On September 2, 2025, Durham’s City Council approved a massive 1750 unit development of townhouses, apartments and single family residences plus 150,000 square feet of commercial space. Gateway at Brier Creek will consume 308 acres of forests and open space. One of the few remaining forested areas in the once lovely southeast Durham will be mass graded, bulldozed, and blasted. Lifegiving trees will be replaced by impervious surfaces. And, it’s completely unnecessary (except to feed the profits of the developers and foreign investors).
The state office of budget and managment calculated in 2020 that Durham needs approximately 2200 new housing units per year to achieve its projected need of 60,000 to 66,000 new units BY THE YEAR 2050. Here’s the big reveal: Durham has approved, by electeds’ votes AND planning department administrative approvals, MORE new units than OMB projected we need over thirty years. The only “crisis” is the overbuilding and needless destruction of the environment crisis.
In addition to Gateway, the council approved an unrelated sixty-seven unit subdivision for a total of 1,817 units approved in one night. Remember, the projections suggest an average increase of 2,200 new units per year. The council added almost the entire year’s quota in one night. No wonder the OMB’s projected need over thirty years has already been exceeded in just five years.
This open letter was originally sent and posted on February 15, 2025. Time for an update:
Mayor Williams and Councilmembers:
In 2020 the North Carolina Office of State Budget and Management (OSBM) projected that by 2050, 148,347 more people will live in Durham than lived in Durham in 2020. Based on that projection the OSBM calculated that between 2020 and 2050 Durham would need 60,000 to 66,000 additional housing units. Doing the math, an average of 2,000 to 2,200 new housing units per year should be built in Durham over the thirty year period ending in 2050. In other words, Durham needs about 11,000 new units every five years to keep up with the anticipated population growth.
The pace of development in Durham far exceeds the OSBM’s projected population growth over thirty years. According to the OSBM figures, development applications proposing approximately 2,100 new housing units should be approved each year starting in 2020.
Keep in mind that most development applications are approved within the planning department with no input from the Council or the public, and often without any notice to Council or public. It is difficult to obtain numbers on the administratively approved applications. I was advised by the planning department that I would have to sift through all applications and count the number of building permits issued. I don’t think my life expectancy allows me to take on that task. However, I know the number of administrative approvals exceeds the number approved through public hearings, probably several times over.
The Council approved the following number of units in 2020 through 2024.
2020 – 3,143 units
2021 – 4,049
2022 – 4155
2023 – 6,478
2024 – 3940
2025 – 6197 January through September 2 – 2900
Total approved by Council: 26,046 as of 9/2/2025
This total includes only units that were voted on. By my count, there were at least a thousand units for which the votes were postponed or I was unable to determine their status, and I did not include those numbers. The council approved units alone, over the years 2020 through 2025, exceed the OSBM’s estimation of need for those years by 13,246.
Conservatively estimating the administratively approved units to be equal to the approvals by vote, the total approved new units in Durham is 52,000, or well over four times the OSBM calculated need for five years. A realistic estimate of administratively approved units is at least twice the number subjected to Council vote. If that is so, the entire OSBM projected need of 60,000 -66,000 new units has been exceeded in the first five of the thirty year projected need.
It’s time for the Council to pause and reflect on these figures. The much touted influx of new residents may well be substantially less than calculated in 2020. Some major player businesses have pulled out of their Durham expansion plans or reduced their expected workforce. Durham’s population of federal workers and medical/science researchers has been slashed. Remote working, unheard of before 2020, is standard operating procedure. Things have changed in ways that do not favor robust population growth.
It seems as though our electeds don’t understand that Durham has many times more housing units built and in the pipeline than is needed. A majority of the council is acting under a false sense of crisis, fostered by a development community which has created, then exploited, an unwarranted urgency. Meanwhile, thousands of acres of our climate protecting woods have been leveled, blasting has ruined neighborhood wells, and our waterways are dangerously polluted.
Take a break. Proceed with caution. Consider protecting Durham rather than selling her out.
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Katie Ross
Save Durham 