Residents of two downtown affordable housing communities, Willard Street and Ashton Place, are pushing the Durham City Council to take a stronger stance on tenants’ rights after ongoing issues with their landlord and property manager.
In March, residents formed the Willard Street United and Ashton Seniors in Action tenant unions to organize around what they describe as a laundry list of persistent issues with living conditions at the apartments: mold, lackluster repair jobs, security failures, rodents, and more.
At an August 6 work session, a handful of union members, along with Durham City Councilmember Nate Baker, asked the City Council to pass a resolution in support of the two tenants unions, which are affiliated with the Triangle Tenants Union and North Carolina Tenants Union. At a work session on Thursday, councilmembers debated whether to call out Willard Street, Ashton Place, and the buildings’ landlord DHIC specifically, or consider a broader resolution affirming the importance of tenant unions citywide and encouraging housing providers—especially buildings the city helped to fund—to engage with them.
At the time that Willard Street and Ashton Place were first developed, the projects were lauded by local officials and national housing organizations for the collaborative spirit and commitment to housing for low-income residents and senior citizens. But in the intervening months and years, residents say the management of those two properties has not lived up to expectations. The tenants say they just want their voices heard by DHIC and the property manager, Community Management Corporation, after feeling like their basic requests were going unanswered.
In November 2024, Durham resident Jason Pulliam died of heart failure in the Ashton Place laundry room. Debra Davies, Pulliam’s mother and a member of Willard Street United, is suing the DHIC and Community Management Corporation for damages, alleging that the electronic door in and out of the laundry room malfunctioned, preventing her son and another tenant from escaping. The issue is emblematic of the routine problems that Willard Street and Ashton Place residents say they have brought to the attention of DHIC, and now Durham City Council.
“We still got doors malfunctioning,” Davies told the INDY. Representatives for DHIC previously told NC Newsline that Ashton Place was not responsible for Pulliam’s death.
Yolanda Mitchell, a Willard Street resident since 2022, said at the August 6 meeting that the tenants had presented DHIC with a formal memorandum of agreement asking for collective bargaining and a pause on no-fault evictions—when a landlord terminates a lease or evicts a tenant without probable cause—during negotiations. According to NC Newsline, DHIC denied the memorandum (DHIC did not respond to the INDY’s request for comment for this story). The unions are also requesting quarterly meetings with DHIC and Community Management Corporation to maintain an ongoing dialogue about these issues.
According to NC Newsline, DHIC has agreed to recognize the Willard Street tenants union because of federal housing laws pertaining to the project-based vouchers tenants there use to supplement rent for that specific building, but denied its recognition of the Ashton Place union, where residents use tenant-based vouchers.
“Applicable law does not require ownership to recognize any tenant union at the property,” DHIC officials wrote in a letter to Ashton Place tenants. “That being said, ownership supports residents’ rights to join the Union or any voluntary association they wish.”
During Thursday’s work session, the discussion shifted from whether the City Council would support the Willard Street and Ashton Place tenants’ unions specifically, and evolved to a debate about broadening the scope of the resolution to include all tenants throughout the city, with an emphasis on public housing and publicly supported housing providers which the original resolution states have a “heightened responsibility to ensure quality, affordable housing and to engage residents in good faith.”
In North Carolina, tenants rights are limited. But the city and county have some latitude for implementing ordinances with developers that “receive funding or financial incentives” from the local government to build or operate affordable housing, per state statute, like Willard Street and Ashton Place. At the August 6 work session, Sarah Vinas, director of Housing and Neighborhood Services for the City of Durham, said new standards for future property management deals are “on my team’s radar” during a discussion about affordable housing on the city-owned 505 West Chapel Hill Street property.
On Thursday, Mayor Leo Williams and Mayor Pro Tem Javiera Caballero suggested stripping DHIC and the two apartment buildings from the resolution entirely, wary of instigating or singling out specific housing partners in Durham, and instead adopting more general language that supports the rights of all tenants in Durham.
Caballero also said that the city staff and landlords need to do a better job of educating residents about their rights, particularly those in affordable housing through organizations like DHIC and Durham Housing Authority, where tenants already have stronger protections because of the projects’ public funding. Experiences with bad landlords have made many folks fearful of retaliation, Caballero said.
“We need to work towards calming and not towards, again, just agitating because we’re in a moment where everyone is agitated and we have to do the work in this community to tone it down,” Caballero said.
Last year, the city council adopted an ordinance that would prevent landlords from collecting rent on properties with imminently dangerous conditions. Councilmember Chelsea Cook also reminded their colleagues that a similar discussion was had when the council passed a resolution in 2024 that specifically named Amazon and supported worker organizing at a local warehouse.
Baker defended keeping the buildings named in the proposed resolution, arguing the moment was “precedent-setting” given how few tenant unions exist in North Carolina.
“If I could pick a different place with a predatory landlord, I would,” Baker said during the meeting, acknowledging the city’s ongoing partnership with DHIC, who city officials say have been mostly positive partners in the affordable housing space. “But the tenants organized, they want to do this.”
“This is either untreaded water, or it’s only lightly treaded, and this is trying to slowly steer the ship and set a new course around the issue of affordable housing,” Baker told the INDY. “We want permanent affordable housing and we want protections for tenants because that’s not always built in. We can talk about numbers, we can talk about 60% [of the area median income], but we also need to talk about housing stability to the degree that we are able to help keep families in their homes and not allow a situation where tenants are not feeling comfortable that they can organize in their buildings.”
Baker has been tasked with updating the resolution language before it comes back before city council for a vote at the September 8 regular business meeting. Tenants at Willard Street and Ashton Place are hopeful that their fight will bring positive change to all Durham residents, not just in their buildings.
“I’m fine with it because we’re still included,” Davies said following Thursday’s meeting. “It still gets our point across to get changes made in our building and also with other buildings that are going through similar or even worse situations than we’re going through. As long as we get it signed and it gives the residents a voice and brings us to the table.”
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