Meeting this afternoon, the Rolling Hills/Southside Steering Committee endorsed the idea of a "summit" meeting on low-cost housing, neighborhood revitalizing and public money -- then handed off to City Hall.

Whether City Hall carries the idea anywhere remains to be seen.

"A request has been made and we heard it," said Larry Jarvis, assistant community development director.

Lorisa Seibel (right), interim director of the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition, raised the idea earlier this month. She has been among the most vocal opponents of a city plan to dedicate future federal grant money to Southside/Rolling Hills.

Seibel is also chairwoman of the Rolling Hills/Southside Steering Committee's housing subcommittee, which submitted the summit proposal for today's agenda.

Ray Eurquhart, a Southside resident who has actively promoted the revitalization project and served as the Steering Committee's co-chairman has also called for a summit.

Seibel did not attend today's meeting and Eurquhart attended only long enough to announce his resignation.

"I'm going to work on other things in Durham and the [Southside] community," Eurquhart said. "But I'll be around, I'm not dropping off the face of the earth."

Neighborhood email lists have been abuzz this week about a public registry requirement for managers of rental property. The idea is, such a list would make it easier for neighbors to make complain when rentals and/or renters become problematic.

Ward 2 City Council candidates Darius M. Little and Matt Drew have weighed in.

Little wrote, "Not a candidate plug here, but ... this idea is great." He added that, in his Woodcroft neighborhood, managers are supposed to let the homeowners' association know which properties they handle.

Drew suggested that a community organization maintain a roster of problem properties and those who manage them, rather than having City Hall list all. "Maintaining a registration database like this is much more difficult than you might think," he wrote, and enforcing a registry requirement would add yet another burden to the Police Department.

Neighborhood groups have kicked the registry idea around several times in the past four years, most recently last spring. According to Lorisa Seibel with the Durham Affordable Housing Coalition, it's a 2010 priority for that organization's Campaign for Decent Housing.