing in 2006 and eliminating about 400 jobs
• A public affordable-housing directory's claim of "220 income based apartments" in Calhoun Falls doesn't reconcile with the 3 named communities this guide could actually identify -- a reminder that regional aggregator counts can overstate what's really available inside a small town's own limits
• No local landlord-tenant ordinance beyond South Carolina's statewide baseline could be located, and no functioning town website exists to check for one directly -- calhounfalls.com is a lapsed, parked domain rather than an active town site
• Median household income ($40,405) and the 16.6% poverty rate are real, current indicators worth knowing before assuming a quoted figure reflects typical local affordability, even as both have improved since 2000

Negotiating Your Lease in Calhoun Falls

South Carolina is landlord-favorable with minimal statutory protections, and Calhoun Falls' rental market has no independently published market-rate price to benchmark against at any of its three identified communities.

• Requesting the current income limit, voucher-acceptance status, and wait-list length directly from Hunters Blind Apartments or Waterford Place Apartments is the only way to confirm eligibility and price, since neither publishes a rent figure online
• Confirming Main Street Apartments' actual program type and specific street address directly with the property is worth doing, since the directory that lists it gives only a cross-street area
• Comparing a quoted Calhoun Falls figure against nearby Abbeville, the county seat, or Greenwood, both larger and better-documented Upstate South Carolina markets, is more attainable than benchmarking against Calhoun Falls' own ACS town-wide average rent ($630/month), which describes the whole renter-occupied stock rather than any specific unit
• Confirming any claimed local rule directly with Abbeville County or the South Carolina Secretary of State's municipal records is a reasonable step given no functioning Town of Calhoun Falls website could be located to check ordinances directly

A community with no independently verifiable pricing isn't automatically a red flag in a market built almost entirely on subsidized housing -- but it does mean every figure needs confirming directly with the leasing office before signing anything.