CITYBUILDER: Editorial

We Can’t Address Durham’s Affordable Housing Crisis One Rezoning at a Time

CityBuilder — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 11:03:23 GMT

VERBATIM is a series that republishes the words of local leaders supporting better cities.

On September 25, 2025, Durham City Council Member Javiera Caballero and affordable housing specialist Ramsay Ritchie published the following op-ed in INDY Week, calling upon the city’s elected leaders to “commit to a comprehensive, evidence-based investment in housing affordability”. Their piece is republished in full.

Back to School, Back to Building Cities

Jenn Truman — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:48:30 GMT

source: https://newstudents.dasa.ncsu.edu/

Every August and September, the Triangle shifts.

Campuses buzz, buses fill, and book bags swing through city streets. Back to school is not just for kids. It is a rhythm that runs through the whole region. Families feel it. Recent graduates feel it. New students feel it most of all.

This is a welcome letter to you students. You are not just returning to class. You are stepping into a region where building cities is not a theory. It is real, local, urgent work.

And we want to say it plainly: we welcome you.

Too often, students hear skepticism from neighbors or see headlines that frame students and their apartments as a problem.

That is not our view.

CITYBUILDER believes every new student makes this region stronger, whether you came from another town in North Carolina, another part of the country, or from across the globe. The Triangle is not only one of the best places to study citybuilding. It is also one of the best places to stay and build a futu…

Freedom Lives Where We Live

Jenn Truman — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 10:50:18 GMT

Freedom means being able to live a life of your choosing.
To live where you want, move if you need to move,
start a family, and know you can raise them in a country
not torn apart by division and hate.”

- Pete Buttigieg, 2019

This isn’t a policy memo. Instead, it’s my personal reflection on freedom, housing, and where independence actually lives.

Federal investments are shrinking. The national conversation is louder than ever and somehow saying less. And yet the real work of making places people can afford, of welcoming difference still happens block by block.

We were taught to think of freedom as something national, even abstract.
But real freedom (the kind you can live inside) has always been local.

This poem is about housing, yes.
But more than that, it’s about building the conditions for choice
and protecting the freedom to live as yourself, wherever you are.