Dear City Manager Ferguson:

As you know, our consortium of community organizations dedicated to affordable housing has closely followed the City's effort to redevelop the 505 W. Chapel Hill St. property.  Consistent with the RFPs for the site, we have advocated for the inclusion of a significant number of residential units affordable at 60% AMI in perpetuity at 505.

We appreciated your suggestion at the December 4th work session that the City investigate more fully the feasibility of moving ahead now to build affordable housing at 505. We are supportive of your thought to include affordable housing experts and interested community members in that process.

We hope you might consider a more proactive approach. In short, we ask that affordable housing receive the same level of in-depth investigation at this point that Staff has recommended for the Milton Small Building (MSB). 

Staff is recommending a thorough plan to explore the feasibility of renovating the MSB. It is relying on a proven partner, Preservation NC, to: a) select a potential developer; b) explore possible renovation approaches; and c) return to Council with a proposal that would include a financial plan and estimate of needed City subsidy. This should give Council the facts it needs to consider whether the building should be renovated and at what level of subsidy. 

This Council and previous Councils have consistently and repeatedly made affordable housing a top priority at 505. Given this, why shouldn't we proceed now to use a similarly thorough approach to explore using a portion of 505 for affordable housing?

Respectfully, we would ask that rather than just seeking to validate or improve HR & A's report -- which was developed without significant input from affordable housing developers -- Council and staff could undertake the following process:

1. Identify several qualified developers to prepare proposals to build a significant number of affordable housing units at the 505 site. There are highly capable affordable housing developers who are interested in working at 505.
2. Each developer would be asked to develop a rough site plan which shows building elevations, building footprint, and placement of surface parking.
3. Developers would be asked to present along with the plan a financial proforma outlining preliminary sources of funds, with a funding range of required City subsidy needed to make the deal work.
4. At the developers' option, they could also propose uses for the remaining portions of the property, which might include a structured parking facility.
5. In the interest of retaining City ownership, the plan would assume the City would offer a ground lease for the affordable housing portion of the site. Developers have told us that they can make a project work with either a long-term lease or a land purchase.

Thank you for your consideration of this request. Our groups would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss this proposal in more detail. 

Sincerely, 

Rick Larson

For the 505 Consortium:

Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit

Duke Memorial United Methodist Church

Durham Association of Educators

Durham Chapter, NAACP

Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People

The People's Alliance

December 17, 2025

Mayor Williams and members of the Durham City Council:

The People’s Alliance Housing Team congratulates those who ran for office this election cycle, and we are looking forward to working with all of you in this next iteration of the Durham City Council. 

This electoral season was unusually stressful at a fraught time in our country. The level of divisiveness both in the election and during public Council debates has felt personal and unnecessarily alienating. Put simply, it doesn’t have to be this way. 

This new City Council presents an opportunity to turn the page and work constructively together. 

We feel that Durham can set an example for the rest of North Carolina about how to stay strong and united in the face of authoritarian threats at the state and national levels.  We firmly believe and have heard you echo each other around shared values. We know most of you fundamentally agree on many issues

The PA membership believes in collaboration as shared responsibility to the whole and for our leaders to lean into difficult conversations. We expect democracy at its best to be iterative, deliberative and civil.

As a governing body in 2026 there are many important pending housing issues and decisions. To effectively meet them we suggest establishing communication norms that include showing respect for one another's strengths, intentional debate and moving toward consensus.  

We have high expectations particularly around housing given the stakes. We expect: 

• the Council to pursue all avenues so that the business community and developers know that our leaders have progressive goals for our City and high expectations for affordable housing. 
• you to be bold and think outside of the box. 
• the City Staff and elected officials to find systemic ways to hear from neighborhoods in the same way you hear regularly from the Chamber, the PA and other groups. 

We know much of that work is ongoing and we would like to work with each of you to communicate more regularly on actions the city is taking and the challenges and opportunities presented. Thank you for your service. We are all looking forward to working with you and members of City Staff on these shared goals. Look for the team and members of PA to be reaching out to discuss in the new year.

With appreciation, 

The Housing Action Team of People’s Alliance

Mayor Leo Williams 

Mayor Pro Tempore Mark Anthony-Middleton

Councilmember Nate Baker

Councilmember Javiera Caballero

Councilmember Chelsea Cook

Councilmember DeDreana Freeman

Councilmember Carl Rist 

October 16, 2025

Mayor Williams and Council Members:

The People’s Alliance Housing Team wanted to express its unanimous, resounding support of the tenant’s rights ordinance expected to be placed on the October 20, 2025 agenda. 

We hope it similarly receives a unanimous endorsement from the Mayor and all members of Council.   

As one of our members, Milo Graber, who has been one of the advocates urging the city to take up the ordinance, wrote in a recent Op-Ed, “By passing this ordinance, we can give tenants and their attorneys a powerful tool to enforce basic standards of habitability in their homes and even the playing field in eviction court.”

We have heard the concerns voiced by the City Attorney about this ordinance. In this case, we hope the Mayor and members of Council go to bat for renters in a state that offers few protections for those at the mercy of a bad landlord. As you know, renters make up nearly 50% of Durham’s population. 

We know some members of Council are considering an alternative proposal for city staff to be able to wield new tools to force landlords to comply with property violations. We hope those efforts could co-exist with, rather than replace, this proposed ordinance, which puts more legal power in tenants and their attorney’s hands directly. We believe the Council should not wait to vote on the existing proposal as heard in the last two work sessions.  

Further, the same ordinance has been part of the housing code in Charlotte since 2007, in Pineville since 2008, and in Pittsboro since 2022. They’ve never been challenged by the state. Both Legal Aid and private housing attorneys have successfully used Charlotte’s similar ordinance in their legal advocacy on behalf of tenants with unrepaired housing code violations in their units. One such lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of Charlotte tenants resulted in a very favorable 2020 settlement.

The “imminently dangerous” housing code violations in that Charlotte housing complex included, among others, unrepaired plumbing and electrical problems. Attorneys were able to rely in part on a section of Charlotte’s Minimum Housing Code (upon which the proposed Durham Housing Code is based) to achieve an important settlement for tenants who were treated unfairly, as the landlord continued to require tenants to pay rent even while the very serious Housing Code violations were found to remain unrepaired.

We hope that our elected leaders would similarly want fair outcomes through the legal system for tenants at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords.To forgo adopting this important tool to enforce minimum habitability requirements in Durham, based on some possible legal response that may or may not occur in the future, would be shortsighted. We hope that the City will see this as an opportunity to defend the rights of the least powerful and those in the most precarious housing situations. That is exactly what we should expect from our city administrators.

Thank you for your efforts and service to our city, and thank you for your time and consideration to this matter.

With appreciation.  

The People’s Alliance Housing Team 

Members:

Jeremy Borden, (PA Member)

Milo Graber (Lead, Riverside HS Affordable Housing Team, PA Member)

Jack Holtzman (PA Member)

Ann Rebeck (PA coordinator, PA Member)

Henry Sniezek(PA Member)

Helena Cragg, Durham resident 

Ron Westlund (PA Member)