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

Johnston Rental Market Overview

Johnston is a 2.73-square-mile town in Edgefield County, part of the Augusta, GA metro area. Research for this guide, checked September 2026, identified 4 rental communities carrying a "Johnston, SC 29832" address: Park Avenue Apartments I & II, Hazelwood Manor, Edisto Plaza Apartments, and Ouzts Street Apartments. All 4 run on federal or state-assisted financing -- USDA Section 515 Rural Rental Housing, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, HUD Public Housing, or Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance -- and none publishes an open-market rent; each lists only income-eligibility ranges and directs an applicant to "Call for Rents." Checking each community's address against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder turned up a second finding beyond pricing: of the 3 communities with a cleanly checkable street address, only Park Avenue Apartments actually resolves inside the incorporated Town of Johnston. Hazelwood Manor and Edisto Plaza Apartments both resolve to unincorporated Edgefield County land despite carrying an identical "Johnston, SC" mailing address -- the same mailing-address-versus-jurisdiction gap this guide has documented in other small South Carolina towns, here showing up on the town's own rental stock rather than only its commercial base.

Common Lease Terms in Johnston

No community identified in Johnston publishes a full lease, application, or open-market fee schedule, so terms here have to be pieced together from each property's own management company and from federal housing program rules rather than a single primary lease document:

• Park Avenue Apartments I & II (401 Park Avenue) is run by Boyd Management of Columbia, SC on USDA Section 515 Rural Rental Housing, LIHTC, and USDA Section 521 Rental Assistance financing, with income limits ranging roughly $27,300 to $39,000 a year at 50% of area median income and $32,760 to $46,800 at 60%, depending on household size -- confirmed inside Johnston town limits via the Census Bureau's public geocoder
• Hazelwood Manor (1202 Calhoun Street), also Boyd Management with the same USDA/LIHTC financing structure, publishes a wider income band (roughly $27,300 to $51,500 at 50% AMI, $32,760 to $61,800 at 60% AMI, for 1 to 8 persons) but resolves to unincorporated Edgefield County land rather than the Town of Johnston, despite its "Johnston, SC" address
• Edisto Plaza Apartments (304 Slide Hill Road) is run by Southern Development Management Company of West Columbia, SC on Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, with rent capped at 30% of a qualifying household's income and eligibility spanning 30% to 80% AMI ($16,400 to $82,400 a year depending on household size); like Hazelwood Manor, it resolves to unincorporated county land, not the incorporated town
• Ouzts Street Apartments, a 14-unit HUD Public Housing property managed by the South Carolina Regional Housing Authority No. 1, publishes the same style of income-based eligibility (30% to 80% AMI) but its own listed address is incomplete, so this guide could not independently confirm which government's jurisdiction actually covers it

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but Johnston 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 Johnston, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• This guide could not locate a codified Town of Johnston 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 Johnston's identified rental communities against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder found a real split: Park Avenue Apartments (401 Park Avenue) resolves inside the incorporated Town of Johnston, but Hazelwood Manor (1202 Calhoun Street) and Edisto Plaza Apartments (304 Slide Hill Road) both resolve to unincorporated Edgefield County land despite an identical "Johnston, SC" mailing address -- worth confirming before assuming which government's ordinances, if any existed, would even apply to a specific address
• The same mismatch extends beyond housing: the Edgefield County School District's own headquarters (3 Par Drive), which carries a "Johnston, SC 29832" address, also resolves to unincorporated county land rather than the incorporated town

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

Mandatory Fees at Johnston Communities

No fee schedule could be independently verified for any of the four identified Johnston communities, as of September 2026.

• Boyd Management's own listings for Park Avenue Apartments and Hazelwood Manor, and Southern Development Management Company's listing for Edisto Plaza Apartments, all say only "Call for Rents" -- no application fee, pet fee, or deposit amount is published for any of the three
• The published figures for all four communities are income-eligibility ranges ($16,400 to $82,400 a year depending on program tier and household size), not rent or fee amounts -- a distinction worth keeping straight before assuming a household "qualifies" at a specific price
• Ouzts Street Apartments' waitlist is likely long, per its own manager's public listing, given its small 14-unit count and HUD Public Housing funding -- a real supply constraint distinct from a pricing question
• South Carolina law sets no statutory cap on application fees, pet fees, or administrative fees -- whatever a specific lease states is what governs

An income-eligibility range isn't a rent figure, and a property with a long waitlist isn't automatically a red flag in a market built almost entirely on subsidized housing -- but it does mean confirming any figure directly with the leasing office or housing authority, in writing, before applying is the only way to know the real cost at any of these four communities.

Population Trends, Peach Heritage, and Johnston's Local Economy

Johnston's Census-reported population has moved unevenly across the last four decades: 2,688 in 1990, 2,336 in 2000, a slight rebound to 2,362 in 2010, then a sharp 15.5% drop to 1,997 in 2020 -- a genuine decade-over-decade decline, not a single-cycle artifact of the kind found in some other small South Carolina towns this guide has researched (Edgefield's own reported population, by contrast, swings on how a large federal prison's group-quarters population is counted from one census to the next). No single documented event -- no plant closure, no institutional population shift -- was identified in public sources for this guide to explain Johnston's 2010s decline specifically. Since 2020, two separate American Community Survey aggregations both estimate Johnston's population has recovered somewhat -- city-data.com puts it at 2,214 for 2024, DataUSA at 2,132 -- but the two disagree with each other by nearly 4%, and DataUSA's own year-over-year employment count for the town swung from 900 to 680 workers, a 24.4% single-year change, in the same data pull. For a town this size, that volatility is a reminder that post-2020 ACS estimates carry a real margin of error and shouldn't be read with the same confidence as the decennial Census count itself.

Johnston was founded in the late 1860s when the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad expanded westward, and was named after William Johnston, the railroad's president, by Dr. Edward Jones Mims. The town's own welcome sign calls it the "Peach Capital of the World," per Wikipedia -- a bigger claim than simply South Carolina's peach capital, though not an unreasonable one locally: the peach industry became successful in this part of Edgefield County in the early 1900s, and the surrounding Ridge region still produces roughly 60% of South Carolina's peaches today. Manufacturing is Johnston's largest employment sector, at roughly 20% of the workforce per city-data.com's 2024 estimate and 26.8% countywide per Census-sourced data cited on Wikipedia's Edgefield County article, though no single named manufacturer inside Johnston town limits could be independently confirmed for this guide. Downtown, two national bank branches -- First-Citizens Bank & Trust (430 Calhoun Street) and Regions Bank (400 Lee Street) -- both check out as sitting inside the incorporated town via the Census Bureau's geocoder, real anchors in a town where several of its own rental addresses and its own school district headquarters do not. Johnston also figures into a piece of its county seat's recent heritage story: Old Edgefield Pottery, the working studio long associated with the Town of Edgefield's historic stoneware tradition, closed its Simpkins Street location in Edgefield and, per its own website as of this guide's research, is "hoping to reopen shop soon in Johnston, South Carolina," with no firm date announced.

Common Issues Renters Face in Johnston

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

• No community identified in Johnston -- all four run on subsidized or income-based financing -- publishes independently verifiable market-rate pricing, so comparing "Johnston rent" to a neighboring town's published figures isn't possible from public sources alone
• Two of the three cleanly checkable "Johnston, SC" rental addresses actually sit on unincorporated Edgefield County land, not inside the incorporated town -- a distinction that can matter for which government's ordinances, code enforcement, or licensing rules apply to a specific address
• Johnston's population decline in the 2010s (2,362 to 1,997, -15.5%) is real and Census-confirmed, unlike some nearby towns' single-cycle counting artifacts -- but the post-2020 recovery estimated by ACS aggregators is genuinely uncertain, with two sources disagreeing by nearly 4% and one showing a 24.4% single-year employment swing
• A "Johnston, SC" mailing address on a civic building doesn't guarantee it either -- the county's own school district headquarters carries that address but sits on unincorporated county land, the same pattern found on two of the four rental communities
• Ouzts Street Apartments' own public listing gives an incomplete street address, which kept this guide from confirming its jurisdiction independently -- worth asking the housing authority directly which government's rules apply before assuming either way

Negotiating Your Lease in Johnston

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

• Requesting the current income limit, program type, and waitlist status directly from Boyd Management (Park Avenue Apartments, Hazelwood Manor) or Southern Development Management Company (Edisto Plaza Apartments) is the only way to confirm eligibility, since none of the three publishes a rent figure online
• Confirming a specific address's actual jurisdiction -- Town of Johnston versus unincorporated Edgefield County -- through the Census Bureau's free public geocoder is a reasonable step before assuming which government's code enforcement or licensing rules apply
• Calling the South Carolina Regional Housing Authority No. 1 directly for Ouzts Street Apartments' current waitlist status is worth doing given the property's small 14-unit count and its own incompletely listed address
• Comparing a quoted Johnston figure against nearby Edgefield or Aiken, both larger Edgefield-area or regional South Carolina markets with more independently published pricing, can help gauge whether a specific quote is reasonable for the area

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 and every jurisdiction question needs confirming directly with the leasing office or housing authority before signing anything.