Key Priorities 

Neighborhoods, Housing, and Infrastructure

Duke aims to serve as a connector and resource partner for affordable housing organizations supporting the Durham Community through the formation of the Affordable Housing Strategic Council. 

The Council aims to catalyze innovation, facilitate knowledge transfer, and invest in sustainable projects that achieve measurable outcomes. It will serve as the vehicle for exploring and sharing new ideas that advance solutions for Durham’s affordable housing crisis. 

Key priorities include:

Guiding Statements: Identify all potentially available publicly-owned, nonprofit, and faith community-owned, and Duke-owned property that could be developed for affordable housing, including multifamily and single-family, homeownership and rental; then determine action steps toward feasibility assessment, acquisition, and development. 

Building a tool for nonprofits/select mission-driven organizations that analyzes land parcels for affordable housing with key sorting features (topography, lot size, owner, etc.). Developing a Use Agreement and Training Day for verified users.

Guiding Statement: Provide creative strategies to raise capital from non-traditional sources to develop innovative financial tools to support affordable housing

With support from a Duke Intern, building a mapping tool for nonprofits/select mission-driven organizations to discern the scope of affordable units at-risk of losing their affordability and identify affordable units in the building pipeline in Durham.  Developing a Use Agreement and Training Day for verified users.

Guiding Statement: Affordable Housing is a symptom of a larger issue of the need to increase economic opportunity for low-income/wealth families. In addition to affordable housing supply, we need to work on education/training, jobs, and wealth creation through homeownership.

Exploring avenues to support aging in place and generational wealth transfer through maintained homeownership, including small critical repairs and homeowner emergency relief.

Guiding Principles

The council works on projects that include the following activities: 

  1. All activities are focused on preserving, increasing inventory, and/or access to affordable housing — both affordable rentals and affordable home ownership opportunities.
  2. Reimagine and produce innovative solutions addressing affordable home ownership.
  3. Engage and foster new innovative ideas to provide an avenue for exchange with community stakeholders and a variety of affordable housing professionals.
  4. Cultivate leadership among council members to advance and sustain housing solutions beyond their launch.
  5. Identify emerging trends and develop programs, services, or learning activities to support housing solutions.
  6. Consensus based decision making is preferred in activity identification and execution. However, group decisions will not require a unanimous vote. Each organization represented on the council has one vote. Since consensus is not required, members can opt to have their dissent documented by providing written documents to the members of the housing council that will be kept on file.
  7. All work will be documented and shared for learning purposes to produce best practices for future councils  

METHODOLOGY

The Affordable Housing Strategy Task Force engaged with a collection of local affordable housing agencies, city departments, and financial institutions working together on new financial products for increasing affordable housing inventory and improving local accessibility. They completed a visioning and action planning that resulted in proposals and identified priorities. This work lays the foundation for the discussion items on the agenda of the newly established Affordable Housing Council.

Using the Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitation model, the Housing and Neighborhoods Unit within what was then called the Office of Durham and Community Affairs led a collaboration of Duke and Durham representatives to forge purposeful partnerships in housing affordability and availability for maximum community impact through the Affordable Housing Task Force. The new Affordable Housing Council continues this work but with a smaller membership focused on leveraging collective expertise and assets to increase inventory and/or access to affordable housing.

Composition of the council

The Affordable Housing Council represents collaborations among organizations and various stakeholders to create equitable and innovative solutions for addressing the current housing challenges in Durham.  

  • 3-5 representing local service providers (nonprofits)
  • 2-5 representing Durham neighborhood leadership

*No more than eight total members from local service providers and neighborhood leadership

  • 3 representing Duke or other strategic university partners
  • 3 representing municipal agencies associated with housing
  • 3 representing the business sector (for-profit)
Council Members
  • Angelique Stallings, Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce
  • Ted Heilbron, Kelley Development Company
  • Michael Rodgers, Poplar Development Company
  • Philip Azar, Neighbor, Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project
  • Alisa Johnson, Neighbor, Durham Neighborhoods United
  • Jane Williams, Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit
  • Aspen Romeyn, Real Estate Team, Self Help
  • Sherry Taylor, Durham Community Land Trustees (DCLT)
  • Kimberly A Cameron, Chair City/County Planning Commission
  • Michael Pullum, City of Durham Community Development Department
  • Elinor Landess, Duke Student Affairs/Off Campus & Community Housing
  • Venus Myles, PNC Bank
  • Rich Gittings, NC Legal Services
  • Rick Larson, Durham CAN

 

Council members expressed interest in joining the Council in February 2023, filling out a short application after reading the guiding principles and scope of proposed work, which included the following:

  1. Council membership should reflect the local communities that are benefiting from housing services, as well as the service providers.
  2. Actionable collective work requires each organization represented to bring forward their skills and resources to move a plan to action
  3. While Duke is bringing forward some facilitation/coordination, student engagement, and seed funding, those resources on their own will not be enough to produce action.
  4. All organizations represented should be able to speak to skills and assets that can be brought forward for creative solutions.
  5. Council members should be able to hear and understand housing challenges and trends on a statewide and national level, as well as challenges the university is facing internally.
  6. Terms are assigned to each organization and are three years in length.
  7. In the last six months of a term, the Council will complete a reflection to allow for changes to the Council’s format and guiding principles based upon their experiences.