Durham’s LGBTQ Center In a Tough Spot

It’s Wednesday, June 5.

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Good morning, readers. 

Two of the most authoritative voices in Durham—Mayor Leonardo Williams and the X account for the city’s tourism bureau—recently affirmed, respectively, that “Durham is dope” and “Durham is queer.” As Pride month gets underway, we’re here to remind you that all of the dope queer people living in Durham deserve ample resources and right now, the LGBTQ Center of Durham is in a tough spot.

On May 10, four employees who were laid off from the center two weeks prior created a GoFundMe with a goal of $50,000. The employees wrote in the fundraiser description that they had been let go from the center with no notice and had not received PTO that they were owed. They also wrote that clients they’d worked with at the center were at risk of losing their “case management, housing support, advocacy, and resource connections.”

The following week, Natalie Watson, the executive director of the center, issued a newsletter urging community members to donate to the GoFundMe as well as to the center itself.

“As of today, we at the center find ourselves in a financial crisis,” Watson wrote. “I’m asking the community to help us all: the center, the survivors, and those impacted by the recent layoffs.”

Watson explained that the center’s primary fundraiser is the annual Durham Pride festival, which was canceled due to weather last year. Reimbursements from grants used to fund several programs have also been delayed, Watson wrote. 

In an interview with the INDY, Watson said that there had been a delay in delivering the PTO to laid off employees because payroll for the entire staff had been delayed for several months. The employees have now received money they were owed, Watson says, and clients who worked with employees who were laid off are being reassigned within the center.

In the decade since the LGBTQ Center of Durham was launched, its programming has expanded enormously. What started as a small hub where volunteers answered phones during limited hours has grown into a multipronged operation that offers housing support, therapy, name and gender change clinics, a youth center, a summer camp, a “Southern Queer Survivors Network” for domestic violence survivors, a food pantry, and a clothing closet, among other services.

Watson says “the community has been great showing up” in the time since she put out the letter but, she says, “we’re still not out of the woods yet.”

The GoFundMe for laid off employees has raised $16,896 as of June 5. 

Have a good Wednesday.

—Lena

Clarification: Yesterday, we wrote that Wake County’s $2.08 billion budget raises the property tax rate by .3 cents to 51.35 cents per $100 valuation. The budget actually raises the property tax rate by .3 cents over county manager David Ellis’s recommendation of 51.05 cents per $100 valuation, but that is less than the current tax rate of 65.7 cents per $100 valuation (residents will still pay more in property taxes in the next fiscal year as property values increased across the board with revaluation).

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