In its last full meeting, the outgoing Durham City Council listened to the concerns of residents of an affordable housing complex slated to be torn down.
The 240-family Few Gardens public housing complex, located in North-East Central Durham, was built in the 1950s and is now obsolete, according to the Durham Housing Authority, which recommended demolishing the complex and rebuilding new homes in its place with a $35 million federal Hope VI grant.
But holding signs bearing messages from "Hope VI Ain't Working" to "May God Bless You On Your Journey," current residents and their supporters told the council there is no plan for their relocation.
"I just want to know where they're going," said Kim Denmark, a welfare reform activist from Ohio who has spoken on behalf of residents and was banned from Few Gardens property by a Durham Housing Authority official when a meeting two weeks ago grew heated. "These people want help, and they're being told a pipe dream."
Originally, the Durham Housing Authority had told residents--many of which are low-income black families, some with single mothers--that they would have to move out for demolition to begin by spring 2001, but it now estimates that that will not occur until mid-2002.
The presidents of the Durham branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the North Carolina Central University student government both joined Denmark in calling for the council to put more pressure on the Durham Housing Authority and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop a plan so that residents know when they have to move and where they can go.
"The Durham NAACP does not want to see a mass of black women and children falling through the cracks of another flawed system," said Curtis Gatewood, the organization's president.
Council members sympathized with residents' concerns, but said the housing authority cannot give residents a firm timeline on the relocation process until it gets approval from the federal HUD department.
Some suggested asking North Carolina's congressional delegation to put pressure on the department. "I really hope that we will use all the powers at our disposal to say to [HUD], OLook, we need your action. We need you to approve some sort of relocation plan,'" council member Floyd McKissick said.
Council members also reassured residents that no one would have to move out until a plan is finalized.
The Durham Housing Authority has offered 80 vouchers to pay for the cost of private housing for some residents once they have to move from Few Gardens; residents worried that the vouchers will run out quickly. The housing authority plans to move the remaining 160 families to other public housing complexes.
Howard Clement, the council's liaison to the housing authority, said that body has halted one policy to which several council members had objected--continuing to add even more residents to the Few Gardens complex even as it plans to demolish it.
The meeting grew heated on occasion, and several times, Mayor Nick Tennyson interrupted speakers to ask them to obey the rules of the council and avoid personal attacks.
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