Fake affordable housing crisis paves way for fundamental transformation of Jacksonville

Residential neighborhoods in Jacksonville are on the verge of a fundamental transformation and it’s all based on a scam concocted by a radical nonprofit.

According to Mayor Donna Deegan’s 2023 Transition Committee Report, the city is suffering from an intentional and preventable affordable housing “crisis” because of stingy, self-centered homeowners.

The report blames the crisis on “a persistent lack of public will to prioritize, coordinate, and fund low-and-moderate-income housing development. As a result, a significant portion of the city’s residents, including low-and moderate-income families and individuals, are struggling to find housing that is both affordable and adequate.” That struggle caused a “shortage” of 35,000 housing units now urgently needed to meet “demand.” Mayor Deegan’s report even projects, based off “data,” the city’s pretend “apartment unit supply gap” will reach 61,000 by 2030.

For the record, I could not verify the claim. The mayor’s transition report cites a PowerPoint presentation by the First Coast Apartment Association, which claims it got the number from a real estate analytics firm called Costar. I spent quite some time searching Costar’s website and found nothing. It is also important to point out the mayor’s transition report and the PowerPoint by FCCA are almost identical.

In a totally unrelated story, there are several other cities and states facing the same pretend affordable housing shortage crisis. Louisville, Kentucky; Charleston County, SC; Fresno County, CA; the state of Vermont & Oregon are all short 36,000 housing units. And just like Jacksonville, Salt Lake County, UT; St. Louis, MI; and the state of Nebraska, are all coincidentally short 35,000 affordable housing units. 

For clarification, American Greatness recently provided definitions of terms as used by liberals and the one for “affordable housing” was “Housing that is government subsidized to below-market value, ruining the value of compatible unsubsidized housing in the nearby area.”

Anyways, Duval’s homeowners must now pay for their crimes against affordability by unwillingly participating in our city’s, soon to come, shared prosperity created by Deegan’s handpicked puppet masters.

The mayor’s Affordable Housing Committee recommends solving Jacksonville’s non-existent crisis by implementing Smart Growth America’s “vision” of reshaping the nation’s housing, infrastructure, and culture by incentivizing homeowners and businesses to relocate downtown. And since no one wants to live in downtown Jacksonville, Team Deegan is using a local “smart” nonprofit to bring downtown to you.

The national radically left leaning nonprofit, reeducates people into believing living on top of each other in cheap, cramped high-density subsidized housing, walking to public transit, and depending on nonprofits/government for safety, healthcare, education, employment, and wellbeing is the catalyst to ending racism, poverty, future weather, unhappiness, and death. None of that is true, however Smart North Florida was created anyway to help Team Deegan “democratize innovation” by forcing unwilling citizens into compliance via the power of City Council and the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. Both of those currently are transforming neighborhoods around town following Smart Growth’s progressive theories of Missing Middle Housing, Vision Zero, Complete Streets, Transit Oriented Development, and Resiliency.

There is a lot to unpack here, as with all my articles, so stick with me.

The “35,000 units short” claim is just an emotional ruse so council members will rezone property within the 295 Beltway allowing for the construction of high-density stackable housing called Missing Middle Housing (MMH).

Joshua Hicks, Jacksonville’s Affordable Housing director said, “We are bringing in the density, because density is important.” Jacksonville has “sprawled out so rapidly,” it is time “we contract it back in,” Hicks said.

Credit: 2023 Transition Committee Report

Deegan’s 2023 Transition Committee Report describes MMH as a “range of house-scale buildings with multiple units – compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes – located in a walkable neighborhood.” The report used Jacksonville’s San Marco neighborhood as an example of MMH because of its “desirable” pre-1950’s neighborhood design. Unfortunately for homeowners, local politicians haven’t figured out yet the real reason why San Marco is such a desirable neighborhood, and it isn’t because rich people can walk to The Loop.

MMH is nothing more than a marketing/political ploy for rezoning land. Smart Growth believes “zoning reform can advance racial equity, support housing attainability, create healthy communities, and decarbonize buildings to mitigate climate change.”

The goal of the MMH campaign in Jacksonville is to rezone land within the I-295 Beltway allowing construction of multi-family development including stackable du-plex, tri-plex and quad-plex housing basically anywhere our housing overlords see fit. Once land is rezoned, Team Deegan can begin solving the city’s phony housing crisis with endless construction of subsidized housing complexes, scoring political points among nonprofits, developers, government elite, and the uninformed.

MMH also paves the way for JTA’s taxpayer funded transit-oriented development. Transit oriented development helps solve another phony crisis created by Smart Growth.

Smart Growth claims Jacksonville is “dangerous by design” and is the sixth worst city for pedestrian deaths according to the nonprofit’s “pedestrian danger index.” The study blames pedestrians for their own demise because they “are their own worst enemy,” taking short cuts to cross streets instead of walking to a Smart Growth approved crosswalk. Deegan said Jacksonville “must close the chapter on being a top ten city for pedestrian fatalities year after year.”

More than 9,000 people die in Duval County each year, mainly from heart disease and cancer. In 2023, 43 pedestrians reportedly died on Duval’s roadways. That same year, 125 people were shot to death. While every death is tragic, it is quite revealing Deegan is willing to dedicate campaign initiatives, rewrite city policy, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent less than 50 accidental deaths but doesn’t give a rat’s a** about people intentionally slaughtering 125 of our fellow citizens. To be fair. She does care, if the triggerman is white, the victim isn’t, and the cameras are rolling.

In order to end the pedestrian death crisis, Team Deegan recommends the city government and JTA follow “Vision Zero principles” constructing “transit-oriented design (TOD) and transit adjacent development.”

Vision Zero is the ridiculous idea government policy can prevent all pedestrian deaths by spending millions on lighted crosswalks, “improved” crosswalks, crosswalks near bus stops and bike paths connected to crosswalks also connected to bus stops. Deegan says taxpayers spending more than $147 million on projects like the Emerald Trail will accomplish Vision Zero.

Another way Smart Growth is helping Team Deegan achieve Vision Zero is with JTA’s $43 million “complete streets” initiative, funded by the local option gas tax.

This is where I usually toot my own horn and make some snide remark about how I am the only one who notices how all our city agencies and politicians are working together against us. But not this time. Despite the lack of media coverage, Average Joe is taking notice, and City Council doesn’t like that.

Tensions were high during the Land Use & Zoning Committee (LUZ) meeting on Jan. 7 surrounding the discussion of three ordinances introduced by Councilmen Rory Diamond, R, District 13. Diamond’s ordinances (2024-0868, 2024-0869, 2024-0870) call for the city to adopt a new “Missing Middle Overlay Map” to the city’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan. The new overlay map is the key to unlocking the magic of Team Deegan’s political tradecraft.

Dozens of people spoke out against the legislation, lecturing council on the axiomatic real-world consequences of its implementation in their communities. Not a single speaker was in favor of the legislation.

It seems like what started out as an honest effort by Diamond to help alleviate one of the mayor’s political crises got completely hijacked by Deegan’s highly partisan “volunteer advisory panel” called the Land Development Regulations Update Committee (LDRU), demanding to have their way. The city’s planning commission also wants to have a say.

“I just want to be crystal clear; I have no interest going into established neighborhoods in Jacksonville, single family homes and dropping a quad-plex in the middle of it. I just don’t want to see that. And so, whatever this process is, it’s not going to be that. At least not for me. And I don’t think the council is going to support that.” Diamond said during the committee meeting.

Diamond said the bills were originally intended for the infill of MMH constructing cheaper housing complexes in high traffic areas with pre-established infrastructure and public transportation.

The goal of the bill was to create housing that is accessible to people in Jacksonville who want to buy or rent but can’t now along established arterial areas in places that already have the infrastructure. And not in someone’s neighborhood,” Diamond said.

Diamond believed the bills would help offer ample housing options for those stuck in the gap. However, once the LDRU and the planning commission got their mitts on Diamond’s original bills, they were transformed into a taxpayer funded wish-list of demands taken from portions of Deegan’s mayoral transition report, Jacksonville’s Resiliency (climate change) plan, and JTA’s MOVE2027. The political wish-list was copied and pasted together and presented to the public as the results of 12 months’ worth of hard work by the mayor’s partisan hacks on political committees.

Diamond and a few other council members want his original bills to move forward excluding demands of the planning commission and the LDRU. 

Deegan’s number one cheerleader on the council, Jimmy Peluso, D, District 7, cannot sit back and allow Republican council members nor concerned citizens, business owners, and homeowners to impede the work of Jacksonville’s first female mayor and her radical committees.

Baby Face Peluso is against Diamond’s original ordnances moving forward because he says it would undermine the completely pointless work of Jacksonville’s highly paid future-weather preventing officer, Anne Coglianese, and her climate change warriors on the mayor’s Resiliency committee. The legislation “immediately runs to the finish line without other bodies that should have a say in the this,” Peluso said. He isn’t wrong. Diamond is trying to prevent Smart Growth’s radical agenda from transforming Jacksonville and forcing us to pay for it.

The whole point of Mayor Deegan’s Resiliency Committee is to buy privately owned land, homes, and businesses as well as create regulations enforcing “building resilience” into all aspects of future development because doing so will prevent future hypothetical weather, hypothetical floods, and pretend “extreme heat” from potentially harming humans and infrastructure in the future. The committee has already used federal cash to buy three houses to return the property “back to nature,” saving the lives of homeowners from the deadly effects of future potential flooding predicted to occur on their now government owned property sometime in the distant future. 

This is what is causing all the drama.

Council members loyal to Team Deegan want to make sure stupid things like buying houses to prevent weather related flooding are included the bill.

The city’s planning commission also opposes Diamond’s ordnances, warning without adopting “resiliency” measures, residents and property owners are way too exposed to potentially increased weather hazards, raising the city’s hypothetical weather-related financial burden.

Let’s remember, this is all supposed to be about simply allowing for missing middle housing to help ease an alleged affordable housing crisis, not saving the planet from weather.

The mayor’s crusade to infill affordable housing across the city has pitted concerned residents against the City Council for months. January’s meeting wasn’t any different. Dozens of homeowners have raised valid concerns about inevitable lower property values, increased crime, traffic congestion, and multistory housing structures overlooking private property.

After hearing from those who oppose rezoning in favor of MMH, Peluso dismissed their concerns with one flamboyant jazz hand while the other held a firm grip on the mic to say, “Much of my District is in the missing middle already. Riverside and Avondale is pretty much on medium density residential. That is where I live. Maybe a block and a half form an apartment complex and then I am also very close to a million-dollar home. So, missing middle’s not a scary thing. It really isn’t,” Peluso said.  He arrogantly continued, “if Ortega was built today, they would probably have people show up saying I don’t want something built next door to me. However, Ortega is one of the highest income areas in the city and they have duplexes, quads, triplexes, apartment complexes; and then right on the river you got million-dollar homes. Some of the wealthiest homes in our city. So, it shows these neighborhoods can co-exist,” said Peluso.

Yes, Jimmy, neighborhoods like Ortega are able co-exist with MMH, for the same reason as San Marco. That is what homeowners are trying to protect while some on the City Council and the Deegan Administration actively work against them.

Councilman Rahman Johnson, D, District 14, also didn’t care what people had to say, accusing them of being disingenuous, at best.

In the “community and media, there is a mélange of in-factual misinformation that people have created based on what they have seen. We have got to look at the facts.” Johnson continued, “a lot of things I heard that came up from the podium were hyperbole. I am not here to debate those things. All I ask you do is try to come to us with some factual information, so we can work together to protect our community and do it responsibility,” Johnson said.

So, don’t believe your lying eyes, folks. Trust the politician.

Johnson, just like Baby Face Peluso, doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of Deegan’s political committees. He said, “I am not going to disrespect a year of work done by the committee that really gotten to the nuts and bolts of it. They gave us something to work with. But this is now the sausage making process.”

That sausage making process is supposed to take another six months. Which gives us more time to unscrew the “nuts and bolts” of what the mayor’s committees are really trying to accomplish.

Lindsey Roberts

Lindsey Roberts graduated from the University of Florida where she studied history and journalism. She was a multimedia producer at First Coast News for five years and then pursued her career as a Mommy to two beautiful children. She has always followed political news and anything specifically related to issues affecting the family and the American way of life. She is ready to get back to her roots by writing for Eye On My City. We are thrilled to have her onboard!!

Comments

Post Your Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *