Charleston mayoral candidates to speak at a forum Wednesday morning

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – Charleston mayoral candidates will be speaking at a private forum hosted by the non-profit One80 Place on Wednesday morning.

The event is not open to the public but is expected to be live-streamed and recorded by the non-profit. Event organizers at One80 Place tell News 2 that today’s forum is specifically focused on affordable housing and homelessness in the community; with the hopes that each candidate has solutions to these community challenges.

All five candidates and current Mayor John Tecklenburg are expected to participate in the forum. It’s set to last an hour with roughly five questions for each candidate.

Meanwhile, Charleston County Board of Elections said voter registration for the upcoming election is similar to previous years. So far this year there are about 95,000 voters registered a few days away from registration closing.

CEO of One80 Place, Stacey Denaux, told News 2 what they’re hoping to hear from candidates Wednesday morning.

“We hope to hear real answers real solutions, solutions that have concrete plans behind them, solutions that are funded, it is nice to have a vision, it is important to have a dream, it is important to have something aspirations. But we need concrete solutions with real-world implication, real-world possibility, sooner rather than later,” said Denaux.

The CEO of One80 Place says while current affordable housing projects are great solutions, their organization sees affordable housing as a growing issue and hopes candidates will discuss more long-term solutions to create more units in the future.

The forum begins at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, Count on News 2 for full coverage of the forum.