Awareness, Agitation and Action: Fayetteville Street Projects Audio Tour | Presented by Durham CAN
By Durham CAN
Although the buildings are gone, the land remains, and the people and stories shaped there are still very much alive. This audio tour is a small collection of the people connected to the Fayetteville Street Projects that to affirm that Durham’s future cannot move forward without remembering its past.
Awareness, Agitation and Action: Fayetteville Street Projects Audio Tour | Presented by Durham CANSep 23, 2021
'A Crossroads' | Pastor William Lucas, First Chronicles Community Church
"We pay taxes just like they do, we work just like they do, and we're citizens just like they are."
'The Struggle' | Ms. Regina Mays, Franklin Village
"I knew a lady who had a voucher and she stayed at Urban Ministries' Shelter for over a year...and she was a Fayetteville Street resident."
'These Kids Are Me' | Ms. Chauntia Gilchrist, GRAB Durham
"The City involvement was way different than now."
'The Truth of the Matter' | Ms. Ava Thompson, Holy Cross Catholic Church
"That entire neighborhood has been hacked up and cut up."
'Déjà Vu' | Ms. Constance Wright, Braggtown Community Association
"I may be wrong but I feel there is another motive..."
'Holy Ground' | Bishop Clarence Laney Jr., Monument of Faith Church
"Currently when I look at the vacant 20 acres, it reminds me of promises unfulfilled and of structural racism that exists in Durham."
Awareness, Agitation and Action: Fayetteville Street Projects Audio Tour | Presented by Durham CAN
On Wednesday, October 14, 2020, Durham Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods held a silent vigil walk around the Grant Street-Merrick Street-East Umstead Street section of vacant, 20-acre site referred known as Fayette Place.
Until 2007, the Durham Housing Authority (DHA) owned and operated 168, 2-story brick duplex homes on nearly 20 acres - the Fayetteville Street Projects. In 2007, DHA sold the property to Campus Apartments, a Philadelphia developer that demolished the apartments, leaving the cement slab foundations.
In 2017, due to the organizing efforts of Durham CAN, the City of Durham gave DHA $4.2 million to repurchase the property with the goal of redevelopment that includes affordable housing. The restrictive covenants attached to the development grant require DHA to maintain the site in a good, sanitary and safe condition (including mowing the grass, removing weeds, trash and debris and repairing fencing) and creating and implementing a community engagement program to provide meaningful opportunities for the Durham community, including but not limited to the Hayti and NCCU communities, to contribute input in connection with the redevelopment of the Site and the surrounding area.
The $95 million Affordable Housing Bond passed by 13.6% of Durham voters in 2019 includes funding to DHA for a number of redevelopment projects in the first 5 years of its redevelopment plan (including a new DHA office), and did not include funding toward redevelopment of the former Fayetteville Street Apartments site. And as recently observed by many members of the community:
"The property looks worse than when the Philadelphia developers owned it."
Before there was ‘Fayette Place’ there was Fayetteville Street Projects: a public housing community developed by the Durham Housing Authority in 1967. And before there was the Fayetteville Street Projects, there was the historic Hayti community.
Although the buildings are gone, the land remains, and the people and stories shaped there are still very much alive. This audio tour is a small collection of the people connected to the Fayetteville Street Projects that to affirm that Durham’s future cannot move forward without remembering its past.