Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams delivered his State of the City address Tuesday night at the Durham Performing Arts Center, centering the speech on youth violence and homelessness.
"We have real issues, but we have real momentum," Williams said. "We have a real possibility to make this community safer and increase the quality of life."
Williams made the stakes explicit. "The people doing the shooting and the people mostly getting shot, they look like me," he said. "It's not just policy. It's pain that I refuse to become numb to, and that is why I refuse to give up."
On the same night, the Bull City Future Fund awarded $30,000 in new funding to local nonprofits. Williams said more investments in Durham youth are coming soon.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott joined Williams for a fireside chat. Baltimore has logged a historic decline in violent crime, and Scott offered a framework he credited for that progress. "We have to look at these young people and give them opportunities and balance it with accountability so they know both are going to exist," Scott said.
On housing, Williams pushed back on shelter-as-solution thinking. "Housing is the solution, not a shelter as a permanent state, not manage homelessness, warehousing people indefinitely and calling it a system," he said. "Housing. Real, stable, permanent housing." The city has committed millions to affordable housing and set a goal to make homelessness "rare and brief" by June 2031, backed by a $13 million community-wide investment.
Williams closed with a line that got the room. "Yes, Durham is dope," he said, adding that the city would keep working to make Durham "the coolest place to live in this entire country."