Renting in St. Matthews? Here's What You Need to Know Before You Sign

St. Matthews Rental Market Overview

St. Matthews is a 1.93-square-mile town and the seat of Calhoun County, connected regionally by U.S. Route 601 and South Carolina Highway 6, which reaches Interstate 26 about 7 miles west and Interstate 95 about 22 miles southeast; Orangeburg sits roughly 13 miles southwest. Research for this guide, checked September 2026, identified 5 rental communities inside town: Lawton Housing Inc (303 Calhoun Rd), Lakeview Apartments (105 Lakeview St), Calhoun County Housing (402 Milligan Cir), John G. Felder Apartments (104 Pearl St), and Freemon Thomas II (303 Agnes St). A public affordable-housing directory describes all five as subsidized or income-based rental assistance properties and cites a townwide total of "108 income based apartments," without breaking that figure down by individual property, and none publishes a specific rent or fee amount. Checking each address against the U.S. Census Bureau's public geocoder found a mixed result: of the 4 addresses that returned a match, 3 resolve cleanly inside the incorporated Town of St. Matthews, but Lawton Housing Inc resolves instead to unincorporated Calhoun County land despite its identical "St. Matthews, SC 29135" mailing address. The fifth address, John G. Felder Apartments, did not independently geocode for this guide.

Common Lease Terms in St. Matthews

No community in St. Matthews 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 jurisdiction verification rather than a single primary lease document:

• Lawton Housing Inc (303 Calhoun Rd) is listed as a subsidized rental-assistance property with accessible units for persons with disabilities; no rent figure is published. Checked against the Census Bureau's public geocoder, this address resolves to unincorporated Calhoun County land, not the incorporated Town of St. Matthews, despite its "St. Matthews, SC" mailing address
• Lakeview Apartments (105 Lakeview St) is listed as a subsidized rental-assistance property; no rent figure is published. Confirmed inside St. Matthews town limits via the Census Bureau's public geocoder
• Calhoun County Housing (402 Milligan Cir) is listed with a short wait list; no program type or rent figure is stated. Confirmed inside town limits
• John G. Felder Apartments (104 Pearl St) is listed with a short wait list; no program type or rent figure is stated. This address did not independently geocode for this guide, so its jurisdiction could not be confirmed either way
• Freemon Thomas II (303 Agnes St) is listed as a subsidized rental-assistance property with accessible units for persons with disabilities; no rent figure is published. Confirmed inside town limits
• The same directory states a townwide total of 108 income-based apartments across St. Matthews without naming which of the five properties (or others) make up that count -- worth asking any specific property directly for its own unit total and current wait-list length

Local Tenant Protections

South Carolina law provides the baseline for tenant rights, but St. Matthews 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 St. Matthews or Calhoun County, may enact an ordinance regulating the rent charged on privately owned residential property
• This guide could not locate a codified Town of St. Matthews ordinance on Municode, eCode360, American Legal, or a locatable town website as of September 2026, so no town-specific rental-registration or landlord-licensing provision could be confirmed or ruled out
• St. Matthews serves as Calhoun County's administrative center, hosting the Calhoun County Courthouse and the county library -- corroborated by multiple sources describing the town as the county seat, though this guide could not independently geocode the courthouse's own historic-register street address (S. Railroad Ave) against the Census Bureau's geocoder to confirm that exact parcel sits inside town limits
• Checking this guide's five identified rental-community addresses against the Census Bureau's public geocoder found a mixed result: 3 of the 4 that returned a match resolve inside the incorporated Town of St. Matthews, but Lawton Housing Inc resolves instead to unincorporated Calhoun County land despite carrying an identical "St. Matthews, SC" mailing address -- meaning county rules, not town rules, would govern that property for any local requirement that differs between the two

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

Mandatory Fees at St. Matthews Communities

No fee schedule could be independently verified for any of the five identified St. Matthews communities, as of September 2026.

• The public affordable-housing directory that lists all five communities states program type and wait-list status for most, but publishes no application fee, pet fee, or deposit amount for any of them
• No rent figure is published for any of the five communities -- subsidized and income-based 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 ($1,045/month, per a 2024 city-data.com aggregation of Census American Community Survey data) is a statistical average across all renter-occupied units in St. Matthews, 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, County-Seat Role, and St. Matthews' Local Economy

St. Matthews' Census-reported population has declined in every count since 1990: 2,345 in 1990, 2,107 in 2000, 2,021 in 2010, and 1,841 in 2020 -- a real, gradual, multi-decade decline of roughly 21.5% since 1990, with a 2024 city-data.com aggregation estimating the population has settled near 1,834 since. Unlike Edgefield's documented prison-count artifact, this guide found no single event -- boundary correction, group-quarters reclassification, or otherwise -- that explains the drop. One current data point worth weighing as a contributing factor: the town's own 2024-estimated median resident age is 55.0, well above South Carolina's statewide median age of 40.7, consistent with an aging population rather than a sudden departure of working-age residents. The same 2024 estimates put median household income at $53,550 against South Carolina's own $72,350 statewide median, per capita income at $34,152, a poverty rate of 31.1% (50.6% among Black residents, 9.6% among white non-Hispanic residents), and town-level unemployment at 3.7% as of April 2026, slightly above the state's 3.6%.

St. Matthews' own role is administrative rather than industrial: it is the seat of Calhoun County, South Carolina's smallest county by land area at 392.48 square miles, and hosts the Calhoun County Courthouse and county library. Calhoun County's own named larger employers -- Devro (a UK-headquartered maker of sausage casings), a Starbucks roasting and distribution facility, DAK Americas, Eastman Chemical, Fitts Company, Zeus Industrial Products, and Thermo King Columbia -- are concentrated not in St. Matthews itself but in Sandy Run, an unincorporated community elsewhere in Calhoun County whose own residents use Gaston or Swansea mailing addresses, not even "St. Matthews, SC." That means county-level employment and GDP figures (Calhoun County's 2022 GDP was roughly $790 million, per Wikipedia, with countywide unemployment ranging 2.7%-4.3% across 2022-2024) describe a labor market physically anchored elsewhere in the county, not inside the town whose lease a renter here would actually be signing. St. Matthews' own downtown carries a different kind of identity: nine sites associated with the town and its immediate vicinity are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the Calhoun County Courthouse (1981) and the Calhoun County Library (1975), both sited on or near Railroad Avenue -- a name pointing to the rail-era commercial core that predates the town's own 1841 founding date, itself built atop the earlier colonial-era Township of Amelia established by royal governor Robert Johnson in the 1730s. The town also holds an annual Purple Martin Festival each April, per its own description on Wikipedia, and its "Notable people" list there -- without specifying whether each was born in town, raised there, or otherwise associated with it -- includes Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis, actor Mike Colter, singer and actress Eartha Kitt, NFL wide receiver Alshon Jeffery, and jazz guitarist James "Blood" Ulmer, among others.

Common Issues Renters Face in St. Matthews

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

• No community identified in St. Matthews -- all five findings point toward subsidized or income-based housing -- publishes independently verifiable market-rate pricing, so comparing "St. Matthews rent" to a neighboring town's published figure isn't possible from public sources alone
• One of the five identified rental communities, Lawton Housing Inc, carries a "St. Matthews, SC" mailing address but resolves to unincorporated Calhoun County land on the Census Bureau's public geocoder -- worth confirming which government's rules actually apply before assuming a town ordinance governs a specific property
• St. Matthews' population decline is real and gradual across four decades of data (1990-2024), with no single documented cause of the kind found in some other small South Carolina towns -- the town's own above-state-average median age (55.0 vs. 40.7 statewide) points toward demographic aging as a plausible contributing factor
• Calhoun County's most-cited named employers (Devro, Starbucks, DAK Americas, Eastman Chemical, and others) are physically located in Sandy Run, an unincorporated community elsewhere in the county whose own residents use Gaston or Swansea addresses -- not St. Matthews -- so county-level jobs and GDP figures shouldn't be assumed to describe employment opportunity inside the town itself
• RentCafe's own market-rent tracker returns no result for St. Matthews 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 St. Matthews

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

• Requesting the current income limit, program type, and wait-list length directly from Lawton Housing Inc, Lakeview Apartments, Calhoun County Housing, John G. Felder Apartments, or Freemon Thomas II is the only way to confirm eligibility and price, since none publishes a rent figure online
• Confirming whether a specific unit is governed by the Town of St. Matthews or by Calhoun County is a reasonable question at Lawton Housing Inc specifically, given its address resolves to unincorporated county land rather than the incorporated town on the Census Bureau's own geocoder
• Comparing a quoted St. Matthews figure against nearby Orangeburg, a larger and better-documented market about 13 miles southwest, is more attainable than benchmarking against St. Matthews' own ACS town-wide average rent ($1,045/month), which describes the whole renter-occupied stock rather than any specific unit
• Asking directly about commute distance and transportation to Sandy Run or other employment areas elsewhere in Calhoun County is a reasonable step for anyone weighing a St. Matthews lease partly on job access, since the county's most-cited named employers sit outside the town itself

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 which government actually governs a specific address, needs confirming directly before signing anything.