Residents at Ashton Place, a downtown Durham apartment complex for low-income senior residents, have quickly forged bonds in the year the building has been open.
Tytia Jones, assistant property manager, says residents collect food from churches and local food pantries to stock the community fridges, and carpool to doctor’s appointments or visits with nearby family members.
“We have a lot of residents over there, 51 families, that have taken the time to fall in love with their homes,” Jones said during a belated ribbon cutting ceremony for the complex this week. “They’ve taken the time to fall in love with each other.”
Barbara Lennon, an Ashton Place resident, moved into her new apartment last October. She’s now living out her “soft life.” Lennon recently retired from Durham Public Schools after 25 years in child nutrition, though she still works part-time as a crossing guard to stay engaged with the students. Moving into Ashton Place gave Lennon much-needed peace of mind because she didn’t want her two daughters to feel burdened as she got older.
“They were concerned about me moving here, and I told them I came here because I don’t want to be their responsibility,” Lennon says. “I want to put myself somewhere so they don’t have to do it. I want my kids to have a good life.”
The 51-unit affordable housing complex is open to residents ages 55 and up whose household income is at or below 60 percent of the area median income. It offers residents an assortment of amenities: kitchen appliances, storage lockers, community spaces and events, free Wi-Fi, and the building is also a stone’s throw away from the downtown Durham Transit Station, which accommodates many of the same residents who would qualify for the low-income housing offered by Ashton Place.
And tenants get to share in downtown living usually reserved for those in Durham’s growing supply of high-rise apartments and luxury residential towers.
“We are not just putting affordable, high-quality housing downtown, but putting it in a place and in a manner that is indistinguishable from the market rate apartments around it, indistinguishable from an aesthetic point of view, from a material point of view,” Durham city council member Mark Anthony Middleton said.
Durham is an attractive destination for young people looking to start a job or a family. The average median age is around 34 years old, but a majority of the new housing, both apartments and standalone homes, can be difficult to access for older residents who are on a fixed income or need varying levels of additional services, like transportation or health care support, that market-rate housing doesn’t always accommodate. After a lifetime of working to build a life, Durham residents need access to homes where they can age in place without sacrificing basic needs.
“We’re opening doors—opening doors of opportunity, of dignity, of comfort, and of safety for people who live in these homes, and who have contributed to Durham for many decades and continue to contribute to Durham,” said Self-Help’s director of real estate Dan Levine. “They have put in the work, and we owe that back to them, to put the work in for them.”
Construction for Ashton Place began in March 2023 and was co-developed by DHIC Inc. and Self-Help Ventures Fund. A complex web of funding sources pushed the project over the finish line, including city, state and federal investment, community partners–Oak Foundation, Duke University and AJ Fletcher Foundation–and various financial institutions like Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and North Carolina Housing Financing Agency. Construction costs rose over the course of the project due to tariffs and other market uncertainties, but the commitment from the funding partners kept the project viable and on schedule, said Levine.
“If any one of them had gone away, this project wouldn’t happen,” Levine said. “All those partners really stepped up even more to keep this project on track and going, and we’re really grateful.”
Vincent Price, President of Duke University, said during the ceremony that Duke would “remain dedicated to partnering on issues like housing and health economic mobility in a variety of ways.” Residents have called on Duke to step up its commitment to Durham amid the university’s own financial setbacks due to federal funding cuts.
Willard Street Apartments, the affordable housing complex adjacent to Ashton Place, opened in 2021. Many of the same organizations collaborated on both locations. In 2022, the Willard Street project was recognized by the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency (NCHFA), receiving the agency’s top award for excellence in affordable housing.
“In Durham, tens of thousands of residents vote, literally at the ballot box, in support of candidates who support affordable housing, in support of affordable housing bonds, in support of donating city land for affordable housing, not just here, but throughout the community,” Levine said. “I want to acknowledge them as partners, particularly in an environment where we need local governments to keep stepping up and doing more to support affordable housing, we couldn’t be in a better place than the fellow neighbors we have in Durham for that.”
The City of Durham has nearly exhausted the funding it secured through the Affordable Housing Bond that voters approved in 2019. Land in Durham is expensive, especially prime real estate in and around downtown. City and county officials have been working together to create an inventory of publicly-owned land to assess whether more affordable housing projects like Ashton Place could be possible. Selling the land to build affordable housing elsewhere in Durham is a possibility, but downtown real estate is already scarce.
“There were a lot of folk who pushed back against the proposition of taking the most expensive real estate we have and using it for affordable housing,” Middleton said.
Without the land, the likelihood of building more affordable housing in the urban center drops significantly. Middleton says that Durham residents–who believe in affordable housing for all and cultural diversity–are prepared to invest in their values, even if it comes at a cost.
“That’s who we are, because we believe in shared economic prosperity, because we don’t want homogeneous neighborhoods,” Middleton said. “We want vibrant neighborhoods where all kinds of folk from different educational strata and different social economic levels mixed together.”
The city council could revisit another housing bond in the near future, as its neighbors in Raleigh ponder the same question. After the ribbon cutting, Middleton told the INDY that it’s up to the voters, not city council, to choose whether they want to make the investment.
“It’s up to the people,” Middleton says. “It’s expensive, and it takes political will. Did you see that view up there? You know what people pay in the city for a view of their skyline.”
Follow Reporter Justin Laidlaw on X or send an email to [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].