Council votes to rescind transfers
In a victory for neighborhood self-determination, the council voted to rescind the transfer of the two properties to Dominion Ministries, and put them into an upset bid process on September 7th. Thanks to amendments by Mike Woodard, the properties will revert to these non-profits if no qualifying bids are received. I found this disappointing for 218 Dillard, since Preservation Durham, a non-profit, clearly noted at the work session 2 weeks ago that they were not notified of the initial process and, loosely quoting "if there was any parcel in Durham we would want to build affordable housing on, it would be 218 Dillard." I thought this parcel in particular should have reverted to the standard process, open to all non-profits if no market bids were received.
But a door has opened again for the neighborhood to work towards their goals. Clearly the win-win here is that we need to build ecconomically-diverse, use-diverse, and people-diverse neighborhoods - healthy, vibrant communities with services, parks, housing for people who work at American Tobacco and people who are formerly homeless.
Council seemed to imply that this somehow gave the appearance of being for or against affordable housing (which applies only to Housing for New Hope.) Of course it isn't. I think of it this way. A neighborhood is like an orchestra - it sounds best with all different instruments, some soft, some loud, some high, some low. Let's say affordable housing providers are trumpets. Trumpets are good, but 50 trumpets doesn't make an orchestra. Because you say "hey, we have 50 trumpets - what we really need is a friggin' oboe" doesn't mean you hate trumpets.
Unfortunately, much of our policy is trumpet-making rather than orchestra-making. If you question all the trumpets in one orchestra, you must hate trumpets - or music in general. We have a lot of organizations in this city that make trumpets, and city policy to make trumpets. We need trumpets - but as part of a whole orchestra, not a monotone.
Okay, so I got a bit carried away with that metaphor.
Posts
6 comments:
Thanks for the update, Gary. Sorry I had to jet -- we had co-op stuff tonight.
Now we got to get some qualifying bids...
But I like trumpets Gary. And Oboes. But really, deep down inside, I have a preference for violas. Can't we have a string section too?
Thank you for all of your hard work and help during this. It's so good to know that people all over Durham support us.
Thank you to city council for rescinding the transfer! thank you also to the communities of neighbors within and around Cleveland-Holloway for your support and work with this issue. How do we start a neighborhood master plan?
Cypress and Coco the Oboes
Thank you. I too ask for a string section, maybe a Cello? A cheap one, (affordable?) so I hear, can sound just as nice.
And thank you to everyone who spoke last night. Wonderful to see such passion for a neighborhood and its people.
--eleni
It's your neighborhood - I say ramp up the strings if ya like.
Congratulations to you all - you pulled off a very difficult feat. Just a few more difficult feats to go...
GK
I would think that the neighborhood would have a rather strong lawsuit against the city if the city didn't follow its own procedural process and basically gave the property (with bias) to a non-profit.
Glad to see/hear that the city got called on it and is being "forced" to actually follow procedure. Democracy's a b*tch at times, ain't it?! :)
Post a Comment