City manager opposes land transfers

Bowing to pleas of Cleveland-Holloway residents, he says city should rethink plans

DURHAM -- City Manager Patrick Baker recommended Thursday that the city rescind land transfers to two nonprofit organizations that have planned to build residences for needy people in East Durham's Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood.

Instead, the City Council will be asked at its Aug. 20 meeting to put the parcels up for sale to any buyer at a fair market rate.

It was a concession to residents of the Cleveland-Holloway neighborhood, who say their community already contains a disproportionate share of halfway houses, homeless shelters and other social-service institutions.

The residents, who showed up by the dozens at the council's work session Thursday afternoon, said they felt blindsided when they learned the city had agreed to sell the two properties to charities for $1 each.

Housing for New Hope wants to build housing for disabled homeless people. Dominion Ministries wants to build a lockdown facility for young people with severe behavioral problems.

Baker said Thursday that city staff members had failed to inform people who had expressed interest in the properties that, in keeping with city policy, the land would be handed over to the nonprofits.

He said the staff should also have told City Council members about the inquiries before the council voted to sell the land to the nonprofits. That information might have affected the council's vote, Baker said.

Council member Thomas Stith III said the vote was taken under the assumption "that these were dormant properties and there wasn't interest expressed for them."

Stith said he thought Baker's recommendation was "very credible."

Natalie Spring, a neighborhood spokeswoman, made an impassioned plea for the council members to accept Baker's proposal.

"It's disingenuous for these nonprofits to pretend they're doing us a service," she said. "You need to set the tone with what happens in our inner-city neighborhoods."

Agencies defended

In defense of selling the land to house the needy, two formerly homeless men said they would have been lost without the help they received from Housing for New Hope.

Terry Allebaugh, Housing for New Hope's executive director, said the residents of their planned facility would be neighbors, not troublemakers.

"I don't think there's anyone that can say these people are a detriment to any community in Durham," he said.

Mayor Pro Tem Cora Cole-McFadden was sympathetic to both sides.

She noted that Durham is part of a region-wide effort to end homelessness in 10 years. Building affordable housing is critical to that, she said.

"We do have a responsibility to help the least among us," Cole-McFadden said.

"But in order for that to happen, there has to be a coming together of the entire community. We're not trying to bombard anybody with anything. We're just trying to put affordable housing in place, so that the homeless will no longer be homeless."

Many residents who spoke said they aren't opposed to affordable housing or providing needed services. There needs to be more of a balance of services and uses in their neighborhood, they said.