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

Great Falls Rental Market Overview

Great Falls is a 4.38-square-mile town in Chester County, about 14 miles southwest of Lancaster. Research for this guide, checked September 2026, identified 3 rental communities inside town: Melrose Lane Apartments (300 Sunset Ave), Great Falls Apartments (800 Chester Ave), and Catawba Falls Apartments (810 Dearborn St). A public affordable-housing directory lists Melrose Lane as income-based with vouchers accepted and Great Falls Apartments as Section 8 voucher-accepting, while Catawba Falls Apartments' own program type isn't stated (though it lists accessible units and a short wait list consistent with the other two) -- and none of the three publishes a specific rent figure. Checking each community's address against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder found a different result than several other small South Carolina towns this guide has researched: all 3 addresses, plus two long-standing downtown bank branches, resolve cleanly inside the incorporated Town of Great Falls, with no mailing-address-versus-jurisdiction gap to sort out.

Common Lease Terms in Great Falls

No community in Great 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:

• Melrose Lane Apartments (300 Sunset Ave) is listed by a public affordable-housing directory as income-based with vouchers accepted, offering 1- and 2-bedroom units with a short wait list; no specific rent figure is published. Confirmed inside Great Falls town limits via the Census Bureau's public geocoder
• Great Falls Apartments (800 Chester Ave) is listed as Section 8 voucher-accepting, also 1- and 2-bedroom units with a short wait list; no rent figure is published. Confirmed inside town limits
• Catawba Falls Apartments (810 Dearborn St) is listed with accessible units and a short wait list, but the same directory does not state a program type; no rent figure is published either way. Confirmed inside town limits
• The same directory names the Rock Hill Housing Authority as administering Section 8 and public-housing programs "for the area" -- worth confirming directly, since Rock Hill itself is a separate city in York County, roughly 25 miles away, and this guide could not independently verify the administering agency from a primary source
• All 3 identified communities' addresses, plus two long-standing downtown bank branches (First Citizens Bank & Trust, 105 Dearborn St; Spratt Savings and Loan, 800 Dearborn St), check out as inside the incorporated Town of Great Falls against the Census Bureau's public geocoder -- so the jurisdiction question here isn't which government covers the address, it's confirming rent, eligibility, and wait-list status directly with each property before applying

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but Great 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 Great Falls, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• This guide could not locate a codified Town of Great Falls ordinance on Municode, eCode360, American Legal, or a town website as of September 2026, so no town-specific rental-registration or landlord-licensing provision could be confirmed or ruled out
• Checking Great Falls' three identified rental communities, plus two long-standing downtown bank branches, against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder found all five addresses inside the incorporated Town of Great Falls -- a cleaner result than the mailing-address mismatches this guide has documented in some other small Chester-area and Edgefield-area towns
• Great Falls is an incorporated town, not unincorporated Chester County land, so the Town of Great Falls -- not the county -- is the confirmed governing jurisdiction for all three rental communities and both bank branches checked for this guide

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

Mandatory Fees at Great Falls Communities

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

• The public affordable-housing directory that lists Melrose Lane Apartments, Great Falls Apartments, and Catawba Falls Apartments states program type and unit sizes 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 ($934/month, city-data.com 2024) is a statistical average across all renter-occupied units in Great 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 or housing authority before signing anything.

Population Decline, Hydroelectric Heritage, and Great Falls' Local Economy

Great Falls' Census-reported population has declined in every count since 1990: 2,307 in 1990, 2,194 in 2000 (-4.9%), 1,979 in 2010 (-9.8%), and 1,951 in 2020 (-1.4%) -- a real, gradual, multi-decade decline of roughly 15.4% since 1990, not a single-cycle counting artifact like the ones this guide has documented in other small South Carolina towns. A 2024 city-data.com aggregation estimates the population has kept falling since, to roughly 1,926. The town's economic indicators track the same trend: a 2024-estimated median household income of $31,787 against South Carolina's own $72,350 statewide median, a poverty rate of 31.1% (highest among Black residents at 49.3% and Hispanic/Latino residents at 76.5%, per the same source), and an April 2026 unemployment rate of 4.6% against the state's 3.6%. Manufacturing remains the largest reported employment sector at 24.8% of the workforce, ahead of retail trade (13.3%) and administrative/waste-management services (11.1%), though this guide could not independently confirm a specific manufacturer of scale physically located inside Great Falls' own 4.38-square-mile town limits -- Chester County's own largest employers (the Chester County School District, E & J Gallo Winery, and Walmart, per county economic-development data) are not confirmed as Great Falls addresses specifically.

Great Falls' name is older than its own waterfall's current condition. Southern Power Company -- founded in 1905 by William States Lee, Dr. W. Gill Wylie, and James Buchanan Duke, and the direct predecessor of Duke Power and today's Duke Energy -- completed a dam and powerhouse on the Catawba River here in 1907, and the same three men then founded Republic Textile Mills Company to put that new hydroelectric capacity to work; the first Republic Mill opened in 1910, with two more following in 1917 and 1923, and drove the commercial buildout of Great Falls' own downtown. The Great Falls Downtown Historic District (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000), the Great Falls Depot, and the Republic Theater all survive from that era. What most visitors and residents haven't seen in more than a century, per American Rivers, is the falls themselves: the dam has diverted the river's natural flow away from the actual waterfall that gave the town its name for over 100 years. That changed, on paper, in 2022, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued Duke Energy a new 40-year operating license for the Catawba-Wateree hydroelectric system requiring continuous-flow releases rather than the prior daily-average operating pattern, restoring water to five sections of the river system including at Great Falls -- with planned whitewater releases in late spring and summer, new kayak and raft launches, and improved fishing access that Duke Energy and American Rivers both frame as a potential ecotourism boost for what American Rivers itself calls "the economically struggling town." As of this guide's research, no rent, employment, or population data yet reflects any effect from the 2022 relicensing -- the restored flows and planned recreational access are a real, federally documented commitment, but an unrealized one in the numbers a renter would actually see today. The town has also produced several notable athletes, including former MLB pitcher Cal Cooper, NBA forward Torrey Craig, and Clemson football All-American Banks McFadden, per Wikipedia's sourced list.

Common Issues Renters Face in Great Falls

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

• No community identified in Great Falls -- all findings point toward income-based or Section 8 housing -- publishes independently verifiable market-rate pricing, so comparing "Great Falls rent" to a neighboring town's published figure isn't possible from public sources alone
• Great Falls' population decline is real and gradual across four decades of data (1990-2024), not a single-cycle artifact -- worth weighing against any claim of a "growing market," especially since no current data reflects the 2022 hydro-relicensing's promised ecotourism upside
• The town's poverty rate (31.1%) and below-state median household income ($31,787 vs. $72,350 statewide) are real, current economic indicators worth knowing before assuming a quoted "market rate" reflects typical local affordability
• Unlike some other small South Carolina towns this guide has researched, every Great Falls address checked -- all three rental communities and two long-standing bank branches -- resolves cleanly inside the incorporated town via the Census Bureau's public geocoder, so jurisdiction confusion isn't the risk here; confirming the actual rent, program eligibility, and wait-list status directly with each property is
• RentCafe's own market-rent tracker returns no result for Great Falls at all, since the town falls below its 50-unit-building reporting threshold -- a landlord citing a "market rate" here has no independently published citywide benchmark to point to

Negotiating Your Lease in Great Falls

South Carolina is landlord-favorable with minimal statutory protections, and Great 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 Melrose Lane Apartments, Great Falls Apartments, or Catawba Falls Apartments is the only way to confirm eligibility and price, since none publishes a rent figure online
• Confirming Catawba Falls Apartments' actual program type (income-based, Section 8, or another structure) directly with the property is worth doing, since the directory that lists it does not state one
• Comparing a quoted Great Falls figure against nearby Chester (the county seat) or Lancaster, both larger and better-documented Chester-area markets, is more attainable than benchmarking against Great Falls' own ACS town-wide average rent ($934/month), which describes the whole renter-occupied stock rather than any specific unit
• Asking directly whether a specific timeline exists for the 2022 relicensing's promised whitewater releases and recreational access is a reasonable step for anyone weighing a Great Falls lease partly on the town's ecotourism prospects, since no rent or market data yet reflects it

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 or housing authority before signing anything.