The Durham Housing Authority is making progress in its efforts to redevelop its aging public housing properties, but some sites are still mired with maintenance issues and more subsidized housing is needed, DHA officials told the Durham City Council this week.
In response to insufficient federal funding, DHA is redeveloping its properties into mixed-income housing. This is intended to create more sustainable funding for subsidized units by adding revenue from market-rate units and transferring DHA tenants from traditional public housing to the better funded Housing Choice Voucher, or Section 8, program.
Redevelopment is set to be complete at the Dillard Street Apartments this year and at Liberty Street and the former Oldham Towers site in 2028. Eleven public housing sites have already been redeveloped and an additional six are scheduled throughout the next decade.
In the last 10 years, DHA has converted nearly 1,000 of its public housing units to voucher-subsidized leases. It currently has 894 public housing units in its inventory—more than 300 of which are scheduled to transition to the voucher program—and has 2,430 tenants using vouchers.
As DHA prepares for future construction, it will move residents out of aging public housing units to a newer building with voucher support through a Transfer of Assistance process. Any resident who has been forced to move due to upcoming construction has a right to return once the construction is complete.
When DHA residents transition to a voucher-assisted unit, their rent stays the same and they remain under DHA’s management. Section 8 vouchers put those residents in buildings with neighbors paying market-rate for their leases, in an effort to deconcentrate poverty. It also helps sustain the property with revenue from market-rate leases supporting upkeep of the property, as opposed to traditional public housing units that are completely reliant on federal funding.
But supply doesn’t come close to demand for affordable housing in Durham. There are 26,000 people on the waitlist for vouchers, and 2,146 on a waitlist for public housing, DHA’s Interim Chief Executive Officer Ashanti Brown told the council on Thursday.
Costs to operate public housing have increased nationally by 37% since 2017, but federal funding for public housing is currently at the same level it was in 2019, Brown said. A 2022 assessment found that DHA’s properties needed $60 million over the next five years to keep up with aging facilities and new construction. But with DHA receiving only $2 million to $3 million federal dollars each year, those projects might be far-fetched goals.
“It is a failed system,” Brown said at Thursday’s meeting. “There is no way you can sustain housing with funding at those levels, with the backlog that it creates.”
DHA is working to build more units as it sorts through a backlog of capital needs on its three largest properties; McDougald Terrace, Cornwallis, and Oxford Manor are all more than 50 years old and have never been substantially renovated. Council member Chelsea Cook said residents at DHA’s properties are living in “unimaginable conditions,” citing 259 unresolved housing code violations and reports of residents living without heating for three years.
Brown said DHA has 3,000 open work orders, with two-thirds of them in the Cornwallis neighborhood, which has not had a property manager since earlier this year. Of the three properties, Brown said the largest capital needs are with aging electrical and HVAC equipment, and that DHA aims to get all housing units off of gas appliances, to avoid the risk of carbon monoxide leaks.
Adding to the lack of federal funding, DHA’s finances have been stymied by unpaid rent and carbon monoxide leaks that prompted mass evacuations at McDougald Terrace in 2020, draining cash reserves. According to DHA, it receives only 70 cents of every dollar the agency is owed in rent, and residents currently owe a total of $2.75 million in overdue rent. The housing authority has ramped up its lease enforcement for tenants with high balances and those with disruptive and criminal behaviors, according to Brown’s presentation.
The unpaid rent has contributed to DHA’s public housing program being deemed troubled by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which rates public housing authorities based on federal standards of financial stability, physical property condition, management practices, and occupancy levels.
Rated separately from DHA’s public housing, its housing voucher program was also “troubled” during the pandemic, but recovered to “standard performing” in 2025.
Mayor Pro Tem Javiera Caballero said years of DHA being a “troubled” housing authority, in addition to understaffing during the pandemic, has had a “domino effect.”
“To right the ship of a large institution takes a long time,” Caballero said. “Is it fair to those residents? No. Do we have limited means? Yes.”
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