The corner of Gardiner and Ten Rod Roads in Exeter looks a lot like a place to take a hike. It’s wooded, quiet, and abuts 26 acres of densely grown trees.
“It certainly would make a great nature preserve,” Colin Penney, executive director of South County Habitat for Humanity, said on a recent visit to the property. “It’s an absolutely beautiful part of the state.”
But this site isn’t part of a trail system or land trust. It’s actually owned by South County Habitat, part of the nationwide network of non-profit homebuilders, which in 2019 built one single family home surrounded by nature.
“There’s plenty of woods here for kids to roam around in and play. But we would have preferred to put a few more units in here,” Penney said.
This story is part of our series Zoned Out: How local zoning hurts efforts to solve Rhode Island’s decades-long housing shortage. Click here to see more stories from this series.
Habitat For Humanity was able to build on this land after it was donated by a developer who built a small subdivision in the area. The Habitat property is 3.2 acres — larger than two football fields put together. But this property is in a part of Exeter where zoning rules say property owners need at least three acres of land to build each house. Hence, one three-bedroom, single-story home next to a whole lot of undeveloped land.
“Putting three to four houses on this 3-acre lot would have been very, very doable. To have acreage that we felt we should be able to develop and couldn’t really is tough,” Penney said. “It’s just the extra time and the uncertainty around what was going to be allowable that really kind of created the decision for us just to move forward with a single family home.”
The outcome was not unique or unexpected. Zoning restrictions like large lot sizes have been shown to increase housing prices by constraining housing construction and incentivizing building fewer, larger houses.
Rhode Island is not immune. On nearly a third of the land in South County, property owners need at least two acres to build one housing unit, according to data analyzed for The Public’s Radio by HousingWorks RI, a thinktank focused on housing affordability. Across the state, 43% of developable land requires at least two acres of land for a single family home, according to data provided by the National Zoning Atlas, a project cataloging zoning laws across the country. It’s 34% in neighboring Connecticut.
Penney says he spends much of his time looking at properties for potential development, and the first thing he considers is zoning, which often presents a challenge – large lot requirements being among the top concerns.
Habitat and other developers have some options for pursuing greater density, but they still require town approval, which can be difficult to get. Even if Habitat can successfully challenge a denial, fighting to build a housing development can take years and tens of thousands of dollars.
“There are certain towns that have made it very, very clear that building at density was not what they wanted,” Penney said. “We looked at some large parcels of land in Charlestown, including one that we were looking at 36 houses, and decided against buying the land because we were just worried that the investment would prevent us from building elsewhere.”
Zoning is at ‘the core of the housing crisis’
When organizations like Habitat can’t build, there are consequences. It means fewer new homes and apartments for buyers and renters. That drives competition and pushes costs higher. In rural Exeter, the median home price is more than $500,000, up nearly 40% in recent years, according to HousingWorks RI, and the monthly cost to homeowners is more than six times what’s affordable on minimum wage.
Exeter isn’t an outlier. Melina Lodge, executive director of Housing Network of Rhode Island, an advocacy group representing nonprofit developers, says housing costs continue to climb.
“We’re seeing this escalation of pricing,” Lodge said. “A lot of that is driven by the scarcity of housing, which is directly influenced by how much or how little a developer can build on a particular lot.”
Lodge says Rhode Island’s housing development challenges aren’t new. Last year, a study prepared for the Rhode Island Foundation found the state ranked near the bottom in terms of housing production over the last decade and was dead last in 2021.
“The zoning component is absolutely, really at the core of the housing crisis, in the sense of: what are we not able to build, which is not meeting demand and then fueling this very competitive housing market, because that’s how it’s structured,” Lodge said.
Towns that require larger lots say they have good reasons for their zoning restrictions. Open space, they say, is part of the character of their communities. And there are environmental considerations, like protecting water supplies. Some towns, like Exeter, rely on private septic systems and well water.
Lodge and other advocates acknowledge that large lot sizes aren’t always inappropriate. But they say towns need to seek out opportunities to build more housing in areas where it does make sense.
“It's not to say that all of a particular town has to look like an urban center. But where is it more appropriate?” Lodge said. “Where are you able to up-zone to accommodate some growth? At some point the people who live there now are going to be gone. And how have you attracted new and young people into a space to create some continued vibrancy is something I think we have to contemplate.”
A success story in Exeter
Though large swaths of Exeter require large lots, Exeter is also a town host to a building project that did work out: the 40-unit Pine View Apartments.
The affordable housing development that wrapped up construction at the end of 2022 was built by Women’s Development Corporation, a nonprofit developer and property manager that works in communities around the region, from Westerly to Woonsocket to New Bedford.
Pine View Apartments in Exeter is a newer project for people living at 30% to 60% of the area median income. The property is almost 7 acres, with a conservation easement to provide a wooded buffer. The development is off of Route 2, a more commercial area of Exeter near a shopping plaza and the South Kingstown town line.
Frank Shea, executive director of Women’s Development Corporation, says his organization began talking with the then-property owner in 2017. Because the project includes affordable housing, they were able to obtain what’s called a comprehensive permit, which allowed them to get around zoning restrictions and build more units.
“I think the process with the town was pretty positive,” Shea said. “Every municipality in Rhode Island — they have people living in their communities, whether they know it or not, who need this kind of housing … And so I think the town also viewed it as a site that could be appropriate.”
Pine View Apartments put Exeter over the state’s benchmark for towns to have 10% of their housing stock classified as “affordable.” The most recent state count shows Exeter is now the only rural or suburban town in the state above that threshold.
Shea says getting above the 10% requirement can be a motivator for towns, because it gives developers less leverage to build housing towns don’t want. But he says he’s optimistic Exeter would be open to working with the Women’s Development Corporation again if they find a site that works for everyone.
