Durham County Confronts Homelessness and Safety Net Cuts
The Durham County Board of Commissioners hears sharp concerns about rising homelessness while weighing investments in a new transition house, a low‑barrier shelter, and street medicine outreach alongside strained budgets. Commissioners and staff detail how federal and state policy changes are cutting Medicaid and SNAP for hundreds of residents, even as the county preserves heritage communities like Orange Factory and grapples with limits on future property tax growth. 92mins
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Original Meeting
Monday, October 5th, 2026
16399.351063
Board of County Commissioners on 2026-10-05 9:00 AM - Work Session - Oct 05, 2026
In This Video
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Public Health Director Rod Jenkins and staff explained that the county would retain and lightly renovate the existing transition house, add a higher-capacity second house to reach roughly 14 beds, and thereby reduce reliance on private providers while expanding 24-hour, structured transitional housing.
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County staff and commissioners discussed adding $2 million in PAYGO funding to the Museum of Life and Science capital project to close an inflation-driven construction funding gap, while emphasizing value engineering, expanded fundraising, and the impact of volatile bond-funded project costs on taxpayers.
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Jillian Hall described how the UNITE street medicine team conducted weekday outreach across multiple Durham encampment sites and downtown, building relationships while distributing supplies, performing needs assessments, offering case management and basic screenings, and partnering with volunteers and community medical and behavioral health providers.
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Jillian Hall described how the UNITE team brought full medical and case‑management services to residents at the Candlewood Suites White Flag Shelter, connecting several people to SSI and specialty care, including one unsheltered neighbor who received rapid cataract surgeries that restored vision and enabled reunification with family and a transition into stable housing.
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Russ Pierce, Executive Director of Housing for New Hope, explained why the agency shifted away from street outreach toward housing support, highlighted the need for medically led street medicine partnerships, and emphasized the importance of sustaining SOAR benefits assistance despite funding challenges.
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Commissioner Burton expressed concern that a wealthy country tolerated gaps in basic healthcare and homelessness, and asked whether the street medicine services were available only to HUD-defined unhoused individuals or also to “working homeless” residents staying with family or in hotels who did not meet the formal definition but were effectively homeless.
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Commissioner Stephen Valentine asked for context on the number of people served by the street medicine van, and Jillian Hall explained how monthly medical pop-ups at encampments and partner sites provided on-van treatment, supplies, and case management, including help connecting patients to specialists and transportation.
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Commissioner Stephen Valentine asked about sustaining the street medicine work beyond one-time funding, and Jillian Hall explained that the team was arranging warm handoffs and referrals to other outreach and case management providers while ensuring continued support for pending SSI and SSDI applications, with a fee-based structure for longer-term assistance.
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Russ Pierce explained that clinical partners had sought a three-year commitment to collaborate on SOAR benefits work and noted that the HOPE team was exploring creative, pre-employment workforce development models identified by the Sanford group for populations facing barriers to regular employment.
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Commissioner Stephen Valentine called for better city–county coordination on homelessness funding, and County Manager Hager explained that the county had earmarked $18 million in its capital plan as a placeholder for future housing and supportive services while also outlining existing county investments in prevention efforts like childcare, food security, and other support programs.
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Interim Executive Director Gaddis described daily shelter activities, noting that neighbors used the space for showers, job applications, device charging, games, journaling, and on-site visits from 11 service providers, resulting in 528 showers, 17 job offers, 127 housing assistance contacts, and six permanent housing placements.
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Interim Executive Director Gaddis reported that the shelter’s per‑person and per‑visit costs left the program under budget pace with a small surplus projected, while neighbor feedback and an initial survey indicated that most participants felt welcome, respected, and supported in seeking housing and employment, with some noting only occasional feelings of inclusion.
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Interim Executive Director Gaddis explained how the shelter provided a safe place for rest and connection while hosting 11 on‑site partner organizations, highlighted the success of journaling sessions and a community open house with health screenings, and outlined an action plan to improve permanent housing exits by prioritizing housing assessments, dedicated staff support, landlord outreach, and focused housing assistance days.
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Interim Executive Director Gaddis explained how the shelter pivoted from a planned laundry truck to on-site commercial washers while issuing laundromat cards, addressed reduced shower use due to repairs and expanded escorted access, and outlined efforts to boost behavioral health and library engagement alongside new housing focus days and preparations for winter operations.
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Interim Executive Director Gaddis outlined plans to deliver a final evaluation of the shelter pilot in early 2027, monitor visit volume and contract metrics against per-person cost targets, and either adjust services or sunset the program if monthly visits dropped below 500 or outcomes remained flat for two quarters.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs described how the day services center had filled a critical gap by providing showers, clean clothes, phone charging, and a safe environment for neighbors including young families and LGBTQ+ survivors of domestic violence, while Interim Executive Director Gaddis emphasized the goal of sustaining and expanding the center as a front door into the homelessness response system through stable funding, new grants, and hiring dedicated staff like Dwayne.
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Carla Rosenberg described the Heritage Communities Program and explained that recognition of the Orange Factory community as a non‑regulatory heritage community was important for honoring its legacy, especially since the historic village was largely destroyed in 1983 despite earlier consideration for National Register status.
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Tessa McGuire described an online story map exhibit for the Orange Factory heritage community that presented its prehistory and early history through maps, aerial imagery, oral histories, and a virtual tour of the former mill village, noting that Riverview United Methodist Church was the only largely unchanged structure remaining after most of the village was inundated.
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Tessa McGuire recounted how Orange Factory residents unsuccessfully protested the city’s decision to dam the Little River and inundate the mill village by 1985, highlighted oral histories documenting their experiences, and described a new roadside wayfinding sign near Riverview United Methodist Church to mark the heritage community’s last remaining structure.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs reflected on learning Orange Factory’s history for the first time, emphasized the importance of documenting displaced communities through oral histories, maps, and photographs, and praised the Heritage Communities program and forthcoming historical marker as vital tools for preserving Durham’s past.
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Chair Mike Lee asked how fully Orange Factory’s history reflected enslaved people and residents of color, and Tessa McGuire explained that the mill village sat on land owned by known enslavers, was largely a poor white textile community that profited from enslaved labor, and included a small number of Black women domestic workers identified by name in the story map despite challenges tracing their descendants.
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Chair Lee urged staff to present a more honest and inclusive history of Orange Factory by foregrounding racial inequities, the role of enslaved people and land ownership barriers for residents of color, and ensuring that heritage narratives honor all who were part of the community rather than primarily white landowners.
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County Manager Hager cautioned that emerging federal and state policy changes were creating budget uncertainty and making solvency harder to maintain, and indicated that staff would return in late 2026 with County Attorney Williamson and others to brief commissioners on the evolving federal landscape and its implications for county operations.
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County Budget Director Keith Lane reported that general fund expenditures ended at about 92% of budget while revenues reached roughly 90% due to property tax appeals and repeated sales tax shortfalls, signaling slowing revenue growth and continued reliance on fund balance even as the fiscal year remained relatively solid.
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County staff emphasized that the county remained in a solid fiscal position despite property tax appeals following an unprecedented 68% base growth, while Keith Lane cautioned that rising inflationary costs for gas, utilities, and other expenses would make it harder to avoid drawing down reserves in future years.
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Keith Lane explained that it was too early in the fiscal year to gauge property and sales tax performance, noted the availability of the 2026–27 budget document online, and warned that current economic indicators pointed to downward revenue pressure from the loss of one-time ARPA funds, stagnating sales taxes, and a $2 million drop in volatile state hold harmless revenues.
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Budget Director Keith Lane warned that volatile state hold harmless revenues and a return to modest 3–3.5% property tax growth were prompting the county to freeze most non‑mandated positions and confront revenue losses from a recent federal act that reduced SNAP and nutrition funding, requiring future board decisions to address these impacts.
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Public Health Director Jenkins informed commissioners that federal funding for a local nutrition program had ended, warned that prepaid health plans were terminating contracts with health departments and putting about 400 professionals at risk of job loss by 2027, and described preparing a reduction-in-force plan while expressing concern about the impact on public health services for parents, babies, and children across North Carolina.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs asked about the local impact of lost nutrition program funding, and Public Health Director Jenkins reported that 16 positions were at risk while explaining that long‑standing, high‑touch services for at‑risk women and children would likely shift to call‑center models under prepaid health plans, with transition details still pending from state officials.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs asked who had decided to end contracts for a key maternal and child health program, and Public Health Director Jenkins explained that major prepaid health plans led by Healthy Blue chose to bring operations in-house, prompting others to follow and leaving only a few plans still exploring complex partnership options with local health departments.
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Maggie Clapp, director of the Department of Social Services, described the life‑or‑death impacts of recent non‑citizen coverage changes, including uninsured patients being pushed out of ICU care, losing access to life‑saving chemotherapy, dying while waiting for Medicaid, and about 450 Durham residents losing coverage as of October 1, which had taken a heavy toll on staff working to secure health and food benefits.
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Maggie Clapp explained that new HR 1 non‑citizen requirements had already cut Medicaid coverage for about 450 residents and would soon impose work or activity reporting and six‑month recertifications with unclear documentation rules, prompting the hiring and training of nine new staff to manage eligibility redeterminations and protect critical health insurance access.
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Maggie Clapp explained that new HR1 requirements would mandate recurring background checks for Medicaid staff and shift SNAP administration cost sharing from a 50/50 split to 25% federal and 75% county, creating added operational burdens and an estimated $2–2.5 million annual cost increase for Durham County.
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Department of Social Services Director Maggie Clapp reported that new non‑citizen SNAP eligibility rules were causing a continuing loss of families from benefits, reflected in a $1.5 million drop in August food and nutrition issuances and a decline in participating households from 16,000 in July 2025 to 14,000 in July 2026.
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Department of Social Services Director Maggie Clapp and Budget Director Keith Lane explained that North Carolina’s SNAP error rate was hovering above the 6% threshold using a highly volatile sample of just three cases, warned that the state’s unique cost‑sharing model could shift roughly $1.7 million in sales tax revenues back to counties if the rate did not fall, and noted that this approach would be especially difficult for smaller counties to afford.
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Commissioner Wendy Jacobs urged staff to publicly document the human impacts of HR 1—such as on a county web page—and County Manager Claudia Hager agreed to return soon with a strategy for sharing the stories behind the policy’s harms while acknowledging limits on how much the county could afford to close emerging gaps.
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Department of Social Services Director Maggie Clapp described collaborating with Duke, Lincoln Community Health Center, Public Health, El Centro, and Cooperative Extension to educate residents about new HR 1 work and recertification requirements through community outreach, a mid-November fair, multi-channel media messaging, and web listings of volunteer agencies that could help neighbors meet documentation and volunteer hour rules.
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County staff explained how large, variable state sales tax refunds to nonprofit institutions like Duke reduced and destabilized Durham’s Article 39 sales tax revenues—often arriving months after the original payments—and highlighted that this refund structure was a major factor behind flat sales tax growth over the past three years.
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Following a pause after the levy cap discussion, Vice Chair Nida Allam requested a clearer breakdown of debt service payments and economic development incentives, and Budget Director Keith Lane explained that the budget document already detailed that roughly 70–80% of county debt service was tied to Durham Public Schools, with smaller portions supporting Durham Technical Community College, the Museum of Life and Science, and other county projects.
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Vice Chair Allam equested a breakdown comparing Durham Public Schools employee benefits to county benefits to assess cost-saving potential of shifting roles like DPS nurses, and County Manager Claudia Hager agreed to prepare a white paper while staff cautioned that personnel and benefits already accounted for about 37% of the county budget, limiting capacity to add more employees to the county payroll.
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County Manager Claudia Hager explained that affordability concerns led the county to contract most janitorial services, while a commissioner and staff highlighted how state incentive programs like JDIG and long-term county investments in sectors such as life sciences, biopharma, and advanced manufacturing—alongside partners like Durham Tech and Durham Public Schools—had helped build a complex economic ecosystem whose story and returns, including major donations, needed to be better communicated to residents.
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County Manager Claudia Hager clarified that a proposed property tax levy cap would slow future revenue growth rather than reduce existing collections, emphasized that only about 15% of the budget lay in departmental operating funds compared with over 80% in less flexible areas, and highlighted the role of key performance indicators in guiding difficult funding decisions in a constrained budget environment.
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County Manager Claudia Hager outlined key budget pressures for FY 2027–28—including federal and state policy changes, rising Durham Public Schools continuation and pre-K funding needs, inflation, and transit planning—and highlighted that over the past four years the county had generated $57.3 million in natural property tax growth and proactively added $91 million more through rate increases to meet community needs.
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County Manager Claudia Hager warned that a proposed constitutional amendment limiting local property tax increases was broadly defined and could, depending on future legislative details, restrict counties and special taxing districts such as volunteer fire departments from raising sufficient revenue to fund mandated services, schools, public safety, and major capital needs.
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