While the dawn of a new year provides a new hope for continued progress in our state, one of the most persistent and complex challenges we face remains as daunting as ever.
The lack of truly affordable housing – combined with ever-increasing demand and the skyrocketing price of the existing, inadequate housing stock – has, like nearly everywhere else in the country, led to a bona-fide housing crisis. That crisis has increased the number of Rhode Islanders who have no home at all, leading to some truly abysmal data that places the state in an unfavorable spotlight.
According to the The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress put out by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Rhode Island saw a 35% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness from 2023 to 2024, with 2,442 people experiencing some degree of homelessness in 2024. That represents a 78% increase from 2007.
Even worse, Rhode Island now holds the unfavorable distinction of having the second highest rate of chronic homelessness in the country, with 48% of its total number of homeless individuals experiencing chronic homelessness (meaning someone with a disability who has experienced homelessness for one year or more or has experienced four episodes of homeless in the last three years amounting to 12 total months of homelessness).
While these facts should be viewed with a fair degree of shame for letting it get this bad, particularly in the smallest state in the country, neither the blame nor the solution for this complex crisis can be placed on any one person’s shoulders.
It is the result of a nationwide reckoning with the increasing cost of goods, services, labor and construction materials; all of which has been exacerbated by ballooning inflation, unprecedented economic disruption by the pandemic and continuously stagnant growth in the wages of working people over the course of many years.
And although no silver bullet will alleviate these issues, we are somewhat hopeful that the state is taking serious strides to address the issue.
House Speaker Joe Shekarchi has admirably led a charge since assuming his leadership role to boost housing production by cutting red tape for developers who include affordable units in their projects. He has championed adaptive reuse of vacant industrial and commercial properties and supported the streamlining of creating accessory dwelling units to allow existing homeowners to provide housing for aging family members or their children, who don’t possess adequate financial capital to live independently due to the aforementioned economic factors.
These approaches are not perfect, but they are a great start. Creating more housing units should, in theory, decrease the overall cost of housing in the long run. However, the state should also look into making changes in its affordable housing strategy as a whole. For example, generous incentives and zoning relief (such as density bonuses) is currently available to developers who set aside just 10% of total units proposed in a project as affordable – with those units usually being listed at rates affordable to those making up to 80% of the area median income.
That sounds great, but in practice, this often leads to moderate- or large-size housing developments where a vast majority of the housing created is still wholly unaffordable to the average, working-class Rhode Islander. Increasing the mandated percentage of affordable units to unlock those incentives, and mandating a lower percentage of AMI as the basis for those affordable units, would lead to significantly better results in terms of creating actually affordable units.
Additionally, the state should be laser-focused on ways to bolster nonprofit housing developers who build projects where 100% of units are priced at affordable rates. These developments, subsidized by federal and local housing authorities, provide the greatest impact in addressing the crisis, while main- taining high quality of standards for construction and quality of life for residents.
We are likewise encouraged by the comprehensive report submitted by the new secretary of housing, which seeks to reduce redundancies among existing agencies and create a more thoughtful approach to increasing housing stock and decreasing homelessness. However, we do have concerns about the abil- ity of the newly dubbed “Executive Office of Housing” to adequately staff and oversee the many responsibilities it proposes to consolidate under its umbrella without becoming over-encumbered.
We will look forward with open minds and ears to hearings in the General Assembly regarding this most important issue in the coming months.