WUNC – A group of housing advocates and physicians in Durham is accusing the city of mismanaging federal funds meant to help people living with HIV and AIDS in the community.
The Coalition to End the HIV Epidemic in Durham, or EHE Coalition, says the city of Durham has mismanaged the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program, also known as HOPWA, a U.S. Housing and Urban Development program.
Over the last four years, the city has accumulated more than $1.3 million in unspent HOPWA funds without any contractual commitments, according to a city staff memo to the city manager.
"The coalition went and found out there was money just sitting with the City of Durham,” said Carolyn Hinton, director of Healing with CAARE, one of the organizations in the coalition and the city’s first free HIV support and community health clinic.
Money sitting with the city
Since forming in 2023, the EHE Coalition and its members have spoken and met with city staff and council members at various times to call for the money to be used.
The group has issued several proposals – including detailed funding allocation plans – to help the city meet an urgent demand for housing for HIV patients, a particularly vulnerable minority statistically shown to struggle with stable housing.
But in interviews with WUNC News, coalition members say their efforts were met with indifference and bureaucratic inefficiency by the City Manager’s Office and the Housing & Neighborhood Services Department.
“Instead of them being transparent, they’re just continuing to say ‘We know what’s best,’” said Lanea Foster, a co-chair of the EHE Coalition, who previously oversaw homeless prevention work with Durham County for years.
“We have a lot of people who would have been eligible for HOPWA funding, who would have been eligible for rental assistance, for even a hotel room when they were coming out of the hospital or some other place. They could get a down payment for rent. They could get several different things that could have stabilized them,” Foster said.
Few actually received help, reports show
Annual reports filed by the City of Durham evaluating the performance of housing programs and homeless services show few households have actually been helped by the city’s HOPWA program across the five counties they serve.
The City of Durham’s HOPWA program is meant to cover residents across Durham, Orange, Chatham, Granville and Person counties.
Local governments granted federal HUD funding for housing and homeless prevention programs, such as HOPWA, are required to publish reports that evaluate their performance.
In the 2024-2025 fiscal year, Durham assisted 14 households across their service area with HOPWA long-term rental assistance.
In the previous fiscal year, nine households received long-term rental assistance, and 41 households received short-term housing assistance.
In the 2022-2023 fiscal year, 18 households received long-term rental assistance and 35 households received short-term assistance.
In these reports, the city cited a lack of affordable housing units and a lack of landlords that accepted federal housing pay.
The city also cited the closure of Central Piedmont Community Action in 2024, a nonprofit that contracted with the city to run HOPWA services.
The woman who last ran the program there was convicted of fraud in a scheme as the previous director of the Chatham County Housing Authority and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, The News & Observer reported.
