The steering committee for the Rolling Hills/Southside citizens group and City Hall are at odds over a key element in Durham's "10-Year Plan to End Homelessness."

They'll talk about it Monday.

Some committee members and advocates for the homeless want 1.5 acres in the redevelopment area set aside for about 20 housing units for disabled people with very low incomes.

"The city staff does not support that recommendation," Community Development Director Mike Barros said earlier this month.

"It sort of caught everyone by surprise," steering committee member Joe Parker said. "It wasn't like we were seeking the city's approval."

Parker said the idea came out of public meetings last fall. It was presented to Mayor Bill Bell in a Dec. 21 letter from Ryan Fehrman, director of the Genesis Home and a board member of the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition.

The committee's recommendation calls for the city to buy the property and then sell it, for $1, to a nonprofit organization it contracts with to build the housing. To get the contract, Barros said, the nonprofit would have to prove that it had the resources to finish the project.

But his department still doesn't care for the idea.

"If we do special-needs housing, the city's going to end up paying for most of it," Barros said, "because you have to have it delivered at such a cost that people living in it aren't paying rent. That's the definition almost of special needs. ...

"If we did put some on this site," he added, "it's going to be the best-looking special-needs housing in the country because it's going to have to complement what we're trying to do [in the redevelopment], which is build confidence in this neighborhood."

Building more "permanent supportive housing" is a high priority in the 10-Year Plan that the City of Durham and Durham County adopted in 2006. It's something the Southside neighborhood needs, said steering committee member Ray Eurquhart, a lifelong area resident.

"We've got disabled vets, we've got seniors, we've got folks with all kinds of dysfunction that need housing," he said.

Committee member Lorisa Seibel said the $1 price corresponds with the price the city gave developer McCormack Baron Salazar in an option to buy about 10 acres of the Rolling Hills site.

Eurquhart said a Southside site avoids conflict with McCormack Baron's plans for Rolling Hills, a twice-failed subdivision across South Roxboro Street from the Southside neighborhood.

"We don't want to step on [McCormack Baron's] toes in developing Rolling Hills," Eurquhart said. "Where we'd build is Southside. Southside people, we're saying, 'Let's go for it.'"

The total redevelopment area covers 125 acres. Most of the 20-acre Rolling Hills site is city-owned; the Durham nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help has bought about 85 vacant and dilapidated properties in Southside for development as owner-occupied housing for low-income buyers.

Barros said the city's objection "has nothing to do with the quality of the person going in there, it has to do with the quality, A, of the development, but also McCormack Baron has suggested to us if we're going to own 1.5 acres we might want to use it for something else within that district and find 1.5 acres or 5 acres [for supportive housing] somewhere else."

Community Development staff and the steering committee's housing subcommittee will discuss the issue Monday afternoon.

"We will work to answer questions from the last Steering Committee meeting and try to reach agreement with City representatives," Seibel wrote in a memo to committee members and city officials. "Anyone is welcome to attend and speak at the meeting, although only Southside-Rolling Hills Steering Committee members would be part of the decision-making process."