Ethics complaint lodged against council member over home demolition

‘The house was on the demo list, and the people sold it,’ Councilman D.J. Haire says. ‘They bamboozled us,’ according to complainant Leonard Williams.

The longest-serving member of the Fayetteville City Council, D.J. Haire, has been accused of violating the city’s code of ethics by a constituent who claims the councilman covertly attempted to stop a house demolition on behalf of an alleged family member who had sold the resident the condemned property.

Haire’s alleged actions may violate a portion of the city’s ethics code, particularly the fair and equal treatment clause. That element dictates that public officials should not “grant or make available to any person any consideration, treatment, advantage or favor beyond that which it is the general practice to grant or to make available to the public at large.”

The complaint against Haire comes as the city has cracked down on code enforcement violations over the last several months, following direction from city council to reduce compliance times and shorten the city’s demolition list. The move to hasten the removal of condemned buildings has not been without complications. Notably, there was controversy over the demolition order of one of the city’s oldest bookstores. The store is still in business after the owners pushed back on the proposed demolition. 

The complaint was discussed by the city’s Ethics Commission on May 20 in a closed session. 

Leonard Williams is the resident who made the complaint about the home he owned in Haire’s district.

TIMELINE

• Sept. 26, 2022 – Fayetteville City Council votes to demolish the house 
• Aug. 28, 2023 – Williams and Boswell buy the house from McNeil. They allege that D.J. Haire visited the house just before this to assure them it would not be demolished.
• Sept. 26, 2023 – Boswell obtains a building permit for $7,500 in building repairs.
• Oct. 20 – Williams and Boswell receive notice the house will be demolished according to 2022 order
• Nov. 13, 2023 – Council votes to stay demolition and have Williams/Boswell meet with staff, after D.J. Haire requests to stop demolition. 
• Nov. 29, 2023 – Williams receives call notifying him the house will be demolished
• Dec. 20, 2023 – House is demolished
• Feb. 28, 2024 – Williams files complaint 
• May 20, 2024 – Ethics Commission meets to consider complaint

What Williams says

Williams said he and his son, Stavon Boswell, bought a house in the Bonnie Doone neighborhood on Collins Street, a side street off Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, in August 2023, from Alvin McNeil, another resident of the neighborhood. The sale took place almost a year after the home had been placed on the city’s demolition list for code violations. 

Williams said he was aware that the house was on the demolition list when he bought it, he told CityView, and he and Boswell initially had been reluctant to go through with the purchase after making that discovery. That is, until McNeil assured them that D.J. Haire — who McNeil claims is his cousin — could stop the demolition, or at least delay it until they had time to bring it up to code, Williams claims.

Haire allegedly visited the house in August at McNeil’s request, and put together a list of necessary repairs for Williams and Boswell to prevent demolition, repairs which they said they completed before the house was demolished. 

“When D.J. Haire came out, that’s when I gave his cousin the money, he [Haire] confirmed that everything will be good,” Williams said. 

Williams said he paid McNeil $27,000 for the house. 

Haire has denied Williams’ allegations about his involvement in the demolition, but indicated the situation involved “underhandedness” on the part of the buyers and seller. 

“The house was on the demo list, and the people sold it,” Haire told CityView. “So that’s some kind of illegal thing that was going on. I don’t know anything about that part. And the house never should have been sold, never should have been sold to anyone.”

Williams said he has not received a single penny back since the house was demolished, despite assurances of receiving the money back he claims to have received from McNeil. 

“He promised us that he would give us our money back if the house, if anything happened,” Williams said of McNeil. “He was so confident that Mr. Haire would take care of everything.” 

Home demolished

The home was demolished on Dec. 20, the city confirmed, just four months after the purchase. The demolition took place despite the fact that the city issued a building permit to Boswell on Sept. 26. The permit, obtained by CityView, was for a “minor interior renovation” of the house to “remove and replace drywall and electrical, plumbing, mechanical, or general building areas that are required to meet NC code standards.”

Asked by CityView why a permit was issued if the house was going to be demolished, the city said the permit that had been granted was not for a renovation project and didn’t cover the full cost of the necessary repairs. 

Loren Bymer, the city’s marketing and communication director, said at the time the permit was granted there was “no indication” that the house was lacking “all electric, plumbing, mechanical, and most structural building components.” 

“The full extent of the problems, much higher costs, and it not being a renovation became evident to the city and owners after that date,” Bymer said. 

The permit, notably, calls for the removal and replacement of these systems. 

On Oct. 20, a few weeks after the permit was issued, Williams received a notice in the mail, which stated that the city would be moving forward with the council’s 2022 decision to demolish the house. 

Williams said he and Boswell had already completed work on the house as per the permit when it was demolished, and this had been in line with Haire’s alleged instructions from August. 

“I would go to his cousin and say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, D.J. Haire told us, he left a letter saying when he came out, all we had to do is pull a permit and do the work on the house,’” Williams said. “We pulled a permit and did the work on the house. Code enforcement still came out and said, ‘We don’t know what he’s talking about. This house is going to get demolished.’”

Williams texted Haire a picture of the Oct. 20 demolition notice on Oct. 25, along with pictures of the home, but the councilman did not respond. Screenshots of texts between Haire and Williams during this time show Haire responded with “please text me” on multiple occasions but did not respond to the contents of the messages. 

Further complicating matters is the questions of a Nov. 17 email from Gerald Newton, the city’s development services director, to Williams and Boswell, saying the “current stay [pause] of the demolition ordinance is in effect and, in part, tied to a decision from the two of you to continue the rebuild or stop.” 

Williams and Boswell said this gave them the impression the house would not be demolished due to the fact the pair planned on completing the necessary repairs, and had already received a building permit to complete some. Williams said they contacted the city with plans for repairs, as per Newton’s email instructions to “get back with us as to your decision.”

Williams acknowledged that he didn’t call Newton back immediately, but said he responded to Newton’s call a week later. On that call, he said he explained that they planned to move forward with renovations and get help from family members to raise money for the repairs. 

“I didn’t hear nothing back from him again,” Williams said, referring to Newton. “I think he didn’t like that answer. He had somebody else call me like a couple of weeks later, if that long, and told me that they will be there next week to demolish the house.”

When asked about the discrepancy between the email and the demolition a month later, Bymer said the email was a response to the Nov. 14 inspection city council had directed staff, during the Nov. 13 city council meeting, to complete. At that meeting, Haire had publicly asked the council to stop the demolition. 

“I’m asking tonight, with whatever conditions that comes out of this discussion, that we remove 5200 Collins Street from the demo list, with whichever deemed conditions that may arise tonight,” Haire said at the council meeting, “that we allow the property owner to continue to improve this structure, to take this structure out of blight, and to take this structure into an improved state where it can be an asset of housing within the Bonnie Doone community.”

Following a brief discussion, the council had voted to stay the demolition to “allow staff to reach out to the owner and to come back by the next meeting with the assessment as to where we are with this project.”

Bymer said in an email to CityView on May 28 that Newton’s email was “a follow-up of the onsite meeting of Nov. 14, 2023, directed by the City Council on Nov. 13 to find out what was needed to create a safe and habitable structure.”

“The letter,” Bymer continued, “recapped items shared at the house on Nov. 14, and Mr. Williams’ conversation with Dr. Newton at the property that this was much worse than he ever thought.”

It’s not clear who authorized the demolition after the inspection took place, as the council never voted to resume the demolition after pausing it on Nov. 13 — a question, Williams said, still hasn’t been answered. 

Haire’s response and contradictions

Haire describes himself as a responsive and approachable representative, but Williams says his experience with Haire has been the opposite. Williams alleges that Haire repeatedly ignored his calls, texts and emails between August and early November, and instead communicated with him via McNeil and McNeil’s employee, Sean Lennon. 

An email Williams obtained from a city records request and shared with CityView demonstrates that Haire was at least in email correspondence with Lennon. Haire forwarded an email chain to Lennon on Nov. 8, writing, “for your information only.” 

Haire, however, said he didn’t know who Sean Lennon was.

“No, it’s hard for me,” Haires said in response to the question of whether he knew Lennon. “No, I don’t. I can’t remember the names.”

Williams sent an email to Haire on Nov. 9 expressing his frustration. Haire responded to the email on Nov. 10.

“Thanks for your email, its my hope to discuss this item Monday with Council,” Haire wrote back. “I’ll know more Monday evening and will share with you.”

In early November, Haire made several official attempts to stop the demolition. A Nov. 8 email exchange between Haire and council members demonstrates his apparent interest in stopping the demolition. He tells council members he needs their “help immediately” to stop the demolition, encouraging them to “feel free to visit the structure as the owner still works on it.”

Williams said Haire’s public attempts to stop the demolition contradict his private behavior towards him, as he and Boswell sought to find out more information about the house after allegedly fixing it according to Haire’s specifications from August.

“So while we [were] waiting — this is how disrespectful this guy is — he’s acting like he’s fighting for the house,” Williams said.

Haire repeatedly denied involvement and placed the onus on Williams and McNeil.

“It’s just some underhandedness that was going on between those folk out there on that house,” Haire said. “I don’t know them. I never met them before until then. I still don’t know them because I’m confused about who the people really are. But the only thing that I tried to do was to help.”

Williams believes otherwise. 

“I look at it as, he was in cahoots with his cousin to get the money,” Williams said of Haire. “And, I don’t know, I think that he just wanted to save face or something, or stop the demolition for a few seconds so he could get the money.”

In an interview with CityView, Haire claimed he did not know McNeil. At multiple points in the conversation, Haire seemed unclear over key details in the case, including the names of the parties and the times certain conversations took place. 

“I’m not sure who Mr. McNeil is,” Haire told CityView. “I get the names confused for some reason. I’m not sure who Mr. McNeil is, but I understand what you’re speaking of.”

CityView was unable to determine whether McNeil was related to Haire; CityView’s efforts to reach McNeil have been unsuccessful. Haire later acknowledged to CityView that he was aware of the complaint against him, but discredited it, stating that he didn’t understand why he was being interviewed in regards to it. 

“What I don’t understand is why you called me? … How I’m in this?” he told CityView. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

What’s next 

Comments made by Development Services Director Newton during the Nov. 27 council meeting — during which Newton gave an update on staff’s assessment of the house — suggest an attempt in August to stay the demolition. This aligns with Williams’ claims about when Haire had been contacted by McNeil to visit the property and stay the demolition.

“In August, there was a question about a potential 30-day extension by one of the council members, if it could be done,” Newton told the council. “That didn’t move forward. Nothing actually came back to the council.” 

The council accepted Newton’s report, but took no further action to remove the stay that had been placed on the house, although the Nov. 13 stay on the demolition had been to “allow staff to reach out to the owner and to come back by the next meeting with the assessment as to where we are with this project.” Newton recommended the council continue with the demolition order. 

Haire suggested the complaint will not lead to any meaningful revelation. 

“I don’t think that it’s going anywhere,” Haire told CityView. “It shouldn’t, because I don’t know anything for it to have gone. I don’t even know why this would even have been an ethics issue, whatever, a concern. So I don’t know, just people trying to do something underhanded. That’s the way I look at it.” 

Haire’s attorney in the matter, Jonathan Charleston, has been involved in a number of controversial cases representing local government officials and private companies. He previously served as the city’s bond counsel during discussions of whether to sell PWC to a private company. Some of Charleston’s current local clients include:

• Mayor Mitch Colvin and his business partner, Darren Collins, whose proposed apartment complex in a rural and flood-prone area has been vehemently opposed by neighbors. They have recently filed an appeal against a vote from the city’s Zoning Commission on May 14 to rezone the rural land and annex it into Fayetteville. 
• The Hoke County government, in a public records lawsuit brought against that body by The News-Journal, the local newspaper.
• Fay Block, the cinder block company that has recently faced renewed criticism from neighbors for the environmental and health effects of the dust from the factory. 

Despite difficulties in getting answers so far, Williams is not done trying. He has contacted the NAACP for help on the matter, he said. 

“They bamboozled us,” Williams said. “We were hoodwinked. I’m trying to, at least, have them held accountable for it and transparency, so the people could see the behavior of the people that they elected.”

The Ethics Commission will continue considering Williams’ complaint at 6:30 p.m. on June 18 in the Lafayette Conference Room at City Hall. The discussion of the complaint will take place in closed session because it involves personnel matters. If the commission moves forward with the complaint, the next step is to schedule a hearing. 

Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608. 

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