Durham renters told they needed to be gone by New Year’s until media got involved


Sara Pequeño
Mon, December 27, 2021

Surrounded by houses with Christmas decorations and “Black Lives Matter” yard signs, a set of properties in Durham’s Walltown neighborhood stood bare the Monday before Christmas, save for the crowd and their white boards standing between two of the buildings.

The group — organizers, neighbors, elected officials and a few camera crews — were gathered around the residents of Braswell Properties apartments physically and figuratively.

On Nov. 29, the people living in the homes received a letter from Reformation Asset Management, a company representing new ownership, telling the 12 families living in the duplexes that they had to be out by New Year’s Eve or face legal consequences. That changed after the tenants went to the media last week — now, the property manager says they have more time.

Let’s be clear: The property manager appears to have done nothing that violates North Carolina’s tenant laws. But this also is true: at least a dozen households are going through the intense stressors of finding a new home and moving, in the busiest month of year, in a season of goodwill, in a city that is rapidly pushing out underserved members of the community.

“They are being very ugly,” resident Janice Sanchez said at the press conference. “They don’t want to even do nothing to even try to give us a break. So this is where we are at. It’s Christmastime, [but] we can’t even think on that level.”

Sanchez, a mother and grandmother, said she had only been renting for a few months when she was sent the notice.

Charles Bulthuis, the owner of Reformation Asset Management and new manager of the property, said the previous owner had informed tenants in October that he intended to sell and told them not to pay rent for November or December.

Varon Braswell, the son of the properties’ longtime owner, said he never asked Bulthuis or his company to take over conversations with the neighbors, since the deeds were not officially signed until the week the tenants spoke out. He also did not instruct the group to stall rent payments.

“You could’ve had a little bit more compassion, just throwing letters out telling them to vacate,” Braswell said of Bulthuis. “I wouldn’t have dared authorize that.”

Bulthuis said his employees have attempted to contact the current residents and assist them in finding new, similarly priced apartments, but have had difficulty getting cooperation.

Resident Luz Romero said her experience has contradicted that.

“I have [been] calling RAM since the first week we got the letter and I don’t get an answer back,” she said in a written statement. “I have also emailed them. Till this day I have no answer. For RAM to say that is outrageous.”

The new property owners, two Chapel Hill residents who have asked Bulthuis to speak on their behalf, are concerned about being fined or sued because of the previous owner’s inaction.

Some residents say the city has been contacted over the years, but with little progress. The City of Durham only has three complaints about these particular properties, and visited two of the homes in the last week. The city found that in both homes, the repairs needed would not require removing the tenants. Bulthuis disagrees, but he said last week that tenants will no longer be required to leave by the 31st. The non-profit Housing for New Hope stepped up to assist the residents after seeing the story in the media.

That’s good. But this entire situation shows who is least important in Durham’s cutthroat housing market, and those who get the worst of it are the residents receiving mixed messages from two different landlords about what’s happening.

These residents are immigrants, children, the elderly, and most importantly, the people we allow to be collateral damage in development, even if the development means better, still affordable housing. It’s why conversations about development get so complicated any time they arise, and in the Triangle, they arise often. If not a story with a clear villain, the story of Braswell Properties in Durham is a story with clear victims.