In our October 1 print edition, we published an op-ed co-authored by Durham City Council member Javiera Caballero and affordable housing finance specialist Ramsay Ritchie arguing for building more housing, both market rate and affordable, to address affordable housing needs in Durham. Readers continue to share their reactions.
From reader Andy Lowe by email:
Many Durham Progressives for too long have offered ineffective housing policies that don’t serve the working-class voters they claim to represent. Creating housing scarcity in the housing market via zoning ordinances and rezoning decisions hurts working-class residents.
These policies are sold as “affordable housing”, “public goods paid for by developers”, “density bonuses” that, in a narrow perspective, can help some (not all) low-income residents have housing, build additional parks, and (possibly) induce additional affordable housing. These policies, unfortunately, can and do combine to have a nasty side effect. Less housing, less types of housing, and less dense housing broadly in Durham.
When housing is scarce, our working-class residents lose out the most, existing homeowners enjoy higher and higher property values, and the city budget is strained thinner and thinner.
The opposition to upzoning combined with increasing costs to builders will decrease the overall supply and density of housing built in Durham. Costs incurred by developers who do build will be passed on to the renter/buyer who lives there. Fewer projects will be economically viable and won’t even happen. The projects that do happen will be less dense and more likely to be car based sprawl. All this and, existing homeowners/landlords get to jack up prices while everyone else pays.
So who is winning in this arrangement? Not working-class residents looking for an affordable rental, not young families who want to raise their kids in Durham and move out of that small apartment. The winners are current Durham property owners (including homeowners and landlords) who win more pricing power and the ability to use community engagement to prevent competition in their neighborhoods.
In short, Durham is suffering from classic Left NIMBYism masquerading as progressive politics.
Durham will not build the housing that is required in the coming years if the city council only allows increases in density on a case-by-case basis and/or at a high regulatory cost. Durham needs density in and near its urban areas and along transit corridors. Bringing more rezoning cases to the city council to fight out which projects are worthy will not bring affordability to the housing market. It will, however, allow for the Left NIMBY homeowners to control and curtail where new housing is built. We don’t need more community engagement. We need more homes and more types of homes at the lowest possible cost.
The Left NIMBY Progressive playbook does not work. Cities like San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles have played that game for years and only have succeeded in pricing out most of their potential residents. Durham should not take this bad deal. Legalize more housing, vote for upzoning, vote for a new UDO that grows with Durham.
From reader Lloyd Schmeidler by email:
Having worked with and for people experiencing homelessness for most of my career, I read with interest the op-ed by Durham Councilwoman Javiera Caballero and Ramsay Ritchie in the October 1st issue of the INDY. One strategy I encourage our elected leaders to consider would be the issuance of microbonds. In addition to or as part of a social impact bond, as suggested by Caballero and Ramsay, microbonds could become part of a community-wide initiative to address our community’s Affordable Housing Crisis.
Earlier this month Lena Geller wrote about a Walltown resident whose foundation was being destroyed by an open stormwater pipe in her yard, and the bureaucratic tangle around trying to fix it. Readers enjoyed the story, and some wrote letters asking the Durham City Council to intervene.
Reader John Schelp emailed the INDY and the council:
Why are the curbs in front of Mandy McGhee‘s house in Walltown concrete—while the curbs up the hillside in Watts-Hillandale are granite?
Because the City didn’t pave the streets in historically Black neighborhoods until a generation later.
For more context, this house is on the same block where a Black World War II soldier was shot and killed by a white bus driver on a City bus. [For not moving fast enough from the second-to-last row to the last row.]
It’s across the street from Carrie Jackson’s house, a brave mother who courageously testified against the white bus driver, leaving Durham with her young children soon after the trial.
And, the house is next to a field of contaminated soil from an old City incinerator (back when the City’s toxic incinerators were located in historically Black neighborhoods like Walltown).
Now, the City is saying they can’t re-connect the two existing stormwater pipes because they can’t find any paperwork in their records?
This is all so fundamentally unfair.
Please do the right thing.
From reader Ken Schlecht by email:
The solution to the problem in “Pipe Nightmare” with Mandy McGhee’s home in Durham seems pretty simple. The map in the article shows water from an enclosed stormwater pipe maintained by the City of Durham dumping onto Mandy [McGhee’s] property, then picked up by another enclosed stormwater pipe maintained by the City of Durham at the far end of McGhee’s property.
The City of Durham should connect their two pipes along the property border with stormwater inlet(s) from McGhee’s property along the way. There should be adequate slope between these two pipe locations. Common sense would say you can’t simply dump stormwater onto someone’s property and say it’s no longer the City’s responsibility! I understand the City doesn’t want any additional expenses, but let’s get practical and at least address the stormwater issue as soon as possible. Then the issue of foundation damage can be addressed.
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