 Good evening, good evening, good evening. I want to call this meeting of the Durham City Council order. People are moving around a little bit. I'm just going to give it a little bit of time here. All right, thank you. I'm going to ask the fire marshals if y'all would please close the door at this time. I'm going to ask if we'll please close the doors at this time. Thank you. Thank you to our fire marshals, we appreciate you. Friends, I want to again call this meeting to order the meeting of the Durham City Council on January the 6th, 2020. And I want to first welcome everyone here today. I especially want to recognize and welcome the residents of McDougal Terrace and friends and supporters who are here today as well. I'm going to now ask everyone to join me in a moment of silence. And as we join together in this moment of silence, I hope that we will all keep in mind those residents of McDougal Terrace who have had to be relocated and have been experiencing other difficulties and significant concerns in their community. So please join me in a moment of silence. Thank you. Council Member Reece, will you please leave us in the place of the flag? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, colleagues and members of the public. If it's your practice to do so, and if you're able, please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all. Thank you so much, Council Member, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Mayor Schuyl. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Johnson. Here. Council Member Alston. Here. Council Member Caballero. Here. Council Member Freeman. Present. Council Member Middleton. Here. Council Member Reece. Here. We'll now have our ceremonial items, and for the first item, I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Johnson to please join me over here at the podium. This proclamation is for National Mentoring Month, and to receive it, I'm going to ask Doreen Langley to please come up. Mr. Langley is Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation and brings this to us every year for this very important aspect of our community life. And I'm going to ask Mayor Pro Tem Johnson if she will do the honors. Whereas in 2002, the Harvard School of Public Health and Mentor, the National Mentoring Partnership, created National Mentoring Month. And whereas the goals of National Mentoring Month are to raise awareness of mentoring, recruit individuals to mentor, encourage organizations to integrate quality mentoring into their efforts, and motivate youth to excel. And whereas a mentor is a caring person that provides a consistent presence and devotes time to a young person to help them discover personal strength to persevere and achieve their potential through a structured and trusting relationship. And whereas quality mentoring encourages and empowers young people to make positive choices, promotes self-esteem and character development, supports academic achievement and leadership, and introduces them to new ideas. And whereas positive youth development theory understands adolescents as a distinct developmental phase where boundary testing and individual identity development are critical steps on the path to adulthood. Steps that need to be supported, nurtured, and cultivated by patient and caring adults in safe environments. And whereas mentors help young people set career goals, meet industry professionals, and find jobs. And whereas mentors serve a critical role in helping youth successfully complete their high school and gain admission to college, equipped with the skills they need to succeed in college and career. And whereas National Mentoring Month is the time when we're engagement from community members interested in becoming a mentor is highest, and is an opportunity to celebrate, evaluate, and encourage mentoring in Durham. Now therefore, I, Stephen M. Schul, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby proclaim January 2020 as National Mentoring Month in Durham, and hereby urge all citizens to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs. Thank you so much. Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, Mayor Pro Tem, City Manager, City Attorney, thank you all so much for recognizing National Mentoring Month. Again, my name is DeWarn Langley. I serve as Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Foundation, which works to provide services and mentorship to young men of color to help transform their academic and professional outcomes. And so there's some other organizations here tonight that will come forth and briefly share what their organization is and what they do. Thank you again. My name is Jermaine Porter. I am the Boys of Color Initiative Coordinator for Durham Public Schools. We have a program within Durham Public Schools called the We Are Kings program that's housed in over 20 schools in Durham Public Schools. We've housed barbershop talks in Durham three times. We've had students, we've had parents, and we appreciate all of the efforts from all of the families, as well as the mentors here in Durham to assist our students of color in Durham, North Carolina. I'm Ray Johnson. I'm the technical outreach chair for the RTP chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. And this month, we're launching our collegiate mentor program where professional engineers will mentor college students as they pursue an engineering degree. Hello, my name is Kimberly Williams. I'm the board of directors for the Durham Boys and Girls Club of Durham and Orange counties. I'm so excited to announce that today we had our grand opening. We have a 32,000 square foot facility located on MLK Boulevard, where the old Walmart used to be. We'll be able to house 600 kids to serve the Durham community. Hello, my name is Winslow Forbes. I'm the chairman of the DL Forbes Youth Foundation. We're a faith-based paramilitary entering program. And we have served over 400 youth in the Seattle Durham. Hopefully, this year, we'll be opened up a military academy. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Larry Thomas. I'm with the Thomas Mentor Leadership Academy here in Durham, where we mentor young men between the ages of 9 and 18. But you have to come in the program between 9 and 14, who's being raised by a single parent, or they're being raised by their grandparents. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Steve Chalmers. I am the president of the Men of Vision Organization. We are an organization comprised mostly of African-American men. For the last four years, we have actually been working in the McDougal-Turris community, where we actually work with youth from the ages of 13 to 18, where we have an organization called the Power for Teens. The organization is basically the purpose of the organization is to build leadership within the community. And we are pleased to be here to share within this proclamation this evening. Thank you. Hi, my name is Pastor Jerry Christian, a Russell Memorial CME Church on 703 South Austin. In our program, what I ministered with men and our women ministry, we are partnering with Burden Elementary School. We mentor children, the young girls and the young guys on how to be leaders in their community, and I'll make sure that their grades and everything is up to par. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Atreus Good. I'm president and CEO of Mentor North Carolina, a local affiliate of the National Mentoring Partnership. The work that we do is to provide expansion services for mentoring agencies across the state. And we also look to address the systemic barriers that you face on daily basis. And so we're the only affiliate in the country that has an explicit racial equity focus because we recognize that you can give every child a mentor, but if you do nothing to address the larger systems and institutions that create the need for mentoring in the first place, mentoring is not solving anybody's problems. And so we're gonna make sure we understand that. So let's hear it again for all these amazing people who are doing this. And if you all are interested in, if you have a young person that needs mentoring, you can reach out to Doran Langley and he can help connect you with the organization that can help you. So again, I wanna thank Doran and all the folks for being here tonight for the amazing work that you do. Thank you so much. Our second proclamation tonight is celebrating and honoring the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And I wanna call my council colleague, Mark Anthony Middleton down here to do the honors. And if Doran could remain up here and I believe Pastor William Lucas is also here, Pastor. Is Pastor Lucas in the hallway perhaps? I don't see him, so I think we'll go ahead. And so Doran, will you please accept the proclamation on behalf of Pastor Lucas and others? Mark Anthony. Good evening and happy New Year to everyone. I wanna thank his honor, the mayor, for allowing me to share in this cool prerogative of his office to read his proclamation. It is a matter of deep personal privilege and joy for me to be able to read this proclamation for our fallen leader, my fallen colleague and fraternity brother as well, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Whereas the champion of non-violence and justice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his life to strengthening the content of American character, fought unrelentingly for the civil rights of all Americans and taught us that courage displaces fear, love transforms hate, acceptance dissipates prejudice, and mutual regard cancels enmity. And whereas in the face of hatred and violence, Dr. King preached a doctrine of non-violence and civil disobedience to combat segregation, discrimination and racial injustice. And whereas between 1960 to 1964, Dr. King made addresses in Durham at White Rock Baptist Church, the Durham Business and Professional Chain, Hillside High School, the Southern Political Science Association at the Jack Tar Hotel, North Carolina College, now the North Carolina Central University, and Duke University, urging civil disobedience and non-violent protest to end racial segregation and discrimination. And whereas on August 28th, 1963, Dr. King led the march on Washington for jobs and freedom, the largest rally of the civil rights movement, during which from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and before a crowd of more than 200,000 people, he delivered his famous, I Have a Dream speech, in which he called for an end to racism and advocated for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. And whereas the march on Washington was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religious, sex or national origin, and prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, employment and public accommodations. And whereas Dr. King was supporting the garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee, and planning the Poor People's Campaign to promote economic justice when he was assassinated in Memphis on April 4th, 1968. Now, therefore, I, Stephen M. Shule, Mayor of the City of Durham, North Carolina, do hereby honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his commitment to improve the human condition of all people through access to quality education, affordable housing, equal opportunity, quality healthcare, living wage employment, and safe labor conditions for all employees. I hereby urge all residents to join in reflecting on and advancing Dr. King's life. Thank you for this proclamation, honoring the life and service of Dr. Martin Luther King. I represent the Durham Community, Martin Luther King Jr. Steering Committee. And every year we host programs and ceremonies to honor and recognize the life of Dr. King. Currently, we accept the nominations for our Keeper of the Dream Award until January the 9th. So if you know of an individual or organization worthy of being recognized, please submit a nomination. Sound like we have a nomination. And then on Monday, January the 13th, we will receive a resolution from the Board of County Commissioners. We will have a day of service on January the 20th from one to 4 p.m. at Jubilee Home, which is a home that provides reentry services and housing for young men here in this community at 404 East Umstead Street. We will also have a marching rally that morning at 1030, starting in North Carolina Mutual Ending at First Presbyterian. And then we will conclude our ceremonies with the annual religious service at Mount Calvary Baptist Church, where we will have our keynote speaker and award academic scholarships to students attending schools here in Durham. So hopefully you all can come out, visit our website, DurhamMLKcommittee.org. Thank you. All right, before we have announcements by the council, I'm gonna talk a little bit about how we're gonna proceed tonight. We have fortunately a very short agenda, which is great. We have mostly a consent agenda, as you'll see, this will move very quickly. And then we're going to add at the end of that agenda. If you could keep the door shut, that would be great. Thanks so much. And then at the end of that agenda, here's how we're gonna proceed. Director Anthony Scott of the Durham Housing Authority is going to talk to us about how the housing authority is proceeding, what actions that they have taken in terms of what's happening in Madougal Terrace and their plans upcoming. After that, I'm gonna give anyone who would like to speak, anyone here who would like to speak, two minutes to do so. And I'll provide some time for people to be able to sign up. There's a sign up sheet that's over here at the clerk's table. We won't do that now, but we'll take a short break. Once we've finished our regular agenda for people to have some time to sign up. Once people have signed up, we will, as I said, ask everyone who would like to speak will have a chance to do so. And everyone will be able to speak for two minutes. After that, if there are questions or things that need to be cleared up, Mr. Scott, we'll be able to do that and talk to us again. And then council members will be able to make their remarks. We'll all be able to make our remarks in terms of the things that we've heard tonight. We very much wanna hear from you all. We're glad you're here. We're sorry for the reason that you're here, but we're very glad that you were here to address us to make your voices heard. And I wanna appreciate you for being here. So now I'm gonna proceed with the agenda and then we will make things happen in that order. Are there any announcements by members of the council? Council Member Fried. Thank you. I wanted to share that tomorrow evening we'll have the opportunity to serve on an order to be on a panel discussion regarding the first rainbow coalition and the documentary series that the UNC TV is providing at the Durham Arts Council and tomorrow at seven. And I also wanted to highlight that there is a reparations conversation with Dr. William Sandy Darity and Kirsten Mullen next Wednesday, January 15th at the Carolina Theater. And we'll be discussing their new book Here to Equality Reparations for Black Americans in the 21st Century. I would just like to make sure that you're all aware. And feel welcome to attend and are invited. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Any further announcements? Anyone else with any announcements? All right, thank you very much. We'll now move to priority items by the city manager, Mr. Manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of council, good evening everyone and happy new year. The city manager's office has no priority items. Thank you. Madam Attorney. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. I'm Mr. City Council. Happy new year, everyone. City Attorney's office has no priority items. Thank you very much. Madam Clerk. Good evening, everyone. The city clerk's office has no priority items. Thank you so much. We'll now move to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is made up of items that the council has worked on previously and it can be approved by a single vote of the council. Any member of the public or member of the council can pull an item from the consent agenda and that item will be heard at the end of the meeting. I'll now read the consent agenda items. Item two, Durham Bicycle, pedestrian advisory commission appointment. Item five, amendment to contract with Durham Urban Ministries of Durham. Item seven, bid report November 19th. I noticed that item five has been pulled from the agenda by Ms. Victoria Peterson, so I'll accept a motion to approve items two and seven. So moved. Second. Madam Clerk, will you please open the vote? Please close the vote. The motion passes seven, zero. Thank you. All right, we're gonna go ahead and hear item five, the amendment to contract with Urban Ministries of Durham. Ms. Peterson, you have three minutes. Welcome, Ms. Peterson. Please give us your name and address. You have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and city council members. These are federal dollars for urban ministry. My understanding, they are requesting and you folks want to approve $90,000 for them. Am I correct? Make sure that we're all on the same page. That's what this is about. Because we have a crisis, in my understanding, the city does not have to match this. And Ms. Freeman is my representative. I live in walking distance of McDougal Terrace, so she represents us from the ward. So Ms. Freeman, I would like to ask you and Pastor Milton, I would just like to ask you too if you would consider to help us to ask the city to add an additional $90,000 to these dollars. The reason why we have a crisis that's going on in our community, that we have a facility that needs emergency help for persons who needs homes and who needs housing. These dollars can be used for that. My understanding, persons who are homeless can come into this facility. Here it says that they work with about 30 families. I think we have about 300 families here in McDougal Terrace that needs probably some kind of assistance. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Steve Shuler. So even though you may feel that, Mrs. Peterson, that is not really what you're supposed to be speaking on. I am gonna speak, I want to speak on that these monies for urban ministries and actually they actually do need even more than $90,000. We have a lot of homeless people that live in our community. We have a lot of single moms that live in our community who have children and they need help. So I'm just asking if the council would consider to add an additional $90,000. You have 42 million that you're sitting on right now today. 42 millions of taxpayers dollars. So 90,000 is not a lot of money. So please consider it. And Pastor Milton, I'm really looking for you to really put this out there to help this community. And Ms. Freeman, please consider, I don't know what you can do tonight, but you can always come back later and put some dollars, add some dollars to this project so that maybe some of those individuals could also, maybe some of McDougarff terrorist folks may also be able to be able to use some of these dollars to help them with their housing. Even though we know that the feds will be doing that, but they're gonna need some additional help also. And thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Peterson. Very emotional on this item. So moved. Second. Moved and seconded. We approve the item. Madam Clerk, will you please open the vote? Please close the vote. Motion passes 7-0. Thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, if I might. Sure. I just wanted to make sure that I noted on that item for number five with the funds that are being used and allocated for the first time for case management services for the homeless. I think that it's a great opportunity to look at whether or not there's something we could do in regards to families in the community that might need case management services. And so I would hope that our administration would take a look into that and figure out if there's a way that we might be able to, in some way, shape or form, take what Ms. Peterson is saying to task and figuring out how we might be able to do that. Thank you, Ms. Chairman. All right. We're now going to proceed as I have described earlier. And first thing that we're gonna do, well, I think maybe what I should do is this. We have already had 40 people sign up to speak. If there's anyone else that would like to speak, if you would proceed over here to the clerks, I'm just gonna just take a minute so that everybody has a chance to sign up that wants to speak. If you'd like to speak, please proceed over here to the clerks table and put your name on the list. If I want to do that now, it hadn't signed up. This is your chance. Mr. Mayor, I understand that there's some folks that wanted to put people in order. I just want to make sure you're aware. Well, I'll try to find that out. And can we open the door so folks can have it? Yeah, yeah. So perhaps the fire marshal could also ask if anyone out there would like to sign up to speak was not signed up. Thank you, appreciate it. Okay, it looks like we've about done it and thank you to the fire marshal for carrying that out and we may have some other folks. While we are waiting for that, though, I'm gonna ask our Anthony Scott, our director of the Durham Housing Authority, if he would come to the microphone and describe for us the actions that DHA has been taking and our future plans. And I just want to welcome Mr. Scott, tell you how much we appreciate the work that you're doing and we're glad that you're here tonight. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of council and city administrative staff and residents of MacDougal. First, I wanted to start in remembering the young lives that were lost and offer my sincere condolences to the families that are hurting and who've gone through such a tragic loss during a holiday season. While circumstances surrounding those deaths are not yet known, no parent should ever have to go through that and as a father myself, I'm heartbroken for all of those that are involved. And second, I want to thank the McDougal Terrace resident leadership led by Ashley Kennedy, who has, you know, Ashley has done an amazing job of helping filling in the gap that we've had in trying to go through this relocation. She's been helpful in relying critical information to us, assisting the DHA and supporting our residents through this crisis. And our residents are having a deal with this rather disrupted. So thank you Ashley for your leadership. Also want to offer my deep gratitude to the public servants who have been working so closely with us to maintain the safety of the McDougal Terrace residents, particularly our partners at EMS, the fire department, neighborhood improvement services, social services, each of these groups have been a tremendous help for us doing this time. In addition to our public servants, I wanted to also thank the public officials from the city of Durham, Durham County for offering resources and support throughout the last several weeks. And especially our community leaders and volunteers who've come in, worked particularly with the efforts of Ashley to support our relocation effort. And thanks to you all, we've been able to care for our residents at McDougal Terrace, while we worked to identify the elevated carbon monoxide levels, repairing impacted units and ultimately returning our residents to their homes. Now I'd like to give a little bit of an update of what's transpired over the past several weeks and what led us to this point. Going back to November, there was a report of an infant death at McDougal Terrace and there was no, it was not reported as being related to elevated CO levels. Later in December 8th, there was a second reported death at McDougal Terrace and it also was not reported as being related to CO levels. On Thursday, December 26th, I received a call from the Director of Neighborhood Improvement Services about a report of an unusual number of elevated CO levels at McDougal Terrace. During our discussion, it was agreed that we wanted to get in an institute of immediate inspections of all the units to ensure that number one, ICO detectors were in place, batteries are there, fire detectors are there, all as a precaution based on what we'd learned from EMS. We also wanted to have EMS in the fire department be an important partner with us in this because we thought it was important while we wanted to inspect for carbon monoxide detectors and fire detectors. We also wanted to make sure there would be education for our residents to know what are signs and symptoms of any possible CO issues and steps that they should take if they suspected there were elevated levels of CO. We quickly mobilized our staff and went out and started doing inspections that Thursday, late morning, early afternoon. Later that day at three o'clock, there was a conference call held with DHA, Neighborhood Improvement Services, EMS, fire, to discuss strategy and approach. It was agreed that all of those additional departments would work with us in inspections beginning Friday morning. So on Friday morning, we all met at Madougal Terrace, our maintenance staff. We had a team of six different maintenance workers. We had four teams of the combined EMS and fire that were also assembled and EMS and fire joined our four teams and the four teams of the six DHA teams. We established communication protocols in case there were any issues that needed to be responded to right away. And we started by prioritizing those families of those that were two years and under and those that were 65 and older. And we also then looked at inspecting all those units that had previous calls. We conducted those inspections all day Friday, all day Saturday, and then we picked up the remaining 46 units on Monday, December 30th and completed those so until we got through all 300 plus units. The results of those inspections were that there were 325 units that were inspected. There were 228 CO detectors that were either replaced or installed. CO monitors were moved to lower locations based on current best practices. There were 417 smoke detectors that were replaced or installed. There were almost 2000 batteries that were installed. And during the inspections, there were four people who had elevated levels of CO. There were six apartments that had reported elevated levels of CO. And how were those levels were not considered to be above the detection of our CO monitor itself? And repairs were made for those identified sources of those CO levels. There were also 13 apartments that reported gas leaks and repairs were made to those apartments as they were known. On Thursday, January 2nd, we had a community meeting so that we could directly speak to our McDougal-Toyas residents and give them updates of all of what we found and what the process was. That was held at Burton Magnet Elementary School and we provided residents updates and discuss what our next steps would be. During the meeting, we got several residents who expressed they still had concerns about potential issues within their units. And the EMS and FIRE was in accordance in attendance at that meeting with us as well. And they followed up after the meeting to go visit those units. It was discovered that there were two other residents that had elevated levels of CO. I got word of that on Friday morning at a part of learning of those elevated levels of CO on Friday morning. That's when we took the extraordinary measure of evacuating people out of McDougal-Toyas who were two years and under 65 and older. And then each of the 11 buildings that had any reports of CO related issues. Between the 3rd and the 4th of January, we went through that process of doing the relocations. We spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out logistics, reached out to several partners, notably DSS who were able to get volunteers there. We also had other volunteers from CASA and Durham CAN who came down to help as well in the processing of residents. January 4th through 5th, we also initiated outreach to federal, state, county, and other elected officials looking for resources that included the members of our Congress, HUD, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development that is, the Office of the Governor, the North Carolina Emergency Management, HHS, HFA, Durham County, Durham Public Schools, and numerous others. So where that brings us to today, as of today, we have relocated 171 families to hotels. There are 11 different hotels. We have approximately 30 additional families that are waiting for hotel spaces to open up. We worked with the Durham Public Schools so that we could pick up kids from those hotels and get them directly to the schools and back. We also issued stipends to families. For the first few days, we have more stipends coming for the rest of the at least week that we expect to have people in hotels. We've also arranged transportation services for residents that would need that. And of course, we've been working with other city and county officials. Our next steps are that we are to complete the relocations of those who still would like to leave. As soon as we get more hotel rooms available, we'll continue to work on our transportation issues, school transportation, dispersed the stipends of families for the remaining week and conduct controlled inspections in those units that have been vacated, as well as controlled inspections in those units where people have decided to stay for CO, mold, any other health and safety issues that we find. Those inspections will begin promptly tomorrow morning at eight. We have a independent contractor that will be coming in to conduct those inspections. We've also reached out to the emergency management services. They are also reaching out to get additional inspectors to assist us in this process. And following the results of those inspections for those units that have any type of elevated levels or other needed repairs, we will proceed to get those units repaired so that we can make them safe and habitable for our residents. In the short term, we're looking to continue to address the needed repairs for our property and bring those units to acceptable standards. I have to say in the long term, it is no secret that DHA has felt strongly that we need to rebuild all of our public housing communities. We know that McDougal Terrace being the oldest community is definitely not at the current day standards in terms of what a unit would look like if we were to build it today. We had reached out to Congress from Butterfield and today I had a meeting with Congress from Price. They are going to be assisting in trying to bring any federal resources that are possible to help us with not only the immediate steps that are necessary, but the long-term rebuilding of our public housing communities, including, of course, McDougal Terrace. So with that, that brings you up to date in terms of where we are today. Thank you very much, Mr. Scott. I'm going to now ask people who are here who would like to speak to do so and I'll be calling your name. And after that, if there are questions and a matter of fact that Mr. Scott can speak to, he'll have another opportunity to do that after folks have spoken. I am going to call everyone here in order, except that I am going to give the, if she would like to, Ashley Kennedy, would you like to speak first? Ms. Kennedy, it's totally up to you. Welcome. Please give us your name and address and you have two minutes. My name is Ashley Kennedy and my address is 9D Ridgeway Avenue. And if you're supporting McDougal, stand up. Have everybody here with me. These are all, a lot of these people, a lot of these people are coming from, I don't know. Just back up, just back up. Yeah, we'll hear you. I'ma just talk loud. A lot of it is because I'm hoarse too. Friends, excuse me. If everybody will let her speak, she will be able to be heard. Go ahead. I'm coming from McDougal Terrace and I'm here today because our community is suffering. We have a lot of our loved ones. I call them my loved ones that are displaced. This week has been very hectic. I got back in town right before New Year's and I know I put in at least 233 hours or more in McDougal Terrace and I don't get paid. There's people that are doing the job that I'm doing that are getting paid day in and day out. Some days I leave at one o'clock in the morning. I'm a single mother of four kids. I just want, something's got to give. Something's really, something has to give for our community. And as y'all see, we're out here tonight asking the city, the county, whoever it may be, to come to McDougal and help us. I've been receiving donations all day, all day long. And our volunteers have worked all day long. All weekend. All weekend, feeding thousands of people. I can't, today probably was my first meal and almost a decent meal in almost a week. I'm running off of four hours of sleep. I have a headache right now, but I'm here with my residents. So I just want the city and everybody else to figure out what we can do to get our loved ones home and in a safe and clean environment. Because guess what? Y'all wouldn't want to live there. Y'all won't, nobody would want their kids to be living in these conditions right now. How would y'all feel if y'all had one of y'all wake up in the morning and one of y'all babies wasn't living? I have so many parents telling me that they stand up watching their kids sleep just to make sure they're not taking their last breath. Come on y'all, something has got to give. Thank you, Ms. Carol. Because I don't have that in order, I don't think we're gonna be able to do that. I'm sorry, because it's, excuse me, it's, well, let me ask this, can everybody sit down and let's, gotta do this in an orderly way. If you have signed up to speak and you are a resident of McDougal Terrace, can you raise your hand? Okay, I think we can do that. All right, I'm just gonna, if you'll keep your hands up for a minute, okay, that sounds good. All right, I'm gonna call on those folks and then you can get up and tell us your name and then we will move on to the next group, okay? Sir, can you come up, please? Please give us your name and address and you also have two minutes. My name is John T. Dunstan. I'm a Durham resident city taxpayer. And I also like to say good evening to my brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and our community. What can I say has already been said, but the one more main person that I'm disappointed in is you mayor, I'm very disappointed in you. You didn't show up to that meeting on the first meeting we had. And you know, I had people coming up to me asking, what do you think about this mayor, JD? And I said, well, you know, we're gonna give him a chance. The first time he was elected because people had their eyes about you. And I said, you know what, it's a conflict of interest when city council members come around from mayor, but I thought a mayor was picked from the people. Make this long story short. As a father and looking at my kids every night, I had to lose contracts because of the conditions that my kids live in. They haven't had no heat in their apartment since the beginning of November. Roots are leaking. Fuse box smells like electrical. And every night, oh by the way, it took three weeks for them to come in to unclog our tub. You know how embarrassed that is? Embarrassing that is to go to people's houses and ask, can our kids take a bath? I had to get a hotel for a couple of weeks for them just to go bathe themselves. But like they say again, would you live in that condition? You know what, I'm the director that you. I don't believe you need to be fired. I believe you need to spend six months over there. Yeah, I'm calling this as it is. Y'all are looking at a political war right now. There's only two people up here that I have confidence in. You don't have to worry about your job. Thank you, Mr. Dunstan. I love you. Others from McDougal Terrace, can you also raise your hand so I can have you come speak? No, I'm sorry. McDougal Terrace residents, yes. Come on up and please give us your, please give us your name and address. Yeah, yes, man. Yeah, come on up. Come on up, give us your name and address. And thank you, Ms. Crowder. Welcome, you have two minutes. Hi, good evening. Samantha Crowder, 1F East Lawson Street. And my question is like to the city of Durham, have you ever had to look in your baby's eyes and fear death because of the conditions of your living situation? When your rent is paid and you've been a resident at this place for four years, you got bubbles in your ceiling, just terrible conditions, like horrible mold in the bathroom that I can't fight. They glazed the tub with paint so it stops up, clogs the whole drain. Like you're taking a shower in a river or something. It's just inhumane, like absolutely ridiculous. You call in for a work order. It takes months, weeks to get some help. You have to constantly call just to get something as simple as a tub unclogged. And the way the buildings are set up, if one toilet or one tub is backed up, the entire building is backed up. Have you ever flushed your toilet and your feces comes up in your tub? That's what we deal with in McDougal on a regular basis. And that's no lie. And this is what I have my baby breathing in. She will be six months on the 29th. She came home into those conditions. I have got in connection with Durham Connection. They came out and tested my unit. I have proof. There's lead-based paint there. She will be moving around soon. I fear every day I look in her eyes and fear that because of my living conditions, I don't know what could possibly happen. And really there's nothing I can do about it right now other than stand up and say what I experienced living in McDougal Terrace. And it's the honest God truth. So please, you guys, help us. Please, I'm displaced. I have five children. I have to get one child to keep Durham. I have to get another son to Bethesda Elementary. I have to get my oldest daughter to Hillside High School. I don't have a vehicle. I can't go outside and put them on the bus from the Days Inn Hotel. It's frustrating. I don't know where my next meal is coming from. I appreciate all the resources that everybody's helping. Thank you so much, Ashley. But this is really stressful on another level of being stressful. I've never thought that it would come to this. And I don't even see them actually fixing the issues that we have. It's unfixable. It's unfixable, honestly, it's unfixable. If each and every one of you guys were to come and just my one apartment, spend an hour, I ain't even gonna give you six months. You and then an hour, you're gonna be ready to go. Five minutes. Thank you, Ms. Crowder. Other folks from McDougal Terrace, come on up. Yes ma'am. Welcome, please give us your name and address. My name is Shankira Douglas. A lot of people know me as Simone. I live at 32E Lawson Street. I just basically wanna know, he said that he's gonna let us know when it's safe for us to go home. What proof can we have that it's safe for us to go home? Because we thought it was safe to live there. And apparently it wasn't. I don't get it. I'm completely in awe. I have a one year old and a six month old. They're tiny. My next door neighbor, her child, was the first child to pass away. That's scary. From the time her child passed up until now, I have been scared to go to sleep. I'm scared to put my kids down for a nap. We're not even home like that because I'm so scared. I'll even go to my aunt's house for my kids to sleep. And that's a terrible feeling. It's ridiculous. They don't care. We're humans and I don't know how many times we got to say y'all see us struggling. We struggling as it is because we live in McDougal. They make it worse by not caring. I was told, I'm not quite too sure if it's true, I was told of an inspection, three years of inspections that have failed with McDougal terrorists under the score of 60 and 60 is failing. If you've known for three years that the score was under 60, why did you continue to let people live there like that? That's ridiculous. If you wouldn't want your kids, your mama, your grandma, or anybody in your family going through this, why put other people through it? And granted, the maintenance man, they can't do it all. Housing authorities swear they can't do it all. Can y'all help us? That's all we're asking for is a little bit of help. If you move me to another neighborhood, just make sure my kids are safe. That's all I care about are my babies. I'd rather go to let them go. But with this, all of us gonna go together. And it shouldn't be like that. It really shouldn't. Like, we got to come up here and beg y'all for help. It shouldn't have came to us begging. We're not dogs. Thank you, Ms. Douglas. Other people from McDougal who would like to speak. Yes, sir, please come on up and give us your name and address. Good idea. Yeah, I'm gonna ask anybody who is from McDougal terrorists and would like to speak, only if you're from McDougal terrorists, okay? So please come on over here to my right and so we can get you all up first. Yes, sir, go ahead. Please give us your name and address and you have two minutes. Good evening, I'm Larry Hunter and I live in 25D. That's considered the alleyway. In a way, as far as like my apartment, for example, I have gone to the management office several times. Feces was backing up in my tub. When I try to wash my clothes, brown water is backing up in my sink where I'm supposed to wash dishes. Unsanitary. Some of the apartments has mold in it. My bedroom at the lower part where the basin is, I can see dark stuff down there. It's like the water is about to sink into the building. I have sprayed and done several things to try to correct it. I wake up sometime during the night before I left. I wake up, I see a book in there, let it be, where do you come from? Where do you come from? That's because the foundation of those buildings over there is no good. You all need to help us. You really do. Because the living conditions for us, we are human just like you all are. I guarantee you all is in great houses we over there. I mean, you step outside trashy everywhere. The inside of the buildings are just torn to pieces. You're talking about a building that's 50-something years old. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. They say move out, stay seven days. You cannot fix that issue in seven days. Mr. Hunter, thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. You also have two minutes. My name is Laura Betty. I live at 52B Ridgeway Avenue. I feel like I'm around family. I saw Mr. Troll spooning out pasta, Charlie. I've been Mr. Reese, Ms. Jillian. The community has got together everybody and they really did a wonderful job in trying to organize helpful evacuated residents. My concern is the children. And specifically, their educational needs, the fact that they do need a stable home. I'm not sure that DAJ has the funds to renew and to repair everything. And if you could just possibly do your best to hurry up the process, if it's a matter of relocating the residents, please keep in mind the children. We all know that the way out of poverty is knowledge. We don't want to interrupt that flow of knowledge. So please, I beg you, think of the children. Relocate, if they have to be relocated, relocate the parents as soon as possible so the children have a stable environment, a stable learning environment. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Welcome. My name is Anthony McLennie. I stay at 5B Warbash. My apartment is in the ridge. I had, since I've been back there for three years, I had three babies that was born there. They had to live in this without my knowledge. But I kept wondering why that indicator kept coming off and I had to keep getting up there recently to turn it off. Couldn't find out what's covered the outside. But before all this went down the day before, I got tested, they told my test is zero. My doctor was watching the news. She called me in for emergency checkup. She bit it on my finger, I read it at 11. She took my blood, called me six hours later and told me I had carbon dioxide at 11, seven. My grandson read it at 17. Now I have two grandbabies in the house that have to watch sleep every night. My first good night sleep was last night because I've been so stressed out. I almost had a fucking stroke behind this. We voted for most of y'all up in here. We put you back in the chair. Are we asking this for a little help? For a little help, because I'm gonna tell you something. Your reelection gonna come up again. You're gonna run for something. We're not gonna put you in the spot that you're in now. Goes for you too, Mr. Mayor. I thank Astley for everything she has done. That's my goddaughter. She has been doing a wonderful job and everybody else chipped in on this effort, including myself, but we don't have to live like this. Mr. Scott and I'm a new battle. They knew what was going on. This is not no surprise and there's no surprise to y'all either because y'all know what's going on. Y'all watch the news with the sewage, the baby's dying. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. I'm LaShonda Orman. I'm in 27A and I'm here to support my whole neighborhood and also bring up the fact that I have mold in my ceilings in my kitchen. I have three children at the age of five, six, and 10, two of them with asthma. So no, we have not had the carbon monoxide in our building but it's the mold that I'm worried about. I went over to the apartment today to grab some things. It's someone in there patching up the ceiling. So when I noticed it, he said, oh, I think I'm gonna knock this down and see if it's really mold in here. The spot that I was showing him I knew for sure was bubbling up because of the mold under there where the water from the tub is coming through my kitchen where my toilet overflowed when I wasn't even home last week and went over all of my dishes. He tried to ignore that. So it's not Ms. Lisa. It's not Chris. It's not Bruce. Neither is it Ms. Rogers. Roberts, Anthony Scott. Where are the real contractors at? You have these jack lead contractors coming in there doing the easy way, covering up. He sprayed something called killer in my cabinets. I asked him between the ceiling and the cabinet, what do you think is in the middle of that mold? These hold all the cabinets need to come out. I'm not trying to lose any of my children. My daughter has been complaining about headaches. She's six years old. I've never had to worry about her with headaches. All of a sudden she's been complaining about headaches. She had a leak in her ceiling in her room from a bad storm we had. Someone was on top of the roof patching it up. They were supposed to come back and check inside of her ceiling for mold. They didn't come and do any of it. So like I said, it's not the managers. Anthony Scott, if you've heard all this stuff about the failure and the inspections, why haven't you taken care of it? Why haven't you tried to fix it? We need help. I'm tired of living in a hotel with no kitchen. I need the help. We need the help. We need answers. Thank you, Ms. Orman. You're welcome. Please give us your name and address. You also have two minutes. Hi, my name is Antonisha Burnett. I stay in two Stygma Avenue. First off, I just want to start by saying, do you guys have to beg us for rent money every month? We shouldn't have to beg you guys to come out and fit something, especially these people that have young children. When I first moved into my apartment, I was pregnant. My daughter was born two months early. She had to stay in the hospital. She had to receive steroid shots to develop her lungs. When I brought her home, Ms. Roberts told me to get a letter so I could be moved out of MacDougal because of the gas heat was affecting my daughter. My daughter has asthma. No one did anything. They didn't want to even accept my letter to even transfer me out. So that's pretty much like a setup for something to happen to my child. I get tired of staying up every night, only getting an hour of sleep scared, watching my children breathe, because I'm just so scared something will happen to them. I just want to put out there. My nephew was Britain Brown. That was the child that died December 8th. No one did anything. You didn't even come out, Mr. Scott, and even try to do anything until she came to the meeting at Burton and spoke. Then you want to come and give hugs and show like you have some sympathy. When you guys should have been having sympathy for us, when we're sitting here putting in these work orders, a complain about mode, complain about silence caving in, complain about plumbing. You guys sitting here and you charging us $20 to get our tubs and things unstopped, but it's been plumbing issues from day one. And you guys know that because you guys have contractors coming out, digging so many feet holes to try to fix this situation that's not going to get fixed. Like this is ridiculous. And you guys, I mean, I'm pretty sure you guys have families. I know you guys go home and live comfortably, happy with your families. Well, you know, a lot of mothers, like my brother's girlfriend, she doesn't get to go home and see her child every day because now my nephew is laying in the iron. How do you think that make us feel? Our time was cut short, my nephew, because the carbon monoxide poisoned him. This is ridiculous. And y'all need to do something ASAP, not just something temporarily. This needs to be a long-term plan. Y'all have to figure it out. Thank you, Ms. Burnett. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. You also have two minutes. My name is Fannie Burnett. Everybody knows me as Jadrika. I'm just fed up. I'm just fed up. Britton Brown was my nephew also. 2001, I had a son die from seeds over there. In 26 age, the whole building is completely shut down. The whole building. Okay, I'm just tired. Like, I've been in the same apartment for eight years. They've patched the same hole up in my kitchen over 11 times. I have black mold. In my cabinets, you can smell it when you walk in my house. I actually have to boil, faveloso, or burn incense because my house stinks. Up under my cabinet, they came and patched up so many times from where the water is leaking down. Well, guess what's coming in? Rats. Rats is eating my bread. They all over my house. They all on top of my refrigerator. You can hear them in the walls, like just scratching all night long. Like, it's ridiculous. My bathroom full of mold. Like, how much more bleach do I gotta spray? How many times I gotta get up here and try to wipe these walls down with all this mold? My windows in the bathroom is rusted. It's rusting. My windows can't even close it. Shut it, nothing. It's just stuck. And I've been called a long time ago and nothing's happened. So I just wanna know when something's gonna happen. My front porch is coming apart. When I step out, I can feel myself rocking. I don't know when when I step on my front porch, I might fall off. It might fall apart. I don't know. So we just want some help. Somebody, please come out there and help. You guys come out there and see for yourselves. Please come tomorrow. Please come out there and look. I'm willing to open my door for you. Please come and look. That's all I'm asking. Thank you, Ms. Burnett. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. Hi, I'm Governor. My name is Brittany Lee and I stay in Two Sima Avenue. So like, I'm pregnant. I have a six-year-old son and I have mold in my bathroom as well in my tub. And everybody know how detrimental that is when you're pregnant. Pretty much like I happen to tell my son to cut off the shower because water just floods up in the tub. And then like even downstairs in the kitchen, it's like a leak from like this mold on the ceiling and it drops over my dishes. And so I have to go back and re-wash dishes or just move it to another side. And then also like in the building 32 where my mom stays, I believe that building should just be condemned like it's roach infested. Like, and my knees have asthma. And so that can trigger her asthma anytime. Like, to the point like I just, I wish I had the money to get my mom up out of there because it's roaches that fall from the ceiling on her bed. So I mean, it's just mind-blowing. And I wouldn't want my worst enemy to live in Matt Duga. It's just terrible. And then I don't even turn on the gas heater. So my family, we'd be cold. You know, because when I turn on the gas heater, it's smell, it's weird. So weird smell. And so we're really suffering. That's all I got. Thank you so much. My name is Alexandra Vallada. I'm a former McDougal resident. My neighbor at B. I live at 31 H. And I have since moved out of McDougal and I do have survivor's guilt because I know that it's not easy to get out of those situations. I was studying at NCCU and as soon as I was getting a few hours of work, they up my rent to 800 just to market value. And I said, why? And they said, because you're making $15 an hour. Ms. Valladaris, can you pull back a little bit from the microphone? Thank you. And I told them, I don't work full-time. I work part-time. I am a student. I attend North Carolina Central University. I'm trying to get my degrees. And they said, well, if you can't prove that you don't work full-time, you're just gonna have to pay market rate. And it took a long time to go through all the offices and to leave my class and to have to go through the extra steps to be able to prove that I don't work full-time because they kept wanting to insist to raise my rent all the way to 800 and market rate. What kind of incentive do we have for people? People can't move out. People can't move out when we have this system and these policies that are not humane, that are not humane. Laura, you're my neighbor. People who know me at McDougal, they know that this is, we are a community. When I left my keys in my car, my neighbors knocked on my door and they said, here are your keys. You left them in your car. I do that sometimes. That is a community that stands together. I can't watch this. I can't open the phone and watch 41 in every single report. 41 is the building with the sewage in the back. 41 is the building with carbon monoxide. 41, 42, 43. 41, that's my building. 41H is my building. And I just wanna say that that was 2010. And you know what? There was water falling in my kitchen and I was cooking, there was water from the toilet. That was falling in my kitchen and my kids. And I looked at the tub and I always thought that the tub was gonna fall on me and my kids. Every single day when I was in that kitchen, I thought the tub was gonna fall over my head because the lines were there. And when I went to Ash's apartment, she had the same lines. Every single apartment growing there, the infrastructure of those buildings, they need to be remodeled. There needs to be a care to keep maintaining those apartments. I have since gotten out. Not everybody can get out. It's time to do something. City Council, it's time to do something. You can use that, guys. Welcome. Please give us your name and address and you have two minutes. My name is Barbara Lyons. I'm the former president at a resident council for McDougal Terrace. I live in the Cornwallis community. I formally resided in, sorry, I formally resided in the Birchwood community, also known as Turnkey. The city manager should know me because Ms. Atwell used to wear your phone out. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm proud of Ashley. And I thank her for all the work that she's done. But at the same time, I want to know why would you make the residents of McDougal pay rent before they moved out for safety? I had my own nightmares with DHA and they know me very well. It wasn't, it wasn't always that way, but they tried to take advantage of me as well. It went south. I'm glad to know how to fight, but so many don't because of fear being put out by management. They do that. That's why I'm here. Management and accounting is so wrong on so many levels. They're stealing from people who are poor. Poor people they already look down on and judge. Okay. They say that they need more funding for what? I did a quick example, a quick example in McDougal. If you pay 360 a month for a year, that's $1,500,055. That's just one development. That's just McDougal. Not including Section 8, not including all the rest of the public housing, not even including affordable housing, plus the bond I voted for. Okay. And one's coming up. So where's the money? Where is the money? Y'all keep talking about funding. Where's the money? Why did they have to pay rent? Okay. We'll be calling each of you and I will be getting in contact with you, Mr. Scott. I need to finish saying this, please. My name is Robert Lines, okay? And I'm the first one to sue DHA and actually win. Okay. That's why they didn't like me. That's why I went south. Thank you, Mr. Lines. I vote, my daughter votes and my son will be voting. He turns 18 this year. And we will vote for the person who is for the people. If not, we'll reserve our vote. You remember who used to be mayor. Okay. That can change too. Do you care? Do y'all care? Thank you, Mr. Lines. Mr. Scott, we care about us, all right? Our address is not our life. That is not who we are. Please stop judging us and treat us as such. Treat us as people. These people are dying out here. I'm speaking for Cornwallis McDougal and everybody that's under DHA's umbrella. Where is the money? Thank you, Mr. Lines. My name is Mamie Bill and I'm in 59 B Wabash and I've been there for 10 years plus. I don't know if y'all can see inside of this cup but this is what I've been dealing with for 10 years or more and nobody can tell me where it's coming from. I have to paint my downstairs every two years. Paint is expensive. I'd rather eat than to paint. So, I mean, where's the money? We don't need to be upgraded. We need to be moved to something better just like the rest of the residents said. Y'all ain't gonna give up nothing to live there. So, do something about it. I vote too. Thank you very much. All right, now I'm gonna go to... This is what I live. I've been living there over 10 years. Can't nobody tell me where it is. This was on my plates, my cups, probably in the rims of my refrigerator and my freezer and no telling me if it actually in that seat. Oh, I'm a drinker. Yeah, would you drink out of that? Thank you. All right, let me just... Before I go down the list, I just wanna appreciate those folks who've been here from McDougal to talk to us. We hear you and we are determined to do everything that we need to do to make sure that you're in conditions that are decent and safe and sanitary. So now we're gonna hear from other people on the list and I'm gonna go down this list in the order in which people signed up. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call a few names and so we can move ahead with this quickly. If the names I call, if you'll move over here to, come over here to my right, that would be great. So the first five names are Chris Tiffany, Delicitatum, Sherry Lawrence, Teresa Spears, and Reverend Tanya Johnson. If you all would please come over to my right, that would be great. Again with Mr. Tiffany. Mr. Tiffany, welcome, you have two minutes. Chris Tiffany, I don't live in McDougal. Skeletal and heart muscles need oxygen, intestines need oxygen, and the brain needs lots of oxygen. So symptoms of chronic low-level carbon monoxide poisoning are like altitude sickness. You might feel weak or tired, maybe a little nauseous, headachey, irritable or depressed. And when people around you were also sick and tired, you get all kinds of social problems too. Arguments maybe, you or your kids take sick days, staying home to breathe even more poisonous air. And politicians say things like, we're willing to help the housing authority, but they spent three days inspecting every apartment, making sure there are now carbon monoxide detectors in every apartment. And if you believe the official reports, they say all the problems were fixed. What else do you want? Wrapping tape around pressurized joints is not how you should fix pressurized leaks. They've been doing that for years and saying they're fixed. But fixing gas leaks and installing carbon monoxide detectors that might sound an alarm at 50, five oh parts per million that you can't see or smell does not solve the problem of acute or chronic carbon monoxide poisoning. But you can see other chronic problems that people have been complaining about for years. Even if it's not your lived experience, many private citizens have risen to the occasion. But why has the city seemed so cold and distant for so long? Over and over, I've heard people say they don't care. They just don't care. Thank you, Mr. Tiffany, Ms. Tatum. Ms. Tatum, welcome. You also have two minutes. Good evening. I'm Delicia Tatum, a resident from Hoover Ruh. On behalf of myself and Hoover Ruh residents, these problems have been going on all over DHA property. It's crazy that nobody addressed the issues until now. I speak for all of us during public housing. What happened to the help that we was promised also? So much have been wrong in my apartment in two years that I've been there. By the grace of God, we have not lost anyone on the material things. But no matter what, we all matter. DHA property matters, period. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tatum. Hi, my name is Sherry Lawrence, and I'm from Hoover Ruh also. And what I'm here to say, we haven't lost a loved one in Hoover Ruh, but we still have mold. We still have holes in our ceiling. Our ceiling is still leaking. You know, I'm just getting my tub fixed for two years, and I've been there five years. I just, in September, got my sink fixed, where it's mold still up under my sink. All they did was just patch the hole up, put a big old band-aids on it, and just say, okay, you're gonna go ballin' Clorox, and that's the mold come back. That's how you clean it off. That's how you get rid of it. That's what they're telling me. Like, I mean, my mom had to move away from my home. My mom would stay in there, she'd elevate. I mean, I have mold downstairs, and they still have not fixed my bathroom downstairs. And I bet you, if they knock that wall down, I bet you it'd be condemned. Also, for real, we shouldn't have to live like that. We pay our rent on time. They shouldn't have the decency to come on time and fix something in our apartment. We shouldn't have to wait months and months, or we shouldn't have to threaten to get our lawyers or get an attorney to even get something fixed as small as a light bulb. It takes three months to get a light bulb. Why? Or they'll bring the light bulb and say, huh, you go put it up. That's not our job. That's not our job to do that. When we live, when we go in that house, that's our palace. That's our, that's supposed to be our dream home or whatever you want to put it. But we can't get out of it, and we always gotta put our money into something because it's mold everywhere. We got by new furniture. We need help. Just not Maduga, Hoover Road, Cornwallis, we all need help. We all, please, we need help. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lawrence. Ms. Spears, please give us your name and address. My name's Lisa Spears. I'm from Hoover Road. Used to stay at number seven, but I was moved to 34 off the count of having three different gas leaks, carbon monoxide and black mold up and through my apartment. Like I've been having these body aches and headaches and stuff like that, like for years on end that I've never been able to explain where they're coming from. But when I actually had to go to the doctors because as soon as they found out about it, I had an appointment made so they can draw blood and do all the blood work and stuff. And just by the grace of God, it came back just, nothing's wrong. It was nothing in my blood to show anything like that. But I done been referred to in arology and stuff like that. So who knows what's in the rest of my body that I haven't gotten checked yet. All because of I've been inhaling all this stuff that I had no idea was up in there because it got to the point that I couldn't even smell the gas. That's how long I had been living in that that I could not smell the gas. I had to take other people's word for it and just call the fire department on the 31st of July of this year to help them come out. Just to tell me that I had a gas leak, carbon monoxide, you know, going roaming off through my house. And I had no idea, two grandkids, four kids, plus myself living up in there. And like I said, I got uprooted out of my apartment. It wasn't fixed or getting fixed so that I can stay up in there. I got put up out of that one to be put into another one. And like I said, I've just been uprooted from everything I was used to without so much of a really explanation. I mean, like I said, y'all, I mean, if you can fix it, you can fix it. But there's no fixing that. There's no fixing all that that was wrong in that apartment. Even though they done painted over and all that stuff now, I have the pictures. I have every picture I have ever took in in that apartment of that mess. Buckets filled up with black water. I have all of that. I have people in here that has the same pictures, too. And I've been out there in Hooverville since 96. And I've been through it out that much from 21 to 7. Thank you very much. Reverend Johnson, welcome. Please give us your name and address. And you also have two minutes. I'm Reverend Tanya Johnson, 3320 Holloway Street. I am the Associate Pastor of Abundant Hope Christian Church, also member of the Durham Canclergy Caucus. And I am here today to say this is not just a one-area issue. I feel as though what has been happening in Durham is that we are playing one DHA property against another. What is happening also? Because we have been meeting with Mr. Scott over in Hooverville. But now that MacDougall has come up and all that is going on over there, all they did was move the maintenance people that were working in the housing authority over in Hooverville to MacDougall. Now when MacDougall finished and we find out Cornwallis has some problems, the same people will move there. We are used to people pitting us one against the other. That we will not stand for any longer. That we are people and we say, the money is going to go here. The money needs to be going everywhere. And also, I want to speak on that $95 million bond. I think before we voted, Mayor, we spoke to you and say it. Why reward somebody and give them that much money to work with when you already seen what they've been doing in the housing authority already? And I also ask you a question and ask you, what will your legacy be as being the mayor of Durham? Will it be that a baby's dying? Will it be that people are living in filth, mold, dead? No, we took a break for the lives that are gone. But these people are not dead. And they want the same thing you want at the end of the day. They want to be able to lay their heads down and know, if God don't take me home, I ought to be able to wake up in the morning. And it should not be at the hands of the city of Durham. Thank you. Thank you, Reverend Johnson. I'm going to call the next five people if you would come over to my right also. Afiya Carter, Maya Jackson, Mary Molina, Antonio Jones, and Joy Spencer. If you all would come over to my right, please, and we'll begin with Ms. Carter. Ms. Carter, welcome. You have two minutes. Thank you. I'd first like to ask, well, I'd first like to thank Ashley, Kennedy. She's an amazing, amazing young person. And she has really stepped up and organized for her community. And whatever happens from here, she needs to be compensated for her time and for her energy. And we all need to make sure that Ashley and her family is OK. I am Afiya Carter, and I'm a resident of Durham. I'm a former city employee. I'm a parent, and I am a concerned citizen. I am here to just address one piece of this, which has to do with governance. It has to do with power. I have served on several boards on several at Ms. Carter. Can you pull just a little bit back from the microphone? I'm having a hard time here. Thank you. Is this better? Yes, ma'am. OK. With several organizations, including an organization of which the mayor pro tem also served on a board. And what I know about boards is that boards are responsible for the financial and the legal implications of an organization. They are responsible for liability. And DHA has a board. However, they only have one resident on that board. And that resident is not a voting member. This is a setup for failure. We need more residents on that board, and we need voting members on that board. That was my only issue. Thank you, Ms. Carter. Ms. Jackson. Ms. Jackson, welcome. Please give us your name and address, and you have two minutes. My name is Maya Jackson. I am a resident of Durham. I'm a supporter of Ashley. I've been volunteering with the residents in the community. I met with one of the mothers who lost their child, and I am a doula. And there are women right now in hotels who are due soon. How are they supposed to come home, bring their babies into an environment which is toxic? And we consistently talk about climate change being an issue for Durham. But climate change is not the issue. It is power. It is classism. It is racism. And nobody in Durham as progressives as it's claimed to be cares about the poor, cares about working black people in this community. And it needs to be addressed. I grew up in Durham. I had friends who grew up in McDougal Terrace, and I was appalled to go into the community center this weekend to see that nothing has been changed. And so when these mothers talk about that they are afraid to watch their babies overnight because they may not wake up. And they talk about they've been dealing with conditions. Asthma, I have four children. I understand what that's like to know that any day now if my child has asthma attack, that she may not wake up. That if there's mold or anything around, that this sets her back and puts her into the hospital. So all I'm asking is that you do one care because nobody cares. For the first time we saw people come out over the weekend. Everyone has been silent in regards to this issue. So if you don't want to see any more black babies die, do something and support these residents in the DHA community. Thank you. Ms. Molina, please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. My name is Mary Molina. I'm a resident of Durham and just recently 51B Ridgeway. Not enough people know what's really going on at McDougal Terrace and at Durham's other public housing units. The DHA board is ineffective in overseeing the properties that they've been entrusted to oversee. The DHA liaison from city council is ineffective as an advocate and simply does not appear interested on the issues or concerns of the people living in public housing. To be fair, I believe she made a cameo appearance on Sunday at McDougal. Not enough residents know their rights. Here are just two of them. As a resident of an HUD assisted multifamily housing program, folks have the right to live in decent, fair, and sanitary housing free from environmental hazards, including lead-based paint. They're entitled to have repairs performed in a timely manner upon request. Not enough people are doing the right thing. I would expect that if you're the mayor or if you're on city council that your voice would carry a little weight with the governor and with HUD in the instance of an emergency such as this. I would expect my mayor and other city officials to reach out to the governor and to HUD without cameras to advocate for the residents. Whether DHA is under your direct purview or not, you can use your positions to advocate on the behalf of these residents. You can help provide for the displaced families during this humanitarian emergency. This emergency is no different from the hurricane emergencies that FEMA and other agencies had had to deal with, except that it was foreseen and could have been prevented. Don't pass the buck. Pass along the bucks. Don't say it's not your job. Make it your job. Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones, welcome. Please give us your name and address. And you have two minutes. Thank you. Antonio Jones, I am a darn resident. And I want to first thank Ashley for inviting me to stand with McDougal and all DHA residents. Just a quick story. I am from Charleston, South Carolina Group and George's Degree Projects. That was three times the size of McDougal. Over 1,000 units in that project. Built about the same time as McDougal. They're talking about projects down in the 90s because of the same issues we're talking about now in 2020. So let's move forward. How do we get here? This is a public health crisis. This is a human rights issue. This is Alcatrina in Flint, Michigan moment right here in Durham. The self-proclaimed most progressive city in the South. There's a lack of oversight at DHA. We have a board liaison from the city council who is clearly uninterested in DHA issues. We are calling for a new liaison that may have a little more compassionate empathy for the residents of DHA property. Most importantly, someone who will not post incorrect, insensitive, and downright disrespectful information on social media about DHA residents. Something else I'm talking about, transparency. What are the real plans for McDougal? I heard Anthony Scott say on the interview that there was a redevelopment plan that would require capital campaign. Now, in my two degrees in public administration, when I hear about redevelopment, that's moving of people. When I hear about capital campaign, that's raising money. So we're raising money to move people. What are we doing? What is transparency? That's what I'm talking about. Accountability. For years, we have been neglected. When I say we, because I stand with DHA and I stand with McDougal. When I say we, we have been neglected by many agencies and many governing bodies. I want to call for a comprehensive, independent, third-party review of all DHA property to ensure that we and the residents return. Oh, ALL. My last thing, and I'm going to sit down. We need some truth-telling to be told around here. So when we say the residents are going home, we're talking about things to fix. Who determined what's fixed? OK. Let me get a third-party on that. I have more to say. What I'll tell you is this is a public health issue. This is a human rights issue. This is our Katrina, Flint, Michigan moment, and the most, in itself, playing most progressive city in the South. I stand with McDougal. Thank you, Mr. Brown. And Mr. Spencer, before you start talking, let me just ask some other folks to please come up. Ms. Sherita Burris, Laura, I think this might be Betki. I'm not sure if I have that right. Arthur Everett and Roger Fowler and Mamie Beale, if you all could please also come over here to the right. Thank you so much. And we'll begin with Ms. Spencer. My name is Joyce Spencer. I am a resident of Durham, and I am a mother standing in solidarity behind the residents of McDougal Terrace and all other DHA residents. We are in a state of emergency. We thank Ashley Kennedy, McDougal Terrace resident and council president for her tireless leadership over the years, and it has been our pleasure to stand behind her at this time of crisis as we help her organize and meet the needs of the people who have been displaced in the map. We have helped Ashley track the locations and needs of approximately 500 displaced McDougal Terrace residents. We have collected supplies, distributed hot meals, and helped coordinate transportation in addition to regulating and resolving medical emergencies. We need for the city, the county, DHA, and all other entities to trust, pay, and resource Black women and community organizers. Black women have been the backbone of these organizing efforts. We know what the community needs. We may be low on financial resources, but we are not incompetent. Durham, your classism is showing. Ashley Kennedy needs to be compensated for her time. Like, frankly, there are many organizers who need to be compensated, but we demand right now that Ashley is taken care of first and foremost and that her family is taken care of. We the community that DHA residents have been able to do with our time, our energy, individual community donations without any official funds from the city. This is what the power of the people looks like. Just imagine what we could accomplish if we had guaranteed resources to sustain our work. I have mentioned several times to several people. Can I please finish? How we need full-time pay community ambassadors to fill resident concerns and meet with residents about their needs and stands for those needs in the ways that we know work best. Been told and have always been asked, what does that look like? Well, this is what that looks like. This is a punty issue, and we need to resolve right now, not now, but right now. I would like to thank each and every donated and student solidarity behind Ashley, Medugal Terrace, and all this this week. Thank you, Ms. Spencer. Hang on one second. Is Ms. Charita Burris here, Ms. Burris? Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I didn't see you over there. You're next. Come on up. Shannetta Burris, I'm a Durham resident. Good evening, members of council. Tonight, I stand before you as a concerned Durham resident and more importantly, a human. I strongly feel as though the majority of his body is too liberal to act with government. We have reached a point where progressive ideology in favor to represent all people in this city is creating great disparities in communities of color, specifically black communities. On the surface, you all advocate for inclusive wealth building and upward mobility for all residents. How are the policies you pass indicate otherwise? When we offer feedback regarding your policy, we're often met with passive aggressive behavior in addition to minority representation on council perpetuating hurtful racial stereotypes against us to further diminish our voice. At this point, we are not voiceless. You all have selective hearing. What we're saying to you tonight, you only consider the concerns of those within your social networks and you exclude the rest of us because we don't meet the qualifications for inclusion. You all have tokenized black voices for far too long. We have watched you parade minorities around the face of policies that offer no real benefit to them or improve their quality of life. You all have a habit of using people to create a narrative for policies that you draft and you discard them in their realities once your political aspirations have been satisfied. I personally think there's no greater sin than creating false hope and marginalized communities for a political game that is simply cruel and inhumane. There's a great disparity in investment throughout the city. Let's be clear. We don't do what terrorists in prime really say the rest of hate at this point. We can see downtown expand to our communities right now and you've offered no help. So what we're saying to you tonight is, you know, we know you trust Durham Housing Authority. If not, Mayor Schull, you're the liaison when you guys awarded $4.2 million for your purchase of fare at place, right? You also pay us a bond recently. So if you continue to give them money, you must trust them. What we're asking for is greater oversight and accountability also to humanize us. We understand that house has been traditionally underfunded by HUD. Therefore, we're asking you all to allocate as you done for the $4.2 million and the bond funds for immediate repairs for them now. We are humans too and you guys are inhumane. Good night. Thank you. Laura, Laura, Laura Betke. I mean, no, I'm saying I scratched my name off. So someone who already spoke to speak. That's all I'm saying. Are you on? Okay. So I scratched my name off. If you look, you'll see Andrea Hudson. That's all right. Go ahead, Ms. Hudson. All right, thank you. So my name is Andrea Hudson. Everybody calls me Muffin. I live at 322 Junction Road. I formerly used to live in old Lincoln apartments which you see has been abandoned for years. But I don't live in Macintosh, I don't live in any public housing right now. But what I do know is I know people and I know people should not be living in the conditions that they're living in. Because what I also know is that when you sign that lease for DHA, any property, you have to keep your apartment clean. Because if you don't keep your apartment clean, guess what? They will evict you. But DHA is not keeping those apartments clean. The videos that I have, I started crying when I walked into that young lady's apartment. And when I video recorded her apartment, I was like, this is 2019. Why are people living like this in the most progressive city? And we have the most progressive city council. I need for y'all to actually do some progressive work. And when I say do progressive work, I mean, if DHA is not willing to do it, then y'all have to be willing to kick them in the butt and say, you're gonna do it. Because $59 million, they need zero dollars. Because all the money they have, they've obviously mismanaged it. So when Anthony Scott came into their office, he knew there were problems. But instead of him addressing those problems, he was addressing other issues to get more money. We know that money has been mismanaged. They're buying new sprinter trucks and giving new cell phones out to their maintenance folks. Those could have been monies to get folks' apartments renovated, right? We also know that that's prime real estate. It's right near the highway, RTP. It's right near Central. It's in between Durham Tech. It's right down, it's not 10 minutes from downtown. So what we know is gonna happen, y'all say that they're gonna be able to return. But what I fear is you're gonna get everybody out of there right now because you already know that it's damaged goods. But then you're gonna have developers coming in and swooping and take that property and you're gonna have all these families displaced. And we know that because whatever you had people sign to get those little cards, saying that if they're leased, it's the same things if they're in that hotel. Now, why is that fair? All right. Thank you, Ms. Hudson. And, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be done. Ms. Hudson. Okay, I'm gonna be done. This is my last thing. Okay. What we also know is if we care for our most marginalized of our community, we are addressing the needs of all of our communities. And we are not doing that as a city. So we need to take care of everybody. And y'all got money. Y'all need to put out $10 million. That's what I'm asking for. 10 million, because if 10 million, if you can't put them back in Maduga, you can put them in apartments elsewhere and pay their apartment fees for a year. You can do that. Thank you. So let's do that as a city. Thank you so much. Mr. Everett. Thank you so much. Mr. Everett. Mr. Arthur Everett. Mr. Everett, welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. Yes, my name is Arthur Everett, Minister Arthur Everett. And I live on 316 Dallad Street. And I have been asked to come because what I heard is familiar from my past. And I wanted the new board to know what I know about not having things in order for people to live in harmony and in good conditions. I've been living in Durham for 65 years and I've seen changes. And I have worked for the Durham Housing Authority under a different leadership. And I know that some of the problems back in 1985, I'm hearing them being resurfaced in 2020, which is really a sad case for the administration that overlooks the condition for people's lives. And it bothers me to know that because this election here, I'm hoping that there would be a change in the leadership in our city because it requires not only just the people asking, but there has to be a desire in the heart of this board to hear what they are saying and to listen to their conditions and says that is inhumane. We're not gonna allow that to happen in Durham. Now I'm witnessing now a great change in the housing area. I see new houses being built and I see who occupying those houses. And those houses are being built by specifications that has none of the problems that MacDougall is having. So that tells me that there is a race imbalance in Durham. And I come to you tonight to ask you to look at that situation and see where you can fit in to bring about the greater change in Durham. My brothers and sisters do not deserve to live in that manner, not at any time. So you can make a difference. So in conclusion, I'd say all the things that has been mentioned here, I'm familiar with and old North Durham stands with MacDougall terrorists and all that we know stands behind them that could not be here. Thank you for your time and God bless you. Thank you, Mr. Everett. And now we'll hear from Mr. Roger Fowler. And while Mr. Fowler is speaking, if I could ask the next group of people to please come over to my right, that would be Mamie Beal, Cynthia Harris, Deborah Friedman, Jamaka Webb and Tracy Briscoe. Mr. Fowler, welcome. You have two minutes. Yes. I just wanna thank you for the opportunity to come here and speak. I'm here to support the MacDougall terrorist community as well as the Walker and Cozart family. My name is Roger Fowler. I am a resident of Durham, 5012 Millstone Drive and I am the pastor of the deceased child that was just buried a few months ago. And I want to look at you, this council, and look at you face to face and let you know that you have the power to do something about this. As I sat back in these chairs here and I looked at the expression on your faces as individuals when these residents got up here and made their case, some of you looked in awe and couldn't believe that these residents were living like this. And some of you gave the expression of you couldn't wait for this night to be over with. But I wanna let you know you have the power to do something about this. Now as I go to the Walker and Cozart family's house to counsel and to give comfort, I see a deteriorating apartment. And I wanna let you know that you really need to realize the magnitude of neglect that's happening to this house, this community. I am a resident of MacDougall terrorist back in the 70s. And as a kid, we played with those open gas bars. We played basketball with tennis balls, thrown them behind those bars. We grabbed hold to them and we shook them. And we took, put them to the test. And I want you all to understand that when I went to console the Cozart family after eulogizing this baby right here, I hold his obituary in my hand that doesn't have an obituary on it because he hadn't even lived a life. Couldn't talk about who he was. I just want you to know that those same appliances that were there in the 70s are here at 2000. And I want you to know that's the neglect of not the people, but the city. Thank you, Mr. Fowler. Ms. Beale, Ms. Mamie Beale. Oh, okay. Thank you, Ms. Beale. Ms. Harris. Hi, my name is Cynthia Harris. I am a Durham resident. I'm a community organizer with We Dreamin' Black and I'm also a lead doula for my May Inc. These residents deserve to have safe living conditions. Safe living conditions are a human right. All of their concerns need to be addressed immediately. The conditions are inhumane. I stand in solidarity with Matt Dougal residents and all DHA residents. This is personal for me because I have family and friends who live in DHA. I've seen the issues of mold, refrigerators not working, which causes families to lose food. I've also seen holes in their ceilings. Matt Dougal residents have also created a list of demands for the city and DHA to adhere to and I will read them now. Rights of a quiet enjoyment. Residents have complaints of maintenance entering in their apartments without notifications. Residents have complaints of maintenance smoking in their units. Residents have complaints of being treated unfairly, spoken to unfairly, insulted and treated rudely by maintenance. Residents request proper documentation and process of maintenance requests. Financial, the residents are requesting a reimbursement of rent for time for the evacuated from their premises. Residents request compensation for Ashley Kennedy for a time work including overtime. Residents are requesting an official audit of rental accounts, fees assessed for damages and late fees, dated back to 1994 to present day. Residents are being charged for damages already in units and normal wear and tear, considering the quality of the structure repairs in the age of housing. Transportation, transportation is requested. Sign-up sheets for transportation while residents are relocated. Communication, a 1-800 number and daily communication are available at front desk of hotels. And motels for updates on housing, cash and food cards to cover their expenses. Some residents do not have access to the internet and may not have cell phones. Repairs and pest control. Repairs for mold, leaks and pest control include eroded units and rats, roaches. Also bedbugs. Some of the units have bedbugs in them. I've had several residents text me today and tell me and call me that they have not received their food cards for today as promised by DHA. That's the problem. They told them that they would be at the hotels today and they would give them their food stipends for today. They would be back today at 9 a.m. and they were not there. So we need answers about that. I have residents that have not eaten today at all. Ms. Harris, I'm sure Mr. Scott will respond to that. Okay, so I really want that answer because I have people blowing up my phone now while I'm in this meeting. Thank you, Ms. They're asking me where their meal's gonna come from tonight. Thank you, Ms. Harris. I have not eaten all day. That's a problem. You guys have eaten all day. I know y'all have. Y'all have had breakfast, lunch, and some of y'all have already had dinner. That's a problem. I have mothers who have not fed their kids today. Thank you, Ms. Harris. Y'all need to fix it. Deborah Friedman. Deborah Friedman. Deborah Friedman. And I live at 1109 East Hardscrabble Drive in Hillsborough. Why do I always feel Durham government cares more about policies than they do about people? Maybe it's because a political pack and a city council play an outsized role in our community. Maybe because whole squats of people of color are being damaged by your social justice narcissism. Whole communities are devastated by beyond policing and Jews are mortified. You were the ones who energized a lethal propaganda resulting in the death of Jews. Durham deserves better. You presume to know what's best for our communities when you allow inhumane conditions in public housing. People you appointed are responsible for incompetence and negligence in Durham housing authority. Then there are the continued rumors about Parks and Recreations Department or city employees. How can a city government propped up by a political pack continue to wreak havoc on the lives of its citizens unabated? It must be stopped. It's time to call an outside auditor, auditors, national media and the governor for help. When the enablers have enablers, it's time to call a state of emergency. Thank you, Ms. Freeman. Now we'll hear from Jamaka Webb. Jamaka Webb, sorry. Please give us your name and address and you also have two minutes. My name is Jamaka Webb. I am a resident of Hoover Road. A former resident of Israel's. Hope this reception is just to get my manager for my property to even call me furniture in my kitchen table. I'm petitioned just to get a leak fixed in my cellar when maintenance comes in to change my filter and they see the water leaking. They see the rest on my floor from a metal chair that I had in my living room. Where is the rest coming from? Because it's getting wet. These are not new issues. These buildings are over 50 years old. Some of them close to 70 years old and no maintenance has been done. So the funds that they're getting, where are they going? They're not maintenance in the buildings. And they'll tell us they don't have the funds to fix a leak. You have inadequate maintenance men if they can't come in and unstop my toilet which when I live in Edgemont and now living in Hoover Road is the same conditions and I feel like I'm better than having to step down into that neighborhood. I feel like I should be in mixed income and working my way up to be able to move out and pay for rent. But because of the way this city is and the gentrification, you can't afford to move out. If you move out, within a year you're gonna lose your place because the minimum wage doesn't even allow you to live. It doesn't allow you to pay your bills. There's no way you can say that you don't have the funds when we see the money being spent. Nobody would be the CEO of Durham Housing Authority if they didn't have their salary. I was treated unfairly by my property manager. She felt like, you're ghetto. This is all you deserve. And you shouldn't be complaining. You should just deal with it. And I'm tired of that. And I'm only upset because these people are going through it. But when I went through it, I had to call Neighbor Improvement Services myself. I had to call them. I had to have that man come out and tell me everything that I knew was wrong with my apartment was accurate. So don't tell me you're doing all that you can when you've done nothing. I grew up in Hoover Road and I'm back there now and nothing has changed. It's the same apartment. Only thing is it's in a worse condition. And I didn't have that going on when I was five, six years old. Thank you, Ms. Webb. I'm sorry, babe. Thank you. I have to live in public housing. I'm gonna ask now, are you Ms. Briscoe? Ms. Briscoe, come on up. As Ms. Briscoe comes up, could I also ask to come over to my right, Cynthia Fox, Rachel Cordero, Rafiq Zayedi, Minister Paul Scott, and Rachel Cordero, please. Ms. Briscoe. My name is Tracy Briscoe. I'm a Durham citizen. I live at 5,300 New Hall. And I want to just first honor you all. I've been watching you as a community rally together and make things happen. You are making it happen. Ashley, obviously Ashley is running the game, but as I'm on the Facebook page and looking at you, look out for one another and make sure your babies are gonna get home from school to the right hotel. Let's put a name in your pocket so they can get to the right hotel because my kids wouldn't know how to get to the right place. I have four kids, six, four, two and one. And I'm here because of my skin color tonight because if I were in this scenario, I think my voice would be heard louder and that's not right to be in this situation. And that's not right. That's called systematic injustice. And leaving people like this in these situations, it's not gonna fix the gap. This is making the gap worse. These are educated, well-being individuals that love their family. I visited a nine month pregnant woman this morning who has a two-year-old and a three-year-old and a little dog in her hotel. Her two-year-old and three-year-old is throwing up, running 103 fever while she's having contractions. No one is there. This is not okay. That is a lot of stress on a nine-month pregnant woman. It's gotta change. If we want Durham to be what we represent ourselves to be, this is Durham. Thank you, Ms. Breska. Welcome. Next we'll have Cynthia Fox. Ms. Fox here. All right then. Rachel Cordero. Ms. Cordero, welcome. You also have two minutes. Thank you. My name is Rachel Cordero. I'm a resident of Durham. I just wanna know what are the true answers and where's the accountability in all of this? You moved these residents out and told them they'd be gone from their homes for a week. You know good and well. You have far more than a week's worth of work to do in those apartments to make them safe for them to go home to. Where's the accountability? When the last three, four, I couldn't tell you how far back inspections from HUD have been failed in these homes. The last inspection you failed with a 30 out of a hundred possible score. You were cited over 800 health and safety concerns in a housing community that only has 360 units. You were cited 24 life-threatening, life-threatening issues on those properties. We filed the necessary paperwork to get the results of those inspections revealed. I'm calling on DHA to show complete transparency and release those results before they ask the residents to return home. They need to know which life-threatening conditions you knowingly exposed them to. We all deserve answers. These people need to know that their home is safe. Your home is safe when you go home. It's not for them. That's not fair. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Darrell. Mr. Zaidi, welcome. You also have two minutes. Thank you, sir. Good evening. My name is Rafiq Zaidi. I live at 807 South Duke Street, JJ Henderson. I'm a 75 year old senior citizen and we are going to some of the same problems at JJ Henderson all over DHA. One thing for sure, when you try to redevelop a land and steal a land from black people, you got to put a black face on it. From Ben Carson all the way down to Anthony Scott, we know what we're dealing with. As I looked at this baby on the front row, I recall a grandmother coming to me Sunday. She said, Mr. Zaidi, my son called me from Central Prison. He has a baby in MacDougall. He wants you to tell the people if you're not afraid, I said, hell no. You tell him, if my baby dies, heads gonna roll, I said it. Now we've seen a mentoring session here tonight. Who's gonna mentor that baby when she don't have a chance to exist? Answer that. A lot of questions have been asked. Will you live under those conditions? Hell no. You will not live under those conditions and you know it. So why put my people under those conditions? You know that you need that land. You know that and you'll get that land by any means necessary. The people have spoke enough is enough. Anthony Scott, you gonna clean these houses up? Oh, you is out of here, boy. You are out of here. You don't have enough power to me white people to stand down. We will run you out of this city. That's what I'm gonna do. Before we, before we, excuse me, before we hear from Minister Scott, I'm gonna ask the following people to also come over here to my right. Anthony McClendon, Victoria Peterson, Victoria Peterson and someone has put their, just their initial down end period, Williams and Williams, if you could come over to my right as well. And did I also say Anthony McClendon? Yeah, we already spoke. Okay, thank you. All right, Minister Scott, welcome. Thank you. Minister Paul Scott, P.O. Box 15123, Durham, North Carolina, founder of the Black Messiah Movement. You know, the scriptures teach us that what you do to the least of these, you do unto me. So the least of these being tonight are these babies and these children you see, the children who have passed. Those are the least of these. Now, I'm a little confused tonight. Maybe y'all, maybe I'm not too bright. Maybe y'all can help me out. These problems that McDougal and other areas are experienced with what I'm hearing, they've been going on for years. You've already calculated that. But what you didn't calculate was us showing up tonight and calling you on. Now, I call it what they're doing in Durham is economic, ethnic cleansing. Now, what that means is they wipe you out and take the land. You don't believe they'll do it? Read this book, Knowledge is Power. Buried in the Waters by Elliot Jasper. Talked about how some areas in the United States, Black folks just disappeared. They weren't there anymore. Now, for the past year, people have been talking about putting the guns down. I don't know where the violence is coming from. Nobody talked about the economic factors and how people were suffering. If I was living in these areas, I'd be mad too. So, what are we gonna do about it after tonight? After the cameras are gone, we gotta stay together. We're one Durham tonight. One Durham. One Durham. So, in my conclusion, the question will be, well, you don't live in McDougal. That's what they tell me. You don't live in McDougal. But tonight, I'm by Brother's Keeper. Thank you. Thank you, Minister Scott. Before Ms. Peterson speaks, I'm gonna ask the following people also to come over to my right. Jacqueline Wagstaff, Barbara Lofton, Tommy Hayes, Leonardo Williams, Kamaira Faizon, and Albert Avery. If you all could all come over here to my right. Ms. Peterson, welcome. You have two minutes. Thank you. Has Mr. Scott left the building? Is he still here? All right, Mr. Scott is still here? Mr. Scott, I told you this. I shared this with you the other day. You need to resign. You need to move on, Mr. Scott. You have blood on your hands. That's right. And Mr. Mayor, you may need to move on too, sir. That's right, yes. Because I'm gonna tell you why. And I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm gonna tell you why. Some of us all last year talked about Maducataris needed to be included in that bond. That's right. In that $95 million bond, plus the $42 million that the city is sitting on. You've done nothing. You've done nothing, again. And black children have died. That's right. Whatever the reason, they died in these units. And it's not fair because you could have did something and you choose to do nothing. Yes, Pastor Milton. You've talked a little bit about it, but you didn't put anything together in writing to say we're gonna take $10 million and put it around in the various public housing, particularly Maducataris, is the oldest public housing unit in this state, the oldest. It's about 60, they're about 60, 65-year-old facility. No wonder they got water bugs and things are leaking. It's an old facility that they needed help. But you chose not to do it, and that's what I don't understand. And now we're in a mess. We're in a crisis. And it's an embarrassment to the African-American community because you know why? People are listening white and black. Oh, good grief. Those Negroes don't know what they're doing. But we did. We came down here and we told you what needed to be done. We tried to be nice and sweet. We didn't cuss. We didn't use any bad language. We talked to you. We pleaded with you. And we begged you to help them to include Maducataris in that $95 million. And Mr. Scott should have also advocated for this community. He should have said, Mr. Mayor, I'm not gonna support this bond unless Maducataris was included. Thank you, Mr. President. And you didn't do that. Thank you. So the blood is on your hands and Mr. Scott, pack your bags. You've got to go. You cannot stay here any longer. Thank you, Ms. Peterson. Thank you. You've got to go. Ms. Wagstaff, welcome. You have two minutes. Always a pleasure, Mr. Mayor. I just don't even have words tonight. Now, I'm gonna give you the real deal. Let's start where it starts right here. Like I told you, Sunday, I said you have a person that you appointed to the board. She sits right there. She looks nonchalant right now. But I've been to more meetings than she's been to and she praised herself on this doing her campaigning. They pimped out Maducataris trotting through there, all doing the election. Y'all trotted through Maducataris like hoodwinking black folks but they needed them votes. They back in and half of y'all and they gross voted for them. I'm just gonna call the spade a spade. But what are they doing for you now? What are they doing for you now? I've been trotting in Maducataris since 1986. Fugot, Hoover Road, Oxford Mounder, I've been in them all. I've been over in Maducataris so much when they pull up, they say you live here. I might as well, 51B. This is crazy. These problems, y'all have them living in a minimum security prison. The first time I walked over there, I said, why do you have to get permission to come in a neighborhood and deal with the people? And I didn't get permission. I started knocking on Ashley's door where she at. Bossed at her every day until I aggravated her out the house. Permission, that's what you get when you go visit people in prison. You have them living like prisoners. Go to the jail. That's where you find mold and contamination. Not in these homes. And y'all are sitting here. I'm looking at your faces back there and I put y'all on live. Cause I'd like to look at you over and over again, see how you don't care. And I know you don't care. Jillian, I got to say what I got to say. I wish I was your mama. I beat you to death right now. I swear I would. I beat you like a step child. Just because you need to know that these people are hurting, you have to feel this. I feel it every day. I've been doing triage all day. That's what we're doing triage right now. That we are taking care of those people in the hotel. I'm driving my van, taking food. I got a text message right now. I got to take some food to somebody out there. One of them, them extend the stage. Thank you, Ms. Wackstaff. I can't take it. Y'all got to go. Y'all got to go. Recall is like a talk. Thank you, Ms. Wackstaff. Ms. Lofton, Ms. Barbara Lofton here. Tommy Hayes. Tommy Hayes. Tommy Hayes. Leonardo Williams. Mr. Williams, welcome. Please give us your name and address. You have two minutes. Leonardo Williams, 4029 Livingstone. And I live in a really nice neighborhood. Folks come together and we just happy all the time. And it wasn't until I was nosy and I went to Ashley's house and I didn't know who she was. I just know I used to go to McDougal Terrace to pick my band students up when I was banded right there at Southern Durham. And it was when I was in her house and everybody said, that's Ashley, you need to go through her for anything you want to help. And it was at that point in time where someone was having a panic attack outside. And they said, that's the mother of the child who passed. And when the young lady Ashley came back inside, someone called her on her phone and she had her own speaker and they said, girl, we haven't had food in like a day and a half, almost two days. Can somebody please get us something over here? And that's when tears struck in my eyes. And I had to take action. Now I know you all personally and you're good people, but your actions, what happens tonight and from here on will be judged. And that's up to you. I took action. I just called out in the community. And what I want to say is it's really easy. I opened my restaurant up and opened my kitchen up. We had over 40 volunteers come together and most people came in and they said, I didn't know. We had 10 hotels. We had buffet lines in each hotel. And we had about 571 meals went out the door. So the job is really easy. The community is out here ready to work. We're just waiting on your leadership to tell us what to do. And someone said that they hadn't gotten food earlier. Just come let me know. All right, let us know. And we're here to help. We're here to make things happen, okay? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Ms. Faizan. Welcome. Please give us your name and address. You also have two minutes. Certainly. My name is Camaria Fasen. I am a resident at 1303 South Austin Avenue. Apartment B here in Durham, North Carolina. And I used to live on 45 East Lawson Street, apartment A for 14 years. So currently now I work at Lincoln Community Health Center. I'm a case manager there under social work with the Behavioral Health Department. So I know a lot about trauma. I've been traumatized. I understand what trauma means. I understand when residents come up here and talk about the same issues that I went through from the early 90s all the way up into the early 2000s. It's the same thing. Black mold, it's the same black mold. It's the same things. And I was able of course to push through, and that's what I hope for some of these kids. But I was lucky enough not to die. And that is pretty much what I'm writing on is that I didn't die, right? So I absolutely appreciate all of what you all do as public servants because I myself am a public servant. I also work for the Durham Crisis Response Center with domestic violence survivors, as we say, not victims. It's when you're already traumatized by your outside surroundings and it's very hard for me not to get emotional about this. You're not safe in your home with mold. You're not safe outside of your home with gunshots. I live right up the street from McDougal, only two blocks away. Luckily, I stand on the shoulders of Miss Cynthia Brown and I also stand on the shoulders of Miss Cannell, an advocate, both of them, very prominent leaders in the community that have since passed. But if I did not have that type of influence in my life, I don't know where I would be. But I know one thing is that it's been 15 years and this cannot keep going and we need something more. And I'm a piece, I'm a product of what can be if you can live through that. So I would like for you all to take that into consideration for people who have made it. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Faisal. Mr. Avery, welcome. Please give us your name and address. You also have two minutes. Good evening. My name is Elbert Avery. My address is 113 Ashmont Lane, Durham, North Carolina. I am a city employee. I work in the Department of Community Development. I'm speaking as a result of just kind of dealing with the number of issues on my own in the past. I lost a nephew who was always very honest and frank. And I've been told by my managers within the city system sometimes I can be too frank. But I will say these things tonight and try to be within your time limit. And a lot of folks have said this isn't just a funding issue related to McDougal Terrace. It's an operational management issue. And at some level, somebody has to own the operational level inefficiencies because all this stuff didn't just jump off on Christmas Day or that week. It's been there, it's inherent, and it's systemic. Somebody's made a calculated risk about leaving McDougal the way it was, all right? And they figured that, well, the voice list can't voice, but so much will spread and disperse the people who live in these housing authority properties. And then we can kind of reallocate and disperse and have people spread out and we won't have this concentration. You said it in your state of the city that you needed to mix the mixed income would allow those who don't have as much to be able to have access. I think that's the way you wrote it. Two resources that they don't have because everybody around them is poor. And what I would say is if they do live in a mixed income area, what resources are you then going to provide them that you can't provide them now? The other thing that I would say is that, real quickly, is that this is a humanitarian crisis. This is like a natural disaster, except it's man-made. There's the cause for independent third parties, transparency and honesty. Because see, if you had just said to us and said, we've heard about this, we're trying to figure out what we should do about this then people wouldn't have quite the chip on their shoulder that they do this evening and what you've seen. I saw, Mr. Councilman, real quickly, I saw Council Middleton over the last couple of days at different meetings. And I would say commendations to him for at least being there. You know, because nobody else is showing up. And one solution thing I would suggest though is that, and I'm hoping I don't get fired from the city for saying what I'm saying is that we have a need to spend some CDBG money right now. You're all aware of that, because we haven't met that timeliness test. Maybe we could approach HUD to say, well, is there a way we can use this money, bypass some of the hierarchy things that we have to do and apply it immediately to this situation here? You know, I'm not here just to try to chew on you, but I would also say, maybe that's a suggestion that we need to look at as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We've heard from all of our speakers. And so let me just tell you how we're gonna proceed now. I'm gonna ask Mr. Scott to come back to the podium and to respond to anything that he would like to, any facts that he would like to add. I'm gonna also ask if council members have any questions of Mr. Scott, I think this would be the right time to ask them. And then after Mr. Scott has spoken and answered questions, then I'll ask our council members to make any statements they would like to make. But first I wanna thank all of you all for being here. I wanna thank you very much for all of the things that you've said. We take them very seriously. We know how important this is to our city, not only to you all, but to every one of us. And you'll be hearing more from all of us in a little while. But first let me ask Mr. Scott if he has anything else that he would like to add. I just wanted to add a couple of things. One, it was stated that the residents that's on our board is not a voting member. That's not true. The resident is a voting member just like any other board member on our board. I just wanted to clarify that. And just to the residents, if you are encountering issues with my employees, then please contact my office so that I will know that employees are doing those things so that we can address that directly. A lot of what I would wanna share would sound like excuses. And I'm not interested in sounding like I have a bunch of excuses for you. Some of you have seen me around for the years that I've been here and you know I think you have a better sense of who I am and what I'm trying to do within DHA. There is a financial issue in your right. There is an issue with how our folks have been responding. And the financial issue is not quite in our hands but how our employees respond is. And one of the things that we did and some of you have met them, Mr. Foster has been hired recently as the new director of housing operations because of the things that you talked about and the kinds of changes that we know we have to make. And a couple of other things I'll just say. One, it was suggested that we have regular updates and I absolutely agree. It's one of the things I was gonna share with Ashley today to try to do at least on a once a day basis to give an update on how we're progressing with this. And it was mentioned about the stipend cards. We have struggled mightily with getting our funding from SunTrust, the cards that we need, et cetera. And again, I'm not trying to make excuses but we'll try to have those cards available first thing tomorrow morning. Let me put my head together with my folks this evening and see what we can do. All right, we'll do that as soon as the meeting is over tonight. Thank you, Mr. Scott. I'm gonna now, Ms. Peterson. Ms. Peterson. Please. Thank you. All right. I'm gonna ask council members at this point, if anyone that has any questions for Mr. Scott. Council member Ross. Thank you. I look forward to addressing the residents. I'll ask a few questions and then hand it over to my colleagues so I'm sure I have a lot to ask. First, you mentioned daily updates. I did have a question about kind of communication. I guess, is there a way for, that sounds like a communication from your office to the residents. How do the residents reach you as it relates to this specific emergency? Like, is there a contact number, a contact name? I know Ashley is the point person for the residents but kind of how, I would like to know that there's two way communication, not one way and unpredictably. Right. So Mr. Foster has been sort of the lead in all of this and I don't have the number off the top of my head but I'll see if I can get that before we finish this evening. If we could, great. And I'd love for that to be shared tonight before we leave. Yes. And I had a question about the transportation support. Yes. That's a question I had kind of coming into the meeting so I'm glad that you thought about it. I guess just if you could share some more details with us about what the scope of that is and if there are ways that we can support that effort. We've made arrangements for the transportation service so residents who need transportation can call that service and they can come out and transport people where they need to go. Okay and are the, is it a free service? Yes. Someone spoke fairly recently about trauma and it's been on my mind about the folks who have lost small children. Are there efforts from the county or from a private provider to provide bereavement support for the folks who just lost children in the last few months? So we've had meetings with the county DSS services to make efforts to get into our, and work with our resident, not only what you mentioned but just in dealing with all of this, right? I mean this is not easy for residents to get pulled up and put in hotels and don't have the convenience of home and those sorts of things. So we're working with DSS and other county services to help support our residents in that. We're setting up a kind of an emergency operation center at McDougal. I think we'll have it up and running by tomorrow. Okay, great, I think I'll take it back there. Thank you. Thank you, council member. Council member, council member Caballero. Yeah, and I see council member Reese's hand. I just wanna piggyback on a question from council member Alston thinking through the mental health support for some of these residents and are we also coordinating with DPS for the students in DPS and other charter schools? I can see that thinking through the upheaval, the emotional upheaval for kids being moved hurriedly. Are we thinking about having conversations with the guidance counselors there and coordinating that as well? Yes, and as I said, we're working through DSS because they have the social service providers and the expertise to try to help us set those up and work through those folks as well. We have been in touch with the schools themselves, but we haven't made that connection with the other side. Could council also get the updates that you're sending residents? Sure. Daily. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Could I just mention we are doing a dorm alert for all of our residents so that we can send communication out to you all through alert dorm, I'm sorry. Alert dorm that is going to be specific for McDougal-Tarris residents. And that's a text notification. Correct. I understand. I'm saying we're at least going to be able to do the alert dorm system to be able to contact McDougal-Tarris residents who have phones. Council member Reese. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, Mr. Scott. Thank you for being with us and for sharing the information that you have. I have some questions. I'm going to try to order them by most urgent to kind of some longer-term questions and I probably try not to take up in an order amount of time because I know my colleagues are going to want to get in as well. I heard you mentioned in your opening remarks that there are 30 families at McDougal-Tarris who you would like to relocate to hotels but you're waiting on hotels. Is that what I heard you say? That's correct. Is it possible there are not 30 hotel rooms in the city of Durham right now that are vacant? How can that happen? Can you help me understand that? We have been contacting hotels and particularly we're trying to find extended stay hotels with kitchenettes and if we can't find those then we're going to whatever hotels we can get to try to get people in those hotels. Okay. All right. Can you talk about the process that you've been going through to get the sort of money cards or cash cards to the residents? How is that working? How is it breaking down? What can be done to help facilitate that? Because that's obviously a huge problem right now. Right. So it's SunTrust that we have as our bank and they've had to acquire the cards from different branches and what have you. So we've gotten the cards then we have to load the cards with cash based on family size and then get those distributed out. We were hoping to get loadable cards so we would just have one card and it would be it and then we can load it if we had however long it takes us to get folks back to their homes and they're not able to deliver those until Thursday. So what we're going to do is do cash cards again and so we've been assembling those cards so that we can then get those dispersed out to residents. I know there's some organizers that are going to want to talk to you right after we're done because their phones are blowing up by people who haven't gotten their cards and haven't eaten yet. If one of those, if some of them can meet with him and one of those folks want to confide me after we can, okay. I'll stay as long as we need to stay to help those folks get something to eat. Is it accurate to say that you have, that DHA has told families that they will only be able to be required to relocate for a week and that their homes will be rendered safe and habitable during that time? No, what we said was that we will have people in hotels for at least a week but it's going to depend on what the results of the testing are. So however long it takes for us to get the CO issues both inspected and if there are issues with that repaired along with mold, then that's how long we'll be housing people. How will residents know that their homes are safe to return to? So we're doing independent testing. We are, there's a testing company that we've hired. We've also reached out to Jim Groves with emergency management to also reach out to others so that we can get even more people to actually do the testing but none of the testing will be done by DHA employees. Okay. Do you have any sense of how much money it will take to bring the units at McDougal Terrace into a habitable condition? I do not. Okay. And one of the reasons why if I could just follow up on that a little bit is like we don't know what the issues are with respect to the things that we're trying to deal with right now. We don't even know what is causing those issues if we have them at this point. We have to do the inspections and determine is it a hot water heater or stove or heater and what particular issue there is with those things. So that will determine the length of time that it'll take for us to do the repairs. So your plan is to inspect every unit McDougal Terrace in this very thorough way. Yes. To put together a comprehensive kind of census of all the problems and then use that to roll up into some kind of cost estimate about what's gonna do, what's gonna cost to fix this, is that right? So that's correct. But our priority is to take care of the issues of CO and mold. So those air quality issues is what we're focused on at this point in time. We're going to do larger, more comprehensive studies on what other issues that need to be repaired and get the resources to do that. So that's part of, you know, as we've been reaching out to state, local, and even federal to come up with the funds to do that. But it's been pointed out. I mean, we know these are issues that exist in all of our properties because of the age and as I talked about the funding, you know, as we've talked about lots of times how we've not gotten all the funding we were actually formulated to get. So those are the things that we're actually knowing that's gonna cost a lot more to fix. I mean, also why we think just doing repairs is not the real answer. It's building housing that is the quality that anybody would want to be in. Okay. I want to ask a quick question about carbon monoxide detectors. In a letter that we received from Chief Soldus of the Durham Fire Department, he indicated that his staff, when they participated in these multidisciplinary teams with NIS, EMS, DHA employees, and did, inspected every unit, did a spot inspection, I guess I would call it, of each unit in McDougal-Tarris testing for carbon monoxide and other problems. His letter indicated that there were a number of detectors that were very, very, very old. And I want to ask you, what is the standard that by which DHA monitors these carbon monoxide detectors? Is it the policy of DHA or the federal government does HUD require DHA to periodically conduct tests of those detectors to make sure that they're working correctly? Yeah, so to your first question, the, it wasn't the CO detectors that were old, it was the fire detectors that were reaching, if I'm not mistaken, so they were reaching their 10 year life. 2009 is where we saw several of the fire detectors, which was really their 10 year life was ending in 2019. So we replaced those. I don't think it was old CO detectors, but I'll have to check on that to be sure. But we replaced or made sure there were batteries on all the smoke detectors, smoke slash fire detectors, and the CO detectors, as we did those inspections over the first course of inspections we did over that four day period. Excuse me. So that's the first part of the question, the second part of the question is how frequently are these carbon monoxide detectors monitored, tested to make sure they're working correctly? Is it practiced? Does the federal government require you to do it during, based on some period? Right, they are supposed to be tested at least annually. And the annual inspections that we do with those, they're called the REAC inspections, what people were referring to the last three years, those also are being tested by those inspectors when they go in as well. And can you tell us anything about whether or not failed carbon monoxide detectors in units at McDougal Terrace were part of McDougal Terrace's unusually low score as a result of those REAC? I'm sorry, repeat that again? The maintenance score, the property condition score that McDougal Terrace got in 2018 was that as a result of, at least in part, fault failed carbon monoxide detectors in those units. So when there are those extended, can't say the word, when they have the emergency health and safety issues, we are required to resolve those issues and send a report to HUD that we've in fact fixed that. So if there is something that comes up on those reports that are, they consider to be emergent health issues, health and safety issues, then we have to prepare that and let HUD know that those things have been repaired and show that we've done that. And were carbon monoxide detectors part of those problems in the 2018 inspection? I cannot answer that without going back and reviewing that report. I know that some of the issues that happen, sometimes the detectors get taken down and so we have to replace those, which is usually the issue that you would see when you look at the reports, it's like missing smoke detectors, missing fire detectors, missing CO detectors. I'll have some other remarks later, but those are the questions that I have. Thank you, Council Member. Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Scott, could you tell us a little bit more about how the inspection that you're doing now is different from the one that happened a week ago because you inspected all of the units that we do with Terrace and now there's a company that's doing that again. Can you just tell us a little bit more about like how is that more comprehensive or what results do you think that you'll be able to get from that that you weren't able to get from the initial ones by DHA? Yes. When we did our initial inspections, first of all, the weather was very mild. So a lot of people had their doors open or their windows open and they were going in and out a lot, particularly as we started going through in teams of fire, EMS and DHA. So that essentially compromises the space. You cannot, you don't have a sort of controlled environment where you can turn on the heating system, turn on the stove, turn on the hot water so that the hot water heater kicks on and be able to accurately monitor if there's any CO2 emissions. So the part of what we're doing now by evacuating folks out is that we'll have a controlled environment where doors are not going in and out of and we can get an accurate testing of whether or not CO is actually being emitted from any of that equipment or appliances. Thank you. So the ones that you found in your initial inspection, what was done to fix those problems and what do you, like how, what's the cost of fixing a faulty stove or a faulty water heater? Does DHA have those resources to do that? Again, it's difficult to say what the cost is because it really depends on what the specific issue is. If it's like in some cases we found there were pilot lights that were out. So that's an easy fix. Or I know that one there was a exhaust for the hot water heater that had been broken. And so that had to be fixed. All the things that we found during those days it was reported that those things were actually able to be fixed on site. So the bigger issues such as the heater system not functioning properly is something that would take a little longer to do. Obviously in some cases we've had to replace a couple of those heaters. And so that's a different kind of timeframe and a different kind of repair issue. Okay, thank you. Another thing that came up in the report that we saw was folks using their stoves to heat their homes. Were you able to figure out what's wrong with the heating systems in those apartments where people were using their stoves so that the heating systems could be used instead? In terms of reports that I got or even some that I saw when I was going through with the inspections as well it was a range of things from the heater because those heaters do not have thermostats. You turn them on, that's it. So the heat is coming out and it becomes very uncomfortably warm in the units particularly on the second floor. So, and these are anecdotal stories. I'm not saying this is anything that's happening across every unit. And so folks would turn on a heater so that they wouldn't have to have that uncomfortably warm heat. Two things such as the heaters themselves aren't working or they're faulty. And so people would turn on their stoves to heat their units because the heating system was inadequate. So are those all, I mean, have those been fixed? Those are being either fixed or worked on. Not all of them were able to be fixed because the issues were bigger than the time or the equipment that we had to take care of those. But those are being either worked on or repaired. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro-Chem. Mr. Mayor. Council Member Freeman, any questions? Council Member Freeman, go ahead. Thank you. I'm thankful that some of my council colleagues have already asked some of the questions that I would have asked. But I do want to go into a little bit deeper into Council Member Reese's comment around the CO2 detectors and noting that I want to be specific. The property score that you're talking about, it includes the CO2, like I'm lost. And then I also want to note, are these reports shared with your board and are those board reports, like is the board reviewing these reports? Like how is the accountability on this side of not just you, but your entire board set up? Because I'm feeling like there's more to this than not. And the fact that the confidence level of the residents is stemming from someplace, I can't put my finger on. But if the level of transparency has been in question and you set up a meeting or so with fire EMS and I'm assuming NIS and county and no one from the community, I don't think that builds confidence. And so in this process, if you're not including your board or residents from the community from the residents council board, and you're not including folks kind of as an independent perspective in the process from the start, it kind of reinforces that kind of unsettling transparency issue. And so noting that there was a report that included CO2 number missing, number there, number working kind of things or things that at a board level, you would kind of catch. And so I'm wondering if that's included, has the board reviewed it? And if the board reviewed it, were there any steps that were taken out of that? So again, once we get those reports about those immediate health and safety issues, we are required to repair those immediately. And so it's the broader things that are in that report that aren't health and safety related, that take longer to do, but those immediate health and safety issues, we have to repair those right away and send that to HUD that these things have in fact been repaired. So those immediate things are in a document? They're in the React document itself, it's the React thing that comes out, it's a public document actually, so it's not something that, it's just something anybody can see. And is it readily available for residents to take a look at? Well, it's online, so I can make sure that we can make as many of those reports as we can access from the system to HUD system as possible to anybody who wants to see them, residents are otherwise. And then also along the lines of, I'm sorry, the conversation you're having with Congressman Butterfield and Price and the supports that they could possibly provide recognizing that these issues are across the country and all the aging housing that's been falling apart since they've been built. Is there any sense from your perspective in how much or what type of support you will be getting from the federal government? We have reached out to the local field office to ask what resources are available to deal with this exigent situation. And in my conversation with Congressman Price, he said they're looking at these emergency funds that are available. I think he said there's approximately $30 million that's available for FY20 fiscal year 20. And obviously that's for the entire country. So we don't know how much of that would actually be available to us. And they're also looking to see if there's other funding in previous years that might be available for that. So that's what his staff, and based on our conversation today, that's what his staff has already been investigating and looking into. And then lastly, so I'm recognizing that you have a volunteer from the community as a resident, providing, I think it was 233 hours in the last week or so. Is that normal? Like, do you normally rely on residents to do volunteer work to get that type of resource covered? So I'm acknowledging that this is an extenuating circumstance. And so maybe there needs to be some type of compensation set up to cover this situation because it is a change of year. I'll reserve the rest of my comments for the, thank you. Councilman Middleton, any questions? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have a question. Thank all of you firstly for being here tonight. Mr. Scott, I want to talk a little bit about what a leadership and accountability looks like now that we have crossed this threshold. Part of the reason, well, the reason why we're talking about redeveloping low income households in Durham to mixed income is not just because it philosophically makes sense. It's also because we know that these complexes, it would cost less to rebuild something new than to repair them. We know that. You took extraordinary action and I commend you for it. Because based upon what I've seen and what I've heard, I believe that there is a clear and present danger to the lives of our children. I think it's imminent. And I think the actions you took support that. So my question, my concern is now that we have crossed this threshold, I want to very pointedly assure people, listen, the most basic and sacred responsibility that a government has to its people is to keep them safe and to keep them alive. Everything else is gravy, everything else is icing. That is the most, that's a sacred responsibility we have. And I heard a resident say that when she went back to her apartment serendipitously, she saw a worker in there to collect something and he was painting over mold. We have to assure that now that we've taken this step and it's out there, the world sees it, that we absolutely do not allow babies and families and children back into these homes if mold has been painted over. We can't do that. And listen, we've heard some tough stuff tonight, trust me. I think you're a humane leader. You came highly commended and you've seen the work that we're talking about transforming some of these communities before. So I wanna on public record say that I am absolutely prepared to ask this council to take extraordinary steps and to spend some serious money because I think we are facing a clear and present danger. I think this is an emergency situation. I think your actions underscore the fact that this is an emergency situation. And whatever HUD does, whatever the state does, whatever anybody else does, I believe with everything in me that this council needs to be prepared to act in a substantive way. And it's not unprecedented. We took up tire mulch, rubber tire mulch out of a park and put down wood chips on the suspicion that it might be harmful to our children. Well, the science is in on mold. Science is in and no leader in this city can countenance the thought of anybody going back into an apartment where mold has been painted over. So whoever this company is and whatever the cost is, I want you brother to assure us that you will come to us and you will let us know. And these folks that are in the hotel now, I think morally we cannot allow them back and if we know that there's mold. I'm not saying you do, I'm saying we as a government, we as leaders now that we have de facto declared this state of emergency cannot, cannot allow those babies to go back in there and things have just been glossed over and painted over. We have now crossed the threshold and whatever it costs to bring, and I think councilor Reece alluded to this in his questions, whatever it costs to bring those apartments up to safety and to standard, tabletable standards, the alternative is to pretend that we don't know about the problem and let those babies and families back in there and I cannot countenance that. And I don't think any leader in this city on, certainly on this podium can countenance that. So I need for you to assure us that this company, when this company brings back whatever the price tag is, whatever the prognosis is, whatever the situation is for these apartments that we will be transparent, we will let folk know and whatever it takes to make sure that we do not knowingly send babies back into these conditions, we're just gonna have to work it out because we have crossed the threshold and we have declared the state of emergency de facto and once we've done that, we can't go back and pretend that everything is okay. And I know that it's not, McDougal terrace gets a lot of attention but these other housing complexes we know are in need and we've known it for a long time and that's why we've talked about redeveloping because we know it's gonna cause more, it would cause more to fix everything than to just build something new. So here we are, it's out and we know it but since we are at this particular situation, I guess my question is, is I just want you to assure this council and assure the people of this city that we will not knowingly send folk back into those living conditions and I'm also gonna not just put you out there, I intend on asking this council, whenever that price tag comes, they'd be prepared to do something significant and that will convey to the people of this city that we are serious about protecting the lives of our people. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Mr. Scott, hang on a second, I also have some questions, I'm sorry. I think that Mr, I think Council Member Middleton wants an answer to the question of- I'm sorry, I don't know if I was clear. I said yes, sir. Oh, I didn't hear you, okay, thank you. I can assure you that that will be the minimum of what we will do. And again, that's why we made some staff changes already and to hear what that young lady said is there's no excuses for that. And so we're gonna go in and make sure that we get this right. And one of the reasons why I took this action and it was tough to do in terms of saying let's uproot all these folks and move them out of their homes with virtually no notice. But I just felt based on what we saw Thursday night that we didn't have a choice. And again, I apologize for what we've put you all through so far and we're trying to get it right. And Council Member Freeman, you make an excellent point in terms of the communication and having them be a part of that. That was something that we simply missed in our efforts to make sure we can try to figure it out and get it right and all of those things. And we definitely need to have the residents be a part of this solution. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Council Member Caballero. Yeah, I had one quick question. What was the amount of funding that was set aside nationally? You said that number a little while ago. 30 million or emergency kinds of repairs, yes. Thank you. There any further questions at this point? Any further questions of Mr. Scott? Just one, I know that you mentioned that there's a new person, that's the point person who's been around for three weeks, Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster. Mr. Foster. I just wanted to, I'm sorry, I wrote it wrong. So just noting that I really want to say first, I do, there's just so much emotionally, I cannot handle with this situation. And I really want to thank you all for being here. I want to thank you for stepping up to do what needed to be done. And so just noting like my criticism is not out of disregard for the work that you do and that your staff does. I do appreciate what your staff has been doing. I know that over the last five years, there's been tremendous changes with the Durham Housing Authority. And I know because I've had the fight with Hoover Road and with Franklin Village and with Eastway Elms and with the, like with Calvary Place, there have been so many issues and you've always stepped up to address them. This overarching issue that we're facing with all of our housing authority locations across the country is not something we're going to solve overnight. I want to be clear that I don't want to put that out there like this is going to go away. It's not going to be something we snap our fingers in. We have a half, you know, $2 billion to actually address it. But I do want to make sure that we're walking with our residents in the community and making sure that they understand that we understand that they're living in these conditions and it's not acceptable. But we're going to do the best that we can to make sure that they're brought up to an acceptable level of standard of living. I want to make sure that this person, Mr. Foster, understands who the community is. And I'm mindful that if you've hired them that that wouldn't likely be the case. But I want to make sure that I hear that from the residents. And so I would really like to make sure that there's some feedback or some type of interaction where residents in the community actually meet and talk with this person who is now their point person for these repairs. Noting that this fear is out there. Yeah, I will just say, unfortunately, he has had a lot of time in our community and meeting a lot of our residents already. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Scott, thank you very much. And now we'll have some time for some Council Member's comments. Thank you very much. Okay. Colleagues, who would like to get a start to Council Member Rees? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, I want to thank the folks that came out tonight. Someone made a comment that it looked like we wanted to be anywhere else, but here we can wait for the meeting to leave. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I will tell you that for myself, there's nowhere else I would rather be than in this room tonight, listening to some of our most committed neighbors talk to us about what is a life or death situation in their community. And it is not my job as a member of this Council to say that this is someone else's problem, to say that we're not supposed to be the person that you're talking to about how to fix this. It's my job as an elected official member of this Council to do something about it. And I just want to say how much I appreciated Council Member Middleton's call to action on this and to say that I agree that we will do whatever we need to do to make this right. And I also want to be mindful of what Council Member Freeman just said, that we are not going to stamp our fingers and raise $2 billion tomorrow. That isn't to say that there's nothing we can do very quickly. And so I look forward to the housing authority letting us know what the price tag is. And I suspect at that time we will be working with our state and federal partners to figure out how to pay that bill because there's nothing more important to our community, to me in this community, than making sure that our most vulnerable neighbors are taken care of. I also can't let tonight go without saying thank you to Ashley Kennedy, who in addition to being a leader in this community is one of, is a good friend to me and has been kind to my family. And I will just say that we, there are children that live in Mededougal Terrace who are very dear to me. And I will do everything in my power to make this right in the weeks, months and years to come because that's what it's gonna take. The other thing I wanted to say about this is I think there are short meaning of long-term problems that we're gonna have to have a menu of solutions to fix. The very short term is the very human cost of relocating hundreds of families out of their homes into apartments, some of which don't have kitchenettes and can't have kitchenettes because I'm not sure there's enough capacity in hotels with kitchenettes to accommodate all these people that can't live in their homes. And so that we're seeing Ashley coordinate much of that human response on the ground out of 51B Ridgeway. And I wanna find out if there's a way to relieve the burden on her and the volunteer organizers who are doing that in a way that makes sense. I think medium term, we have to grapple with what it's going to cost to make these homes habitable for the people that live there. And that may not seem like a medium term solution and medium term problem, but it really is because that's gonna be a huge lift financially that we're gonna need help with. And so figuring out how to make that work is sort of a meeting term solution. But the longer term solutions here are daunting. As I haven't heard anyone say this yet tonight, but I will say that nationwide, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, essentially the federal government has underfunded maintenance in our housing authority communities nationwide by upwards of $50 billion with a B. Durham has its fair share of that and probably then some because we have some of the oldest public housing communities in the country. And so grappling with that national problem as it manifests here in Durham is a huge challenge and will require not just action by the people on this council, by elected bodies across the city, by the people in this room and residents across Durham, but it's gonna take change at the national level to create new priorities about how we prevent these problems from happening in the future because I don't know if you guys know this, but we just had a bond referendum like a month and a half ago where we promised to give the housing authority a lot of money to rebuild certain of our communities. And once they're done and our gleaming palaces for our residents to move into, the housing authority is gonna have to take care of those things, those communities. And if we don't change the long-term funding strategy from Washington about how the maintenance is funded in housing authority communities across the country, including in Durham, then that money that we're gonna spend to rebuild these communities to build amazing new housing for our lowest income neighbors is not gonna be kept up and we'll just have to be in the same place we are again in 15 or 20 years. And so we can't, we don't have our hands on the levers of every solution to that problem. But as the mayor's fond of saying, what we can do, we must do. And that starts now with solving the human problems of folks who have been relocated and finding out how we're gonna pay to make McDougal Terrace right again. And we talk a lot about accountability and responsibility. And I know Director Scott feels a lot of that in this room tonight and that's a good thing. But I also feel that tonight. As I said, it's not my job to tell you that it's someone else's responsibility. It's my job to try to figure out how we're gonna fix it. And that is what I'm gonna try to do in the time to come. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Reese. I think we'll just go straight on down the line here. Council Member Freeman. I first and foremost wanna thank you all for being here this evening again and again and again. This is an issue that has plagued my neighbors and myself and so many others for so long. And the way that you guys have shown up, there was someone who spoke very plainly about how the dangers inside your home and then the dangers outside of your home. I sat through, last year was probably the hardest year I've had and working in this community. And I've never been so disgusted and frustrated and I just can't fathom how there's so many people in this community I love that I care about, that care about my community and there are so many who could care less. And I'm very clear. I speak very plainly about the issues that plague us as black people, plague people brown, yellow, anything other than white regularly. And I have not found a solution worthy of getting behind in a way that you have brought tonight. And I am just thankful because you're giving me the life that I needed. I took a break last year after Christmas. And I have to tell you, I checked out. I had to take a break. Like personally, I just had to. And I wanna apologize for not being open and honest about it because it just hurt. That bond referendum and my heart of hearts, I wanted to support it, but I knew good and well that none of the work that needed to go into it to make sure that the residents were at the center of the solution was being done. And I could not put my stamp on it to say that I could support it because I knew coming out of it, we weren't gonna address it in a way that I knew was equitable. I'm not even gonna go down this road with the police and the shootings and everything else. But these issues are all tied together. And the fact that you all could come together and figure out how to be here and make us be present and make us here at 10 o'clock for a 10-minute meeting because that's what it was scheduled to be, a consent agenda of three items for these last few hours speaks volume to your power. And I want you to own that every day. I sit here at your pleasure. And anytime that you are not happy with what I am doing, you should say it. Anytime you are unhappy with what is happening, you should say it. I just want you to be present and ready to work. It's not gonna be a meeting. It's not gonna be a council thing. If you leave it to us, we will screw it up. You have to be in the room, you have to be involved and you have to say it plain and clear, but you also have to be ready to hear the feedback and be ready to understand like, this is not gonna be something that gets fixed tomorrow. But if we work together and continue to press forward, black, brown, white, yellow, green, purple, whatever, we all are human beings in this community and we should all be treated as such. And if there is anyone that is not, I fully expect to be called on. I fully expect for it to be called out. I fully expect all of those things just as you do. And I hold the responsibility sitting on this council to serve you as residents, not as voters, as residents in this community who expect to be served when my elder, Victoria Peterson, stands up and says this $42 million sitting in our reserve account, the weight that that carries for me and the balancing that I have to do, I need you to trust more than anything that I'm gonna try my best to look out for the interests of our entire community. I also wanna make sure that I'm very clear and that I'm in this fight. This is not every day of the week, knowing that this has been the case since I started working with Eastern Children's Initiative at Hoover Road in 2013, I can't in my heart of hearts come to any of your houses. I mean, I just can't, I cannot. I've seen the bubbles, I've seen the mold, I've seen the district pair. And my hands are tied without you. I just can't state it enough, I need you here. Beyond that, I do know that this call for action is not just here in Durham, it is about a whole national attention that has to be called. I know that Antonio Jones mentioned, this is our Flint, Michigan, this is our Katrina and it really is and how we come together and how we all find purpose and serve in one another is gonna be what determines our future. So I'm hopeful tonight. I am very uplifted and I feel renewed in this fight. I checked out and I'm back. I apologize to those of you who have not seen me at the meetings. I am usually there and I will be there. I am hopeful that this will not be a long drawn out situation with the CEO and all of that. But the mold and repairs part is something that's gonna be a little bit more long term and we're gonna have to figure out how to address it. And I do appreciate the executive director using priority and not just making it all case equal because that is equitable and recognizing that there are people with children under the age of two who are more susceptible and there are people who are over 65 who are more susceptible to that CEO and oxygen. I think we need to do the same thing on the mold and repairs as well. And I would bring it down to 55, not just and I would raise the age to five because those are all formative years of brain development. I will say that there are a lot of resources in this community. We need to make sure that they all rally around us. I know that for the education of partnership with the advancement of children's and health peach is the resource I used in my own home to get led abatement done. And watching that process, I can tell you that this is not, it's not gonna be an easy fix. You've got to watch like a hawk to make sure that the steps are taken to make sure that your home is safe and returning and then also keeping it up, like keeping it safe. And so I will be saying that I will, I would like to make sure that I'm present at every Durham Housing Authority meeting so that I can see these reports because I haven't in the past two years. But I know that that's not gonna be possible. And so I'm gonna be relying on more of you. And if we all take turns, I know that we can all get this done. Thank you, council member. Mayor Pro-Champ. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I just wanna thank everyone for coming out tonight especially the residents from McDougal Terrace who are here in the middle of a very stressful period of displacement. You all didn't have to be here and you chose to be here and we appreciate you coming and being in the space with us and making sure that we understand what you all have experienced over the last couple of days. I wanna thank Ashley for all of the incredible work that she's been doing in the community. And for always answering like texts even when you're in the middle of a crisis I really appreciate you keeping us informed as well as the folks in your community about what's going on. I've been really impressed by the advocacy of community members both in and outside of McDougal Terrace who have come together to really support neighbors in this crisis from folks at Dwellies to other organizations in the community. All the donors who've given money and volunteers who've come out and prepped food to step in when there weren't resources available. I think it's a real testament to the power of community advocacy in our city that this was all brought together to support people when they needed it and that we have been able to that the community has been able to meet some of the needs in McDougal Terrace in a very proactive way. So I think everyone who's been involved in that effort and of course the folks who are here tonight. We have a lot of work to do. I wanna make sure that folks know that this council is committed to supporting the housing authority moving forward. Every request that the housing authority has made for funding support from this council has been approved. I know that that is not, some of the folks who spoke tonight had concerns about just giving more money to the housing authority with the bond and with other the purchase of Fayette Place, for example because of issues of how that money's being managed. I think though that it's important that we continue to give money to the housing authority and to support the housing authority if we want these kinds of problems to get fixed. I don't know how we fix them other than by supporting the housing authority. So I'm committed to continuing to do that. I think the rest of the council is committed to doing that as well. I also think it's important based on some experiences that I've had with organizing and housing issues in Durham. I was part of a group of folks who worked with residents in Lincoln apartments before they were removed from that building several years ago. And very similar issues were present there. Issues of mold, lots of plumbing problems, roof leaking and it was determined by the organization because they couldn't get the support to do the repairs that they needed that the community was gonna be emptied and people were gonna have to find new places to live. We don't want that to happen in McGoogle Terrace or in any of Durham's public housing communities. We want to continue, we want to make sure that the housing that we have available now continues to be available. We wanna make it better rather than, we want to provide the resources to make it better and by not providing resources I don't think we'll be able to do that. Again, I wanna, as my council colleagues have mentioned this is part of a much bigger problem and I think that we are, if we can get some funding from the federal government or from the state to fix, to help with the problem that that would be fabulous. We have, we are in the middle of a 40 year disinvestment in public housing in this country and there is not an easy way for any community to manage that, Durham included. But there are a lot of resources in this community. There are a lot of resources that we can access and I think that we will be able to access those resources moving forward. So thank you all again for being here tonight and for making sure that we understand what's happening in McGoogle Terrace and in other public housing communities in Durham. We appreciate your voices and your advocacy. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor Pro Tem. Council Member Alston. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First to any residents who are still here who may be watching or listening, I wanna be clear that you shouldn't have to live like this. And as a leader in this community, I wanna say that I'm sorry and I feel a deep amount of sorrow for the families and loved ones of the children whose lives were lost. That kind of loss of life is devastating beyond words. And I say that as a parent. There are a number of things about the situation that have been devastating and concerning the biggest of which is the immediate threats to the physical safety and health of our residents in McGoogle Terrace and in our other housing authority properties. Also with respect to this recent evacuation, while very necessary, I'm concerned about the additional housing instability that the situation has the potential to cause for our residents. I'm concerned about the impact of this process on the school performance of our students and on the wages of our residents whose lives have been significantly disturbed. And I'm also concerned that some of our residents will be left in even worse living conditions by virtue of this displacement. So I just wanted to note those. But most of all, and kind of in line with what my colleagues have mentioned, McGoogle Terrace and our other housing authority properties are plagued with serious deferred maintenance and other public health issues and that can continue. Everyone in this community in McGoogle Terrace and all of our housing authority properties deserves to feel safe and deserves transparency from all of your government agencies. So I am fully on board with the comments of my colleagues to use the resources that we have, including our funding resources to help deal with this problem. And so I'll look to guidance from the dorm housing authority from our administration on how to do it, but I'm confident that we need to do it. So thank you all for being here and for sharing tonight. Thank you, Council Member Austin. Council Member Caballero. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening. Thank you all so much for coming out tonight. Before we, Ms. Wackstaff, Mr. Scott, and so forth. Could we, let's wait five minutes till the final comments have been made and then y'all can talk as much as you want. Thank you so much. Council Member Caballero. Yep. Good evening. Thank you so much for coming out. I wanna thank my Council Member Middleton. I know he's been out in your community substantially the last two days. I was out of town until Saturday, watching as the sun folded on social media many, many miles away. We have heard you loud and clear. I will say that if there is a look on my face while I'm in a meeting, it's often just to suppress the quiet rage that I have. Hearing your stories, our federal government and our state government have passed, as you've heard, the billion dollars of maintenance, passed the buck on the local governments. And quite frankly, I'd be fine with that responsibility. And I'm planning very much and I'm in support of what my other colleagues have said on this dais, but they're not lowering your taxes. They're continuing to get their peace and then pass that on to us. And then that also impacts our communities who are struggling financially. And so that is the rage that I feel. I am perfectly willing to take on the responsibility. I think we actually will do a better job because the solutions would be local. And we could really hear what residents need. So that is, if there's ever a look on my face, it's because I'm disengaging from my own emotions. So I apologize if that comes off as dismissive. I'm committed to whatever needs to happen. I have a lot of concerns. Black Mold is not something that you can paint over. I think the CO issue is an easier issue to manage. I think it's an easier issue to solve for. The plumbing, the black mold, all of these things, that's ripping out walls. That's redoing, that's substantive repair. And so my concern for residents who are already in temporary housing is what happens when the reports come back and we realize that it's not something that can be returned. We don't know that yet, but that's the kind of my gut concern, my gut fears that. These are not solutions that will come easily. They're not solutions that will come quickly. But I think everyone on this diocese is very much committed to you all. A few weeks ago, several of us were at another gathering where folks were sharing their stories around their working conditions. And I left that room with the same emotion that we must take care of each other, that we cannot keep failing each other, that we all deserve to live in dignity, to live in safe housing, to have decent wages and a decent life. And as much as possible, I'm committed to doing that for you all and to working with you all. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Middleton. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and colleagues. And again, thank all of you so much for being here tonight. So before Paulie Mary and Barbara Jordan and Rosa Parks were who they were, they were basically Ashley Kennedy. And I want to honor her work. Yeah, you can clap for that. You can clap for that. She did. I want to honor her work. Mr. Mayor, earlier tonight, I read a resolution proclamation honoring Dr. King. And on the day Dr. King was assassinated, he was supposed to be in Durham. But he wasn't in Durham. You know why? Because he was with poor people, striking workers who were being violently pushed back on in Memphis, Tennessee. So he would have been in Durham on April 4th, but he was in Tennessee addressing some of the issues that we're talking about tonight. So it's almost poetic that we would honor Dr. King tonight and be here in this way talking about these issues. I said earlier, and I'll just say again, our most sacred responsibility is to keep our people safe. The next time people in the hood say something's wrong, listen to them. Seems like I've spent a lot of time talking about what's going on outside of apartments and violence in this city. And turns out, as someone said earlier, we were just as in much danger inside as well. So inside and outside. So the next time folk from the hood say something's wrong or they need something, we should listen and take them seriously. We have folk that are no longer in their homes tonight because I think to his credit, Anthony Scott realized that this is not something to play with. He didn't move people out of their homes because he thought it was a good idea or was bored. He did it because these are real life-threatening issues that are before us. And no one should make any mistake about it. When I sat at the community meeting last week and listened to those mothers, there was one mother who had her baby in her arms and talked about the mode situation and her holding her baby. I realized that every once in a while you have situations that remind you why you ran for office, that remind you why you did this, that remind you why you said yes when folk asked you to run. This is that situation. This is one of those situations. This is bike lanes for me. This is tree canopy for me. This is climate change for me. And they're all important issues, but this is our babies, no one can speak for them or protect them except us. We all lay God. So it starts here, it's gotta be unequivocal and it's gotta be every day and it's gotta be constant. So I thank my colleagues and I heard almost to a person, all of us express our willingness to do what we need to do and of course, we ain't got $2 billion, we do not have $2 billion, but we got something and we can put something on it. So we're awaiting what the feds, anti-up, what the state anti-ups, and anti-sup of what DHA is able to come up with, but I am absolutely committed and heartened to hear that we are prepared to act. This is what government is for. This is what it comes down to. There's nothing more important than this. There's nothing more important than this. And on this evening, when we've honored Dr. King, like he and his generation, now our generation is being faced with a challenge. And the question is, how shall we respond to it? And let us resolve to overwhelmingly respond and vanquish this challenge with overwhelming resources and the overwhelming values that define who we are. This is the time for Durham to prove who Durham is here and now. Thank all of you. Again, thank you, Ashley. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, colleagues. Happy New Year. God bless. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Council Member Middleton. I have some comments as well and I first want to appreciate all my colleagues and I don't think there was a single thing up here that was said that I don't agree with wholeheartedly and appreciate the unity of the council in supporting this community that has come to us tonight. I have, I know that we have heard a lot of people have already recognized Ashley Kennedy for her work, but I want to add to that as well. I don't believe Ashley's in the room, but let me just say, she is here, that her work didn't just begin with this. She has been doing this for a long time and all of us who know MacDougal know what she has been doing and it is amazing work now, but it has been amazing work. I also want to thank the folks that have volunteered. We have had a tremendous outpouring of folks making donations, bringing food by, helping deliver food, helping serve food, helping be, opening their restaurants to people to do those things, bringing their grills out and I am just amazed at that outpouring of volunteer support. It has been very moving. So this is an emergency and we are treating it as such and I want to say that I completely endorse the action of Mr. Scott in relocating the residents out of MacDougal until he felt utterly confident that those apartments are safe. That was a decision that I think was absolutely right even though it's a very hard decision and it disrupted a lot of lives, but safety has got to be first as everyone here has said. Someone said that safe living conditions are a human right. That is absolutely true. Safe living conditions are a human right and we as a community have to guarantee those safe living conditions to everyone in MacDougal Terrace as we do to everyone in our entire city. Carbon monoxide, gas leaks, mold, these are not acceptable. These are not acceptable and all of you all who said that tonight are absolutely right and that is why Mr. Scott acted and again, I endorse that action. This is critically important to all of us. When we hear about babies dying, no matter what the cause is, it is crucially important that we respond with all of our might as a community and to the people who have spoken tonight to all the residents of MacDougal Terrace, we hear you, we care very deeply and we are determined to make sure that your housing is safe, sanitary and decent. We will be paying a lot of close attention to this in the short term, but we'll be also making sure that after this crisis has passed that we will be providing safe, sanitary and decent housing in MacDougal Terrace until we can replace all of this housing, which has got to be the thing that happens. This housing is too old to be continually patched. So there are gonna be three phases here. The first is what we're in now, dealing with the relocation situation, getting people back into their homes safely. The second is making sure that all of these apartments are safe, decent housing for everyone to live in. And third, we're going to have to be redeveloping MacDougal Terrace and replacing these buildings, which we've known, we've known that. I wanna say something a little about housing authorities and city councils and city governments across this nation. What we have seen around this nation predominantly is city councils all across the nation have been pushing their housing authorities and their residents away. People have wanted to look the other way because these communities are often housing are most vulnerable and because they're often housing mostly people of color. And you see this all across the country where cities are giving no resources to their housing authorities. And in Durham, I want to say that we are going and we have gone in the other direction. We have embraced our housing authority and its residents. We're supporting its work in the service of improving the lives of people who've lived there. And we have been spending in the last several years millions of dollars in city tax dollars to renovate Damar Court, to renovate Maureen Road, to renovate Laurel Oaks, to materially improve the lives of the people who live there. We're about to do the same at JJ Henderson and we are also with city dollars supporting for the first time in many years new affordable housing to be built by the housing authority on the JJ Henderson site under Mr. Scott's leadership. The city is putting millions of dollars in the last few years into Durham Housing Authority because we know we cannot let these conditions persist. And in addition, we know now that our housing bond will be redeveloping over the next few years Liberty Apartments and Oldham Towers and Forest Hills Heights were committed to redeveloping all of the Durham Housing Authority communities in the next few years. There's a very simple reason that that McDougall is not first on this list and that's because it's hard. It's hard. Some of these communities, well, let's put it like this. In order to redevelop a housing community like McDougall Terrace or any of our large housing authority communities, not only takes a lot of city money, but it also takes a lot of private capital. The city money has to attract that private capital for this redevelopment to occur. And at McDougall Terrace at this time, that's very hard. It's the opposite of the fact that people want to go in there and steal the land. It is that it's hard to attract private development, private investment there now. And so what we're doing with the Housing Authority's leadership is doing this in a way that we think that we can best redevelop all the Durham Housing Authority communities. And McDougall Terrace is definitely on that list and this will be done in a few years. But between now and then, we have to make sure that everyone is living in safe, sanitary, and decent conditions in McDougall Terrace. That is a moral obligation of all of us on city council and of our entire community. I also want to say that Housing Authority Director Anthony Scott has my full confidence. He is a superb leader. He made the right decision, a difficult decision about this to keep everyone safe. He is working within a severely under-resourced system or a public housing system as people on the dias have said has been severely under-resourced by our federal government for many years. And that's why we as a city have had to step in to help redevelop these communities. But I have full confidence in Mr. Scott and his ability to get this done and to do what he has started doing in the last couple of years, which is to redevelop our Housing Authority community so people can live in decent conditions. It has been mentioned that we should be reaching out to HUD and to our members of Congress. I just want to make clear that we have. I've spoken to Congressman Butterfield. Mr. Scott has spoken to Congressman Butterfield as well as Congressman Price. The Housing Authority has been in constant communication with HUD and we have asked our Congressman, Congressman Price to do so as well, which he is doing. So that work is definitely happening. And I want to just finally say that it's been said, if, as my colleagues have said, if the Housing Authority doesn't have the money to do this job and needs the support of the city, we are certainly ready to hear that proposal as we have been for all the Durham Housing Authority proposals that have come to us in recent years to do this redevelopment. And we will certainly be waiting for that as well if it comes now. So again, I want to thank all of you all for being here tonight. It's a very difficult time for us, for our whole community, because it's a difficult time for those of you who live in McDougal Terrace. You have our full support and you can hold us accountable for that. So I appreciate very much everyone being here and I'm going to now adjourn this meeting at 10.36. Thank you.