Eno River Association sent eviction letters to Durham tenants. Now, they’re staying.

A group of tenants who united last year to fight being evicted from their homes may instead get to buy them under a tentative deal reached with the nonprofit Eno River Association.

The news was first reported Wednesday by Indy Week.

Jessica Sheffield, the association’s executive director, declined to discuss details of the agreement with The News & Observer when reached by email Thursday morning.

The “deal is in process,” she said, and the negotiations with the tenants and an affordable housing nonprofit involved in the discussions are confidential until completed.

That could take a couple of months, but “it was the right thing to do for these families and for the community,” Sheffield said.

“We are on a path to transfer several homes to a housing-focused nonprofit, ensuring they’re forever preserved as affordable homes in Durham,” she said. “This effort will provide the housing security our neighbors need and allow Eno River Association to turn ownership over, knowing the homes we have provided at low-cost since 1990 will continue to be affordable to our community.”

The undeveloped land will eventually be transferred to the N.C. State Parks system as part of the Eno River State Park, she said.

Invested in homes, tenants stay to fight

The fight to preserve the seven affordable homes on Open Air Camp Road started on Sept. 7, 2022, when the tenants — 26 adults and children in all — learned the Eno River Association was selling the land to the N.C. State Parks system.

Their homes would provide low- or no-cost housing for future park employees, according to an Oct. 11 email given to The News & Observer. The eviction notices gave three households until Nov. 30 to move, while the other four had until July 31, 2023.

Some of the tenants — several low-income, some with disabilities, a veteran and older adults — had lived there for over 15 years. Some had made repairs that they said the management never made.

At the time, much of the nation was riding a historic surge in rental rates and home prices.

The tenants chose to fight, forming the Eno River Tenants Association in alliance with neighbors who were not tenants but had experience organizing campaigns.

The group started a petition and sent its demands to the Eno River Association.

Community organizer and neighbor Leslie St Dre, who is not an association tenant, said Thursday the agreement is “a huge victory.”

She also declined to share details but encouraged Eno River Association officials to eventually make their process public, because it took a lot of work to meet their tenants at the negotiating table, St Dre said.

“I think once everything is completed, it will be an even bigger sigh of relief,” she said.

Hints of change, but no information

They’re going to throw a block party when the deal is done, Sheba Everett, a tenant and the mother of five girls, said Thursday.

“All this time waiting, it’s finally through,” she said, crediting their success to the neighborhood coming together, but also “hundreds of people” who sent emails, signed a petition and stood in support.

It’s a different feeling than last year, when Everett told The N&O how her family feared losing their home.

She suspected something was afoot in early 2022 when her annual lease became a month-to-month lease, Everett said, but the Eno River Association’s property manager, V.S. Rich Property Services, told her the change would help families struggling in the pandemic. In June, the property manager brought state park rangers out to inspect the homes. No one mentioned the sale, Everett said.

“It was just disgusting,” she told The N&O, recalling how her family proudly led their visitors around the five-bedroom, brick home, the garden and the yard where the girls play. In retrospect, the visit seemed like white colonialism against people of color, she said.

“You don’t do things like that. You don’t have people come into someone’s house, don’t tell them anything about it, and basically come size them up,” Everett said.

Now, “I’m happy, and I’m looking forward to being able to live in peace without this hanging over my head,” she said. “Living in peace with my girls, out in the woods near the Eno. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

The N&O’s prior efforts to reach the property manager, V.S. Rich Property Services, were unsuccessful.

ERA, tenants talk about demands

In October, the tenants demonstrated at the Eno River Association’s annual meeting, sharing their stories and pressing the board to rescind the evictions, repair the houses, and sell them to the tenants. The state could buy the undeveloped land, or turn it over to Indigenous stewardship, they said.

Eno River Association officials pushed back the evictions to May 31 for some tenants and July 31 for others. On Nov. 18, after The N&O published a story about the fight, Sheffield said the association would meet with tenants.

In an email, Sheffield told The N&O that the organization would use a professional mediator “to find equitable outcomes for the people who live in these homes.”

“We have made mistakes throughout this process,” she said. “We followed a traditional land trust model, whose practices focus exclusively on land resource protection. We apologize that we did not prioritize our tenants from the beginning. We are committed to doing better.”

A December update from the tenants said Eno River Association officials had initiated repairs on a few homes. In the spring, the association met several times with them and the Durham Community Land Trust, the tenants said.

The land trust will not be a party to the final agreement, Sheffield said Thursday.

On May 9, the tenants group posted on Twitter that the Eno River Association had tentatively agreed to rescind the evictions, continue waiving rent payments, and preserve the homes and the land through a land trust housing model.

St Dre said she hopes the “organizing victory” will encourage other tenants to fight back, more landlords to prioritize affordable housing, and local governments to exercise more rent control over housing built on public land or using public dollars, she said.

Those moves are especially important as big tech companies bring more jobs and people to the Triangle, and state lawmakers weigh additional limits on tenant rights, she said.

“We hope to connect to different groups and (organizations) that are working on stabilizing communities,” St Dre said.

“Right now, folks are focused on definitely procuring the details of their own home, but there is a clear need, and I do think it is a model for more folks to start organizing in their neighborhoods.”