Emotions were already running high at this week's Duluth City Council meeting, where councilors were, it seemed to some, pressured into taking an immediate vote on a $6.2 million-tax increment financing package for a 15-story apartment building downtown.
The Loaves and Fishes Community, AICHO, the Duluth Branch of the NAACP and other social justice groups called on the council to table the vote until they could address the issue of affordable and low-income housing.
Then Council President Noah Hobbs made a comment many interpreted to mean that poverty was a result of poor life choices.
Joel Kilgour of Loaves and Fishes says he's listened to the recording of the meeting over and over, and he thinks folks are misinterpreting what Hobbs was trying to say. That being said, he wonders about the need for public financing of a building more than half the people of Duluth couldn't afford to live in.