Local nonprofit Open Table Ministry hosted a “Homeless Roundtable Discussion” Tuesday morning, where panelists discussed the need for cohesive public-private partnerships to address the homelessness crisis and expressed frustration with the Durham Housing Authority.
The Ministry, which provides transportation, legal assistance and emergency resources to people experiencing homelessness, brought together city officials and community members to address the growing homelessness crisis in Durham ahead of World Homeless Day.
The City of Durham has seen rising rates of homelessness since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a 2024 report by the city’s Community Development Department, there were 361 people facing homelessness in 2019, compared to 415 this year. The city’s homeless population peaked in 2022 at 459 people, which includes those who are unhoused in addition to those living in emergency shelters or transitional housing.
Durham’s rapid growth in the past few years, alongside soaring housing costs during the pandemic, have contributed to growing numbers of displaced low-income individuals and strain on the city’s housing resources.
“When the pressure on the housing market happened during the pandemic, you had folks who had been renting for a decade, maybe two, who were shocked that their rent got jacked up month to month, and they no longer could sustain that rent,” said Councilmember Javiera Caballero.
Colin Davis, community development manager of the homeless system for the City of Durham, started the discussion by explaining that there are more people experiencing homelessness than the Durham Continuum of Care — the city program aimed at assisting homeless individuals — can accommodate.
Per Davis, there are currently 45 men, 51 women and 41 families who are unsheltered in Durham, noting that these numbers are in addition to those currently making use of the city’s temporary housing. Davis added that 10 men, 16 women and 28 families self-reported being at “imminent risk of homelessness” within the next two weeks.
Durham’s homeless housing system has not returned to its pre-pandemic capacity. The city’s current temporary housing consists of 50 beds for men, 15 beds for women and 28 bedrooms for families, which is 30 beds less for men and 15 less for women than it was before.
However, these figures provided by the city do not capture a complete picture of homelessness in Durham. “Unleased” people — those who may have access to shelter through transitional housing or other means but do not have their own housing — are not identified as homeless by the Continuum of Care’s Coordinated Entry Program or by the federal government’s measurements.
“These people are not looked at by [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] as homeless, but in actuality, they are. They have no legal protections in whatever housing situations that they have,” said Charita McCollers of the Lincoln Community Health Center Homeless Clinic. “… While I think Coordinated Entry has been great at helping us get some sense of what our numbers look like, by no means is Coordinated Entry capturing all of the people who need help.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically increased the number of people in need of housing. Tasha Melvin, executive director of Families Moving Forward, explained that shelters were “rarely at capacity” prior to 2020.
Since the pandemic, Melvin’s shelter has been met with more families seeking shelter for longer periods of time. McCollers says that these increased levels of homelessness have been “normalized.”
Community organizations have played an essential role in supporting Durham’s homeless community. Several panelists in attendance Tuesday are employed by organizations serving Durham’s homeless community, providing services including health care for the uninsured, community shelters and case management.
Open Table Ministry — a longtime partner of the Duke Divinity School — has become a vital pillar of support to the homeless community by providing case management resources, assistance obtaining personal identification documents, an emergency winter shelter, clothing and weekly Free Stores, where they offer free food, coffee, clothing and showers through a partnership with Fresh Start Durham.
But these providers are now experiencing a strain on resources.
“Homeless service providers cannot do this by [themselves]. This has to be a community response,” McCollers said. “... We need to come together intentionally … we’re only as big as we can be.”
Caballero spoke to the role of City Council in addressing the crisis, explaining that solutions like regulating short-term rentals are outside the council’s legal jurisdiction. She added that the unwillingness of the N.C. General Assembly to establish such policies hinders progress.
“They don’t care about Durham [and] they don’t care about urban residents … so we have to create our own solutions,” Caballero said.
The panel pivoted to a discussion about the fragmentation of the homelessness support system in Durham.
Ann Oshel, senior vice president of community health and well-being at Alliance Health, recounted encountering a homeless man on the street who was “visibly” struggling with his mental health. Despite wanting to connect him with a support team, she was unsure who to call.
Mark Scruggs, a member of the Open Table Ministry’s Board of Directors, criticized the Durham Housing Authority’s — the group responsible for the public development of affordable housing units and the provision of housing vouchers to low-income families — absence at the roundtable as the “elephant in the room.”
“I don't want to say much because there's no one here to represent them, other than the fact that we need to learn more about them, and we need to learn what the problem is and why they can't do their job,” he said.
In recent months, Scruggs and other Durhamites have faced difficulties accessing housing vouchers that subsidize their rent.
“It's not been totally pleasant having to deal with one administration at DHA, after the other, after the other,” he said.
McCollers theorizes that “tremendous levels of turnover over the past five years” has led to a knowledge gap within the DHA, adding that its absence at the roundtable may have been because they “don’t know” about the conversations being held by local organizations.
She highlighted the need for community organizations to work alongside the DHA to bridge this gap rather than antagonize them.
Caballero and Scruggs also called on Duke to be more involved in addressing the issue of homelessness in Durham.
“I think with all the college football, basketball we have here, with all these wonderful medical facilities, [the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and] Duke right here, I think we could get some players involved besides just the same old waters,” Scruggs said.
Duke Athletics recently partnered with a number of local organizations — including the Ministry — for “919 Day” Sept. 19, where student-athletes and staff engaged in community service work as part of Duke Athletics’ “mission of making a positive impact beyond sports.”
“Until the city and the county and other community partners like Duke and other large entities can sit there and be in the market the way a private development firm can be, we're going to continue to lose,” Caballero said during the Roundtable discussion.
Caballero clarified that Duke does contribute to Durham but does not always communicate their outreach efforts effectively. She did not expand upon the specific ways Duke could impact the housing market as a private development firm.
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Ana Despa is a Pratt sophomore and an associate news editor for the news department.