Town-Gown Unity Against Trump Attacks

The People’s Alliance joins our allies in the Durham community in urging the Duke administration to pursue a budget adjustment process that is fair, transparent, and minimizes harm to Durham’s most vulnerable residents, who should not be asked to shoulder the heaviest weight of Donald Trump’s unconstitutional and authoritarian attacks on higher education.

We recognize that Trump’s ongoing assault on our nation’s universities has jeopardized at least $500 million in federal grants, contracts, and other funding sources at Duke. Hundreds of millions of dollars in existing Duke research grants have already been cut, frozen, or eliminated. Taken together, Duke is facing a loss of almost 15% of its roughly $3.5 billion budget—a massive hole that must somehow be filled.

Given the magnitude of this threat, some level of painful budget cuts and staff layoffs are likely inevitable. However, People’s Alliance is deeply concerned about reports that the Duke administration has designed and rolled out these cuts without any meaningful input from key university stakeholders, including Duke unions, faculty, and rank-and-file staff. Even worse, Duke’s leadership is asking many of its lower paid and most vulnerable workers to bear the brunt of these cuts, while apparently shielding the highest-paid staff and administrators. This is deeply unfair.

Duke is Durham’s largest employer and our residents are a critical customer base and source of revenue for the Duke hospital system, so what happens to Duke’s workers deeply impacts the Durham community. Given the consequences for Durham, the People’s Alliance calls on Duke to open up their budget adjustment process to key stakeholders, minimize the pain inflicted on its lowest-paid workers, and require the highest paid administrators to share the burden of any cost-saving measures the university adopts.

Finally, we urge Duke administrators, Durham community leaders, and elected officials to explore avenues for cooperation in the face of Trump’s assault on American life. We can no longer afford to bury our heads in the sand and hope that he will somehow forget about progressive cities like Durham or that Duke will be the one university that he miraculously decides not to target like he’s already targeted Harvard, Penn, Columbia, and the rest.

This President is coming for all of us. It’s only a matter of time. Fighting each other—instead of fighting back—will allow him to pick us off one by one. The only hope for American democracy is that we hang together, or we shall assuredly hang alone.

505 Coalition*
Position Statement on the 505 W. Chapel Hill St. Development
June 5, 2025

Re: Response to City Staff Memo dated June 16, 2025

The 505 Coalition stands by our previous position that the development of the property at 505
West Chapel Hill Street must include a significant number of residential units affordable at 60%
AMI, in perpetuity. And there must be no more delays in this element of a development plan.
Addressing the lack of affordable places to live is our community’s most critical and pressing
need, and the 505 site offers the City a chance to do something significant now, not wait for
years in the future. We reject the City Staff’s recommendation to simply stop moving forward.
This is a pivotal moment, and now is NOT the time for Council to take its foot off the gas.
As we stated in our position statement in October 2023: “We believe this significant public asset
can give us a unique chance to take a big step forward in meeting Durham’s affordable housing
needs... Downtown’s long-term residents – educators, first responders, bus drivers,
maintenance workers, and especially those on fixed and low-to-moderate incomes – are being
displaced and priced out of the City they helped build and now serve in so many essential
ways.[1]”

Discussions about how to use this important plot of land have gone on for almost a decade.
During that time, hundreds if not thousands of Durham residents have been priced out of
Durham’s urban core, or forced to spend an unsustainable amount of their income on rent or
mortgages. We believe that it is simply unacceptable for the City of Durham to pass up an
opportunity today to use an asset that the City, and by extension, the people of Durham, own, to
do what our residents most need: build safe, attractive, affordable housing.
At this critical moment, we collectively and respectfully ask the Council to pursue the following:

(1) Honor the first priority of the RFP and ask the City staff to negotiate and execute a cost-
effective contract with a developer – Peebles or another qualified affordable housing developer

– to build 160-200 units of housing affordable at 60% AMI in perpetuity at 505. We agree with
City staff that no market rate housing or commercial space should be built at this time. Not only
are market conditions unfavorable, but subsidizing these uses makes no sense in a City where
lab and market-rate housing infrastructure is already adequate.

This affordable housing effort does not need to start from scratch. Peebles has already
submitted to the City a preliminary “low density” proposal – for several stick-built five story
buildings that would require much less subsidy than a 10 -12 story tower using steel
construction. So, the City subsidy for 160 units, for example, might be roughly $15M
(approximately $100K per unit) rather than over $200K per unit required for steel tower
construction. We think this project IS achievable with a reasonable subsidy from the City. And, it
could leave room for the other components envisioned by Council to be built when market
conditions improve.

(2) Time is of the essence. Council should stipulate that this contract be finalized in time for the
developer and the City to apply to the NC Housing Finance Authority for a 4% LIHTC allocation
in fall of 2025, or in January 2026 at the latest.

(3) If Council determines that it has lost confidence in the City’s ability to work constructively with Peebles, then Council should agree to the Staff’s recommendation to end the negotiation process with Peebles. At that point, the City can pivot to identifying another developer – one
with deep AH expertise – to execute the plan to build low density AH at 505 W. Chapel Hill St. Akridge has previously submitted a good response to the RFP.

(4) Most importantly, the members of the 505 Coalition agree that the City of Durham should
NOT STOP the development process, but continue to move it forward with the AH component
with all possible speed. The AH crisis continues to worsen, and our City employees, teachers,
first responders, and other essential service workers deserve action, not further delay.

*505 Coalition members:
Durham CAN
Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People
Duke Memorial United Methodist Church
Durham chapter of the NAACP
People’s Alliance
Durham Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit

Statements from the Board of County Commissioner Meeting

May 27, 2025

Full Meeting recording HERE

Ann Rebeck

Good Evening I am Ann Rebeck, the Lead Coordinator for the People's Alliance. As you know in early March you received a budget request letter from PA. The PA members collectively vote on the budget priorities and the items in this letter were selected via that vote.

Since 1993 the PA Education Action Team has fought for full funding for traditional public schools. That remains true here in 2025. We thank the County Manager for considering the 10 million dollar increase, we respectfully ask that you honor the DPS request for 16 million. We recognize the challenges of the budget this year but remain steadfast that the fiscal needs of our schools should be a priority. 

In the last year and half the PA Child and Family Policy team formed and grew. In our budget letter we asked for the County to fund the newly formed 501(c)3 Carolina Parent Defenders in the amount of $250,000. We believe that this initial grant to the CPD from the Board of Commissioners will help stabilize and reunify families in Durham County. Thank you to each of the County Commissioners for expressing your willingness to meet and discuss this opportunity with team members. I think we collectively believe that we can do better in Durham to keep families together.  In the next few weeks we look forward to holding actual meetings with Commissioners who have expressed interest but so far have not been able to talk with the team. We are also grateful to members of the DSS board for meeting and communicating with the Team about the request. You will hear from some of those team members tonight and hope you will take seriously the PA's request for funding of Carolina Parent Defenders.

Sydney Schildnecht

I’m Sydney Schildnecht, resident and social worker with Durham Public Schools. I’m also here with the People’s Alliance Child and Family Coalition. Respectfully, tonight I need you all to be partners to the children and families I work with by fully funding both the DPS budget, and the holistic early defense pilot program designed to prevent and mitigate unnecessary removal of children from their families and community context when involved with Child Protective Services.

As a social worker with DPS, I am paid on the teacher pay scale. However, we were excluded from this year’s Master’s pay after the Board failed to account for us due to their refusal to include worker voices through Meet & Confer. After months of organizing, the Board approved our pay for next school year, if y’all pass this budget. Not at 5% Master’s pay increase, which is a pay cut to the teachers receiving it this year, but in full.

Here’s the tension of social work. I believe I deserve to be paid respectfully for my degree and skills. I know my working conditions can mitigate burnout and that when I’m not burnt out, I do my best work with our most vulnerable students.

I hold this, as someone with macro social work training, as I work with families who are being evicted, while there are no available eviction prevention funds, and no plans to expand these in the budget. As I direct parents to Entry Point, where they’re placed on a months-long waitlist, with no plans to increase shelter capacity.

I’ve seen an increase of 20 unhoused students in my elementary school this year. This is up 50%, and only includes those identified.

When families are evicted and unable to find shelter, they’re vulnerable to DSS CPS involvement due to the department’s interpretation of “neglect.” After separation, it’s near impossible to find and maintain affordable housing here. That’s why tonight, I also ask you fund Carolina Parent Defenders through their pilot. Doing so moves funds upstream to prevent traumatic separation due to inhumane policies that penalize families for system failures. Early defense keeps families together, protecting them from the harms of stigmatization due to poverty imposed by failing systems. Be on my families’ and students’ teams. Fund the DPS budget and the Carolina Parent Defenders. Thank you.

Maya Bracy 

My name is Maya Bracy, and I am a Durham resident, developmental psychology researcher, intern serving Durham Public Schools, and member of the People’s Alliance and the Child and Family Coalition. I am here today to urge you to invest in a holistic early defense pilot program that supports families involved in Durham’s child welfare system.

In Durham, over 95% of maltreatment cases involve “neglect,” which often identifies symptoms of poverty, rather than a lack of care. When children are removed from their homes by the Department of Social Services, it’s then that they’re confronted with a sudden shift in their access to care. They’re removed from their attachment figures, care routines, and sense of safety. This ruptures critical developmental processes, including brain development and emotional regulation. It puts children at greater risk for developing long-term challenges with depression, PTSD, and forming healthy relationships. 

And the impact doesn’t stop with the child. Family separation is a traumatic event for parents, changing their lives and fracturing the trust and support they receive from their communities. Families are left alone to navigate complex emotional and legal experiences with few resources or social support to help them repair and reunify with their children. But by investing in a holistic early defense program like Carolina Parent Defenders, Durham County could help prevent unnecessary separation and trauma for the children and families of Durham.  

There is already evidence that programs like this work. In Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and New Jersey, early legal intervention and holistic services have kept hundreds of children out of foster care by supporting families, not separating them. These models prevent trauma, improve outcomes, and cost less than our current system. 

So, I ask that you allocate $250,000 dollars of the budget to holistic legal representation and early defense for families involved in Durham’s child welfare system and invest in an intervention that protects child development and promotes healthy outcomes for our entire community.