Mayor D.C. Reeves has received pushback on social media over the recent Wall Street Journal article concerning the increase of million-dollar homes sold in the greater Pensacola area. He has repeatedly said that more housing, regardless of its price point, helps ease the affordable housing crisis.
“If I had one wish of the information that I could just magically convey to 55,000 people in this city right now, it’s a two- or three-minute education on just that fact more housing helps the community because there is such an us-versus-them mentality about housing,” he said.
“It’s unfortunate because if we snapped our fingers and had 500 market-rate units, like you’ve heard me talk about before, all that does is open up the additional opportunity for affordability for someone else,” Reeves said. “But we somehow fall into this trap of you’re either doing one or the other. If you see if it goes across ARB (Architectural Review Board) or city council that a market rate building’s coming up, you can rest assured that everyone on social media or Facebook comments will say, ‘Well, you don’t care about people who don’t make less money.”
He added, “And it’s that term I use with you all the time—we pat our head, rub our belly. We can do these both, and we have to.”
The mayor said it would be irresponsible to ban market-rate housing until developers build more affordable housing.
“That would be such a poor strategic decision for the city,” Reeves said. “And so, there’s a big disconnect with folks that don’t follow that as closely that I wish I could convey…When I’ve been in a Rotary Club or when I’ve gotten a couple minutes just to be able to explain why we need both of these things, people tend to understand it. But I think folks who’d maybe not follow it as closely think I see people building $800,000 houses or 2 million condos, and then that must mean that you don’t care about people who are in a more vulnerable state.
He asserted that building $800,000 homes or $2 million condominiums doesn’t mean one doesn’t care about “people who are in a more vulnerable state.” Mayor Reeves described the city’s efforts to sell the former Pensacola Sports site to provide the most tax revenue and the solicitation of proposals to convert Pensacola Motor Lodge into temporary housing as a “perfect microcosm.”
He said, “We’re working on both these things at the exact same time.”
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