PROVIDENCE – Just three of Rhode Island’s 39 communities offer housing affordable to renters earning $50,000 or less, and only one municipality hosts two-bedroom rentals affordable to an individual earning the median renter’s income of $38,339.
Meanwhile, single-year housing costs in the Ocean State have increased at their highest rate since a 2001-2004 surge, and almost 70% of jobs in the state’s designated “high-growth sectors” don’t pay an hourly wage that supports typical housing expenses.
Those are a few of the findings highlighted in HousingWorks R.I.’s 2022 Fact Book, an annual report detailing barriers to affordable housing and potential solutions. They’re also just a few of the forces behind a housing landscape where more than 139,000 Rhode Island households are considered cost-burdened, meaning they spend upwards of 30% of their income on housing costs, according to the report.
The state’s affordable housing landscape declined across the board, the report found, though some demographics, including Black and Hispanic households, fared significantly worse than others.
The 2022 Fact Book, released on Friday morning at a Hotel Providence breakfast event, acknowledges several “landmark and thoughtful actions” enacted at the state level since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a $250 million American Rescue Plan Act allocation toward housing; the RentReliefRI program, which provided $230 million in federal rental assistance to almost 36,000 renters and landlords; and new legislative commissions and laws that review and strengthen housing equity.
But the report’s other findings demonstrate that these measures alone can’t solve the housing crisis, HousingWorks R.I. says.
“Federal and state governments may provide funding and a framework of legislative policies to guide housing equity,” the report states, “but creating lasting and local solutions requires the partnership of municipalities and revised local land use regulations.”
Many municipal barriers stem from strict zoning requirements that bar multifamily and affordable housing units, the report notes.
Change could also require more collaboration across the state: Rhode Island largely lacks formal bodies of regional cooperation, the report states, unlike neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut, and state and municipal goals often fall “out of sync.”
“We must continue to work together across the state with all our municipalities to implement the framework that will enable a diversity of housing options for our residents — through infrastructure and revised land use regulations,” HousingWorks R.I. director Brenda Clement said in a statement.
“We simply need more production of all kinds of homes, and to preserve and upgrade the stock we have,” she added.
Renters, buyers see costs increase
In Rhode Island, the 2021 year-end median single-family home price was $365,000, according to the R.I. Association of Realtors — a 14% single-year increase. Additionally, mortgage rates increased from 2.96% to 4.65% between late 2021 and mid-2022.
Based on median single family home prices from 2021, a Rhode Island household earning the median income, $70,305, could not purchase an affordable home anywhere in the state.
But “the headline story for too many Rhode Islanders … is the rental crisis,” the report states.
According to Realtor.com, the Providence metro area had the fifth-highest year-over-year rental cost increase in the nation, surging 23.8%, which the report says is largely due to low multifamily construction and vacancy rates.
Rhode Island is the only New England state where multifamily housing construction has seen a quarterly year-over-year decline from Q4-2021 through Q2-2022, according to the report, and vacancy rates are five percentage points below healthy rates.
Bristol, Burrillville and Woonsocket were the only three communities demonstrating affordable rentals for households earning $50,000 or less, and only Burrillville has two-bedroom rentals affordable to an individual earning the median renter’s income of $38,339.
Meanwhile, the state’s hourly wages often fall below recommended rates for affordable housing: Almost 70% of the Rhode Island jobs designated as “high growth occupations” by the state’s Department of Labor and Training don’t pay the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s $24.32 “housing wage.” An affordable hourly housing wage in Rhode Island would need to pay almost double, HousingWorks says, at $46.38.
These high expenses have disproportionately impacted Black, Indigenous and people of color, the report noted.
Rhode Island has “significantly lower shares of Black, Hispanic and Asian homeowners than the the United States as a whole,” the report found, and 37% and 40% of Black and Hispanic households, respectively, are cost-burdened, which exceeds other demographics by eight or more percentage points.
The report also notes other stress points, such as the end of a pandemic-era pause on evictions, sharp increases in chronic homelessness, and a state housing stock where 74% of units were built prior to 1980.
And despite statewide initiatives intended to provide housing relief, Rhode Island relies heavily on federal funding, the report states, with state dollars comprising just 27% of expenditures on housing from mid-2020 to mid-2022.
“Our state still has a long way to go in order to do its part in combating the housing affordability crisis,” Clement said.
Jacquelyn Voghel is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Voghel@PBN.com.
