Port St. Lucie wrestles with high home prices [South Florida]
With 80 percent of its vast acreage carved up into single-family building lots, Port St. Lucie has served as the affordable-housing mecca for cities from Broward to Indian River counties since it was twinkle in a developer’s eye 46 years ago.
Most of those years, there was no central water and sewer service, only wells and septic tanks that helped keep land prices low. Jobs have always been scarce here, and folks head north or south to find a shopping mall.
So it was a combination of things – both predictable and not – that led to Wednesday’s discussion among city council members: How to help middle-income workers afford homes in a city that former Mayor Bob Minsky once described as a place people moved to when they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.