Seledonio “Cele” Quesada can give you 2,000 reasons why Port Arthur ought to pursue using federal funds to build low- and moderate-income houses in Port Arthur, including Port Acres.

That’s how many people responded for vouchers when the Port Arthur Housing Authority took applications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program recently. Those 2,000 applications arrived in 75 minutes on line, and reached the maximum for applications the Housing Authority could receive.

Quesada, executive director of the Housing Authority, said it’s plain the need for affordable housing is “huge” in our community. But while applicants may need the city’s housing, does the city need the applicants?

That’s a cold question. But Port Arthur’s leadership is cool to the idea of building still more homes for people who can’t afford to buy their own. Mayor Derrick Freeman can give you one reason why Port Arthur ought NOT pursue using federal funds to build low- and moderate-income houses in Port Arthur: It’s bad for the city’s future.

Freeman said flatly this week, “We are not going to be building more low- and moderate-income housing. I think we are two to three times the state average (for low to moderate-income housing) at this time.” By Thursday, when the mayor appeared on our live streamed news show, he said he’d learned that the city might have five times as many such low-income homes as the Texas average. It’s not easy to absorb so many struggling households. Must we invite more?

What the city needs, Freeman said, is not people drifting toward Port Arthur for government help — making us the port in their financial storm. What we need are people who come here with job skills or for people here to acquire jobs skills that would position them to land good jobs — there are an abundance of those in Port Arthur — and to buy their own homes without a lot of government expense.

Port Arthur needs working-class or middle-class people who can qualify for good jobs, keep them, acquire homes on their own and pay property taxes. That’s how vibrant cities get ahead, pushed by competent, hard-working people who fend for themselves, who accumulate property, pay taxes and who pay their own way.

Quesada got pushback at his own meeting this week, where questions were raised about the need to build homes for people who can’t afford to buy them. Some say yes, some lean no.

He was asked, too, if people who lost their homes in Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey in 2017 and left Port Arthur would necessarily come back. Is there such a guarantee? If they don’t come back, will those low-income homes be needed?

We all need to know. It’s great to build, but to what end?