Durham approves $1.4 million to help housing authority install electric stoves
The Durham City Council on Thursday agreed to give the Durham Housing Authority $1.4 million to expedite repairs at the McDougald Terrace public housing complex.
It doesn’t know where the money will come from yet.
DHA Chief Executive Officer Anthony Scott said the money will help the authority move forward with replacing the leaking gas stoves that forced it to evacuate 280 families to local hotels last month. Some of the stoves dated to McDougald Terrace’s opening in the late 1950s, he has said. Gas heaters and water heaters also contributed to the evacuation, now in its seventh week.
DHA has asked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for permission to put aside standard procurement procedures and use capital funding so contractors can fix problems found in recent inspections, Scott said.
The housing authority’s letter to HUD estimates the total cost of making repairs and addressing electrical, mechanical and environmental issues is $5.04 million.
“HUD has responded favorably,” Scott said, and has agreed to waive its normal procurement process except for costs associated with installing electric stoves.
A letter from Courtney Kyles, director of HUD’s Greensboro field office, states documentation supports emergency waiving of procurement rules for ventilation work, water heater work and replacement of gas stoves with new gas stoves.
“Based on the information submitted, the changing to electric stoves and upgrading the electric panel does not indicate an emergency exigent health and safety issue,” the letter states.
However, Scott told the City Council that historically the use of the gas stoves, which aren’t vented, has been a cause of the high CO levels at the complex.
The $1.4 million will pay for electrical upgrades the buildings require for the new stoves. DHA plans to pay the estimated $138,000 cost of the new stoves with non-federal funds, avoiding the procurement process.
Without the city funding, DHA would have to stop the existing contractor’s work and go through a process that would take at least 60 days.
The request was placed on the agenda for the council’s work session, a meeting in which leaders don’t typically vote on items, at the last minute. However, council members said they wanted to suspend the rules and vote on the issue to show their support for the community and improvements.
Durham voters approved a $95 million affordable housing bond last fall that will give the housing authority $59 million. That money is slated to go toward modernizing DHA’s downtown properties, however, not McDougald Terrace, which is located east of downtown near N.C. Central University and Durham Technical Community College.
The City Council plans to discuss where the $1.4 million approved Thursday will come from at a budget retreat on Feb. 28.
Temporary gas stoves
The housing authority is moving forward with mechanical, plumbing and environmental work, but it probably won’t get to the electrical work until May.
That means that it will move people back when that other work is clear but with new gas stoves.
Once the electrical work catches up, people wil have to move back out for three to five days to rewire their units and add the new electrical stoves, he said.
It’s cheaper to move people back in with temporary new gas stoves than to continue housing people in hotels, which costs about $500,000 a week. DHA has spent roughly $2.5 million on relocation associated expenses.
The first six families evacuated last month were able to move back to their units on Friday. A total of 16 apartments are ready for people to move back in, and Scott said more will come online on a rolling basis.
“I do expect the pace to pick up.” he said.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 3:34 PM.
