But if you’re new to the Bull City, let me explain. OID stands for Only in Durham. It’s a mindset peculiar to the City Council, which has rarely seen an affordable housing project that didn’t deserve a taxpayer bailout.

This was so commonplace in the 1990s that Durham became an object of ridicule. City Hall was like a pinata stuffed with OPM (other peoples’ money, the free variety) just waiting for good-hearted souls to turn those dollars into affordable housing. Or all too often, line their pockets.

Among those showered with cash was Rebuild Durham Inc., a good idea destined to go wrong. The idea, which originated in 1999 with then-Community Development Director Kendall Abernathy, was to put the city into the business of rehabbing distressed houses for low-income rental.

As a nonprofit, Rebuild Durham was the outfit that would get it done. Except that it didn’t get done.

According to its agreement with the city, Rebuild Durham was to buy and rehab 27 houses by 2004, using a pile of federal and city dollars. By the end of 2008, a grand total of 13 were finished.

Bureaucratic gears grind slow but fine. It eventually occurred to someone that Rebuild Durham wasn’t producing its promised stream of affordable rental housing. The reason was obvious: lack of managerial smarts, which in turn led to abysmal record-keeping, financial disarray that included failure to make loan repayments, and code violations in some houses that did make it to rental.

How bad is it? Since 2000, the city and the feds have poured $909,700 into Rebuild Durham. That’s $70,000 for each of those 13 houses, a pretty stiff tab. The feds were so discombobulated that they demanded the city return $366,323.

Of course, that didn’t happen overnight. No, a compliant City Council entered into negotiations – this is no joke – with Rebuild Durham that stretched out for more than four years. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that only negotiating with North Korea could be less productive.

The upshot of all this follows a familiar script in Durham, a city especially sensitive to its black residents, many of whom regard projects such as Rebuild Durham as payback for the destruction of Hayti. In the early 1970s, the maws of the Durham Freeway consumed much of Hayti, inflicting a lasting wound on a minority community and upending the city’s politics.

Earlier this month, the City Council agreed to repay the $366,323 due the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which means Rebuild Durham no longer has to worry about that sword hanging over its head.

Technically, Rebuild Durham got a loan from the city with an indefinite due date. But no one really expects Rebuild Durham to repay the money. It’s the OID Way.

Meanwhile, Rebuild Durham executive director Edythe Thompson is praising the City Council’s benevolence as a “fresh start.”

Who wouldn’t? All that money is minted in the Big Rock Candy Mountains. So what’s a million or so down the tube if you’re not accountable for it?

When Thompson talks about a fresh start, be paranoid. Be very paranoid. The meat on which OID doth grow fat is you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.