Commission hopes to rekindle affordable housing talks

The City Commission expressed a desire to create more affordable housing in Sarasota at a meeting Tuesday evening — but first, commissioners said, they need to figure out precisely what affordable housing is.

The commission held an informal meeting Tuesday — a rare occurrence for the board, designed to allow them to discuss pressing topics with one another without any need to take action. Mayor Willie Shaw broached the topic of affordable housing, raising concern about the board’s recent decisions to waive required developer payments to the city’s affordable housing fund.

“We want young people to be retained in this area, we want young families to build neighborhoods, but we don't want to provide affordable housing,” Shaw said.

Although the rest of the commission agreed that a lack affordable housing was an issue, there was also a desire to root future discussions in less nebulous terms. Commissioner Eileen Normile repeatedly asked what, exactly, “affordable housing” meant, critiquing the co-opting of language used in public housing programs.

"I don't know how we understand the term affordable housing without defining what that term is," Normile said. "What's affordable to one person isn't affordable to another."

Vice Mayor Susan Chapman was critical of earlier failed efforts to spur the development of more affordable housing in the city. She said the goalposts frequently shift because the term is not precisely defined — in previous conversations, residences priced at $250,000 have been called affordable. In order to avoid the missteps of past commissions, Chapman said the board must manage those conversations more effectively.

“We have to have an honest discussion about what is affordable,” Chapman said. “‘Affordable’ becomes ‘attainable,’ and once it becomes ‘attainable,’ it's not necessarily affordable. It gets so far afield so quickly.”

The commission agreed to continue its conversation at a future meeting. The group also tackled a list of other subjects it hopes to address down the line, including the extension of the downtown Community Redevelopment Area, the process by which the commission’s agenda is developed, the Lift Station 87 project and homelessness issues.

Contact David Conway at [email protected].