Affordable housing plan back on after victory on appeal

The Women’s Development Corporation has scored a big victory in its fight to build a 53-unit housing development for low- and moderate-income people on a 63.8-acre parcel in Richmond over the objections of several local residents and town officials.
Deeming the proposed development to be too dense for that area, the Richmond Planning Board had approved the WDC’s Altamonte Ridge plan only on the condition that it be reduced to 33 units. The nonprofit developer countered that this was, effectively, a denial, and the State Housing Appeals Board agreed.
On Aug. 7, the R.I. Superior Court upheld the appeals board’s findings.
In an interview, Steven Richard, a lawyer with Nixon Peabody in Providence who is the appeals board’s legal counsel, said that neither the board’s decision nor the court ruling were meant to set a precedent by overturning a municipal planning board decision concerning affordable housing. The board hears about five appeals each year.
The court’s decision came more than two years after the plans for Altamonte Ridge were submitted to the town. An entity created for the project, Altamonte Ridge LLC, had bought a 63.8-acre parcel in historic Shannock Village on West Shannock Road for $850,000 from Chestnut Investment Group LLC in March 2005. The town had assessed the parcel at $360,000.
The plans, developed by Commonwealth Engineers and Consultants, call for two four-plexes, 12 two-bedroom duplexes and 21 single-family houses. The units would sell for between $195,000 and $215,000, with a few closer to $175,000.
Susan Aitcheson, vice president of WDC, said the project would bring much-needed affordable housing to a town that has very little of it.
“You can buy a home in Richmond for about $350,000 or maybe $400,000 that’s about the same size as what we’re building,” she said.
Along with about 34 of the 38 other Rhode Island municipalities, Richmond has less than 10 percent affordable housing, the minimum required by the R.I. Low and Moderate Income Housing Act. As of April 6, Rhode Island Housing reported that 8.35 percent of the 425,610 housing units in Rhode Island qualified as affordable housing.
And there are big disparities in the availability of affordable housing in each community. Although Newport and Woonsocket have 17.29 percent and 16.50 percent affordable units, respectively, Scituate and Little Compton have only 1 percent and 0.13 percent.
Of the 2,592 housing units in Richmond, 66 qualify as affordable housing; that is only 2.55 percent. When the Altamonte Ridge development was proposed, Richmond needed 196 affordable housing units to reach the state-mandated 10 percent, according to an affordable-housing plan released by the town in December 2005.
But Richmond Town Planner Denise Stetson said that although a town like Richmond does need affordable housing, the rural community doesn’t have the necessary infrastructure to support high-density development, so the 10-percent mark is tough to reach.
“I think for some of the rural communities it is hard,” she said, “because there’s not as much density as is needed for it.”
During the planning board’s hearings on Altamonte Ridge, about 60 residents and abutters signed a petition saying the property shouldn’t be developed so densely. The WDC responded with extensive background information – including testimony from a real estate appraiser, a planner, a traffic engineer and Brown University economist Dennis Michaud.
But after five public hearings and two discussion sessions between July and December 2005, the Richmond Planning Board voted unanimously on Dec. 13, 2005, to approve the plans only on the condition that the number of units be cut back by 20. Otherwise, the development would be too disruptive to the community, the board found.
“The proposed density will irrevocably change the rural and historic character of Shannock Village in terms of density, traffic, noise, health, safety and environment, as well as that on the site itself,” the town board concluded.
Aitcheson said the Superior Court ruling now clears the way for the plans to proceed in their original form. •