Trying to pass line-break element to SPAN element gets encoded

Sorry if this seems like a stupid question and it probably is. But in VSWeb 2012 I am constructing a string that will appear in a SPAN element. I wish to pass <br> to allow line breaks to appear in the browser. Like so...

Message += lst.Item("list_id") & " " & lst.Item("list_api_identifier") & lst.Item("list_description") & "<br>"

Displaying the Message in Razor view as @Message, the <br> element is getting encoded to &lt;br&gt; in the page source.

How do I allow the unencoded <br> to pass through to the page source?

(yea I know it is VB...please no flames)

Thanks