First families return to Durham public housing community after carbon monoxide crisis

Six households returned to McDougald Terrace on Friday, a month and a half after the Durham Housing Authority evacuated hundreds of residents during a carbon monoxide emergency.

DHA Chief Executive Officer Anthony Scott said he expects a larger wave of tenants to move back into the public housing community on Lawson Street next week.

“If you can imagine, uprooting what became more than 200 people and placing them in hotels, the logistics of all that, and then dealing with things that you didn’t anticipate, took a large effort,” Scott said.

About 280 households have been staying at local hotels since Durham County Emergency Medical Services officials told DHA in late December that residents were reporting breathing difficulties.

Scott said he didn’t know when all the residents would be able to return, but he expected to have a better idea next week. He also said some residents may have to be moved again temporarily after they have returned in order to complete some electrical work.

Work also has been done while the residents have been away to address mold, plumbing, extermination and other issues.

McDougald Terrace, completed in 1959, is the city’s largest and oldest public housing complex with 360 units. It is among a handful of DHA properties that have failed recent federal inspections, scoring a 34 and 31 out of 100 on its last two inspections.

On Friday, neighborhood leader Ashley Canady said she was hopeful DHA was making meaningful improvements.

“Right now I’m just taking it in stride and hoping they’re doing the right thing,” said Canady, president of the McDougald Terrace resident council.

Canady said she spoke to Scott about other needs at the complex, such as having mental health counseling for returning tenants.

A few units at McDougald were never evacuated, and there were signs of normalcy Friday among the swarms of workers coming in and out of the units. The sounds of children could be heard from the lawns. An SUV along a curb played hip-hip music.

Durham Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods

Also Friday, Durham CAN, or Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods, called on DHA and the city to reprioritize the $95 million affordable housing bond Durham voters approved in November.

Durham CAN wants bond money, $59 million of which will go to DHA, to fix problems at all DHA properties, instead of just modernizing the authority’s downtown properties.

It also wants DHA to make its pilot eviction-prevention program permanent and to credit $37,926 in court fees charged to residents whose eviction filings were voluntarily dismissed in 2018 and 22019.

Durham CAN cited Hoover Road as another DHA property in need of renovations, noting that it documented gas leaks, mold and other problems there last summer. Hoover Road resident Sherry Lawrence said she didn’t feel safe in her home because of mold that forced her asthmatic mom out.

“While the recent evacuation of McDougald Terrace residents just months later did not come as a complete surprise to us, we were horrified that many of these conditions of neglect did come as a great surprise to leaders within DHA and City Hall,” the group said in an open letter to DHA and city and county elected leaders Friday.

Building better staff

Scott joined DHA in 2016. In an interview last week, he told The News & Observer that lack of federal funding, staff turnover and challenges in hiring and training property-management staff have hurt efforts to address problems like those at McDougald Terrace.

“What I’ve been doing since I’ve been here is building good quality staff,” Scott said. “There’s been a lot of work to resolve the structural problems we’ve had at DHA.”

The housing bond was already going to help McDougald Terrace indirectly, he said, by making more money in DHA’s capital fund available for repairs and maintenance at the authority’s non-downtown sites.

The evacuation and related expenses may deplete the fund, which had about $7 million in it, Scott said, but the agency will ask the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and, if needed, the city for emergency aid.

Eventually, DHA wants to completely redevelop, not just renovate, properties like McDougald Terrace, which Scott said has reached “functional obsolescence.”

Note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Ashley Canady’s name.

This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 4:00 PM.