Residents of a low-cost apartment complex near N.C. Central University have been given 30 days to move out by the apartments’ management.

“There’s a series of problems we’ve had,” said Howard Williams, president of Southern Real Estate Management and Consultants Inc. Difficulty collecting rent combined with maintenance expenses have Williams’ company “unable to pay the normal expenses” such as water and electricity, he said, leading to the decision to close the complex.

“It’s getting to where we can’t keep the basic necessities on,” Williams said. “All the resources we have is the rent we collect.”

Tenants received notices of closing last week.

About 150 people live in the complex, which occupies most of four blocks fronting on Lakeland Street, east of South Alston Avenue and close to the Durham Housing Authority’s MacDougald Terrace apartments. Williams said his company would “work with (the residents) to the best of our ability” to help them find new places to live.

“That sounds like a Herculean task,” said Ray Eurquhart, a neighborhood organizer who has worked with Lincoln tenants in their previous disputes with Southern Real Estate. “These are poor people, where are they going to be moving?”

Williams said the complex is aged, and “the area that it’s in is not the best.”

According to Durham County tax records, most of the complex was built in 1960. The Durham Police Department’s Crime Mapper shows 53 incidents in the four blocks from September 2011 through August of this year, including 27 assaults.

Tax records show the apartments’ owner as the Lincoln Hospital Foundation, a nonprofit corporation. According to the N.C. Secretary of State’s office, though, the Lincoln foundation was dissolved in 2009 and its listed agent, Durham attorney Chuck Watts, said he has no affiliation with it now.

Wise: 919-641-5895