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)