Durham Housing Authority evacuated hundreds over CO. Here’s how much it cost so far.
The Durham Housing Authority has spent $485,000 so far to evacuate residents during the carbon monoxide emergency at McDougald Terrace, the agency’s CEO said Monday.
The expenses cover hotels, residents’ spending stipends, transportation, and security at the public housing community while residents are away, CEO Anthony Scott said.
The money is coming from the housing authority’s capital fund, which contains $7 million earmarked for repairs and maintenance needs for all of the DHA’s roughly 1,800 units throughout the city. The agency has 14 public housing communities, as well as five affordable housing developments.
“In emergencies such as this, we can use our capital funds to do that,” Scott said. “But keep in mind we are seeking funds from the federal government.”
The evacuations began Jan. 3. The money won’t last forever, said Scott, who testified before a congressional committee in March 2019 about the “wholly inadequate” federal funding for public housing nationwide. A decade ago, HUD estimated the capital needs backlog at $26 billion, and the figure has now grown to over $50 billion, according to his testimony.
“It’s just sort of part of the narrative around this, how limited the funds are that we have,” Scott said of the situation at McDougald Terrace, the city’s largest and oldest public housing community. “We kind of have to make a decision every year on how much we are going to spend where.”
The housing authority is slated to get $59 million from an affordable housing bond Durham voters passed last year, but the money is going to downtown DHA properties, not McDougald Terrace.
Modernizing public housing
Mayor Steve Schewel acknowledged that in an email Monday, but he said the bond money that will modernize other properties will free existing DHA funds for McDougald Terrace.
The ultimate goal is to end the “isolated poverty of our public housing residents” by converting public housing sites into mixed-use developments, Schewel wrote.
“In order to attract the necessary private investment to build the housing, and in order to create mixed-income communities which include market-rate housing mixed into the affordable units, DHA and its consultants determined that the downtown DHA sites have by far the best chance of success,” he wrote. “I agree with that.”
“In addition, DHA has to make an orderly transition from its current status of simply caretaking crumbling buildings to becoming a successful redeveloper of its properties into communities where its residents will have excellent housing,” the mayor continued. “That transition includes, first, the simple renovation of communities like Morreene (Road) and Damar (Court) going on now. Second, it includes successfully redeveloping mixed-income communities ending the isolated poverty of its residents on the sites where it is most likely to succeed. Third, it includes taking on the much larger, much more difficult sites, including McDougald Terrace.”
The most recent problems at McDougald Terrace came to light after two babies at the complex died late last year and Durham County Emergency Medical Services noticed a trend of possibly CO-related calls there. The Fire Department then contacted DHA, Chief Robert Zoldos said in an email.
The state medical examiner said both babies tested negative for carbon monoxide, but eight people — three adults and five children — at McDougald Terrace were treated for elevated CO levels.
On Monday, a DHA spokesman said the authority did not know the status of a third infant who was 16 days old when hospitalized with an elevated reading.
Leaking gas appliances, pipes
More than 300 residents evacuated from the complex on Lawson Street are entering their second week staying in 12 area hotels.
Scott said he hopes to know by Thursday how long residents will remain in hotels.
On Saturday, more than 350 people packed Burton Elementary School as Scott answered questions about the problems at McDougald Terrace. The complex failed federal inspections by the Department of Housing and Urban Development when it scored 34 points out of 100 in 2018 and 31 points in 2019.
The housing authority inspected 246 of the complex’s 360 apartment units and found “significant” issues with 35 furnaces, 133 stoves and 34 hot water heaters, Scott said. Some of the stoves are the original stoves from when the complex was completed in 1953, he said.
The housing authority expects to complete the remaining inspections Monday — roughly 100 units.
Shut-off valves were leaking gas in some of the units, Scott told residents Saturday. Original ventilation pipes to carry gas outside are made of terracotta, the same material in flower pots, he said, “the kind that break.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 4:59 PM.
