2024 Spartanburg County LGBTQ Needs Assessment

In 2024 an interdisciplinary research team of USC Upstate faculty scholars completed the second needs assessment of the LGBTQ+ community in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. The final report will be published in Spring of 2025. The 2024 Needs Assessment reflected that LGBTQ+ individuals in Spartanburg report significant challenges, including feelings of unsafety, exclusion, and lack of community support. Many have faced high rates of adverse experiences such as homelessness, judgment, discrimination, sexual assault, and substance use. Barriers to mental and physical healthcare—such as cost, discrimination, and lack of inclusive providers—prevent many from seeking necessary treatment. Workplace and school environments often feel unwelcoming, with microaggressions, discrimination, and limited support preventing full openness. Family and faith communities provide mixed levels of acceptance, with many abandoning organized religion due to bigotry. While respondents appreciate the local LGBTQ+ community, they cite limited visibility, racial marginalization, and difficulty connecting with others, especially in rural areas. Overall, there were some areas of progress noted since the 2018 report including but not limited to the formation of the Uplift Outreach Center as a space for LGBTQ+ youth, and changes in healthcare environments to provide intake forms and lines of questioning that reflect the needs of the LGBTQ+ population. This project was funded by the LGBTQ Fund of the Spartanburg County Foundation in collaboration with the Freeman Foundation.