If you make less than $100,000 a year you can’t comfortably afford to buy a home in Rhode Island, according to new data from the think tank HousingWorksRI at Roger Williams University. And if you make less than $75,000 you can’t afford to rent.
In its annual housing factbook, which it released on Friday, HousingWorksRI once again paints a bleak picture for housing affordability in the state. More than one-third of Rhode Island households put more than one-third of their income toward housing, marking them as “cost-burdened” and at-risk, according to the factbook.
The group calculated that the lowest income that would enable one to affordably buy a home in Rhode Island is in Woonsocket at $119,123. Burrillville is the only municipality in which someone making the state’s median renter income of $45,560 can afford to rent an average-priced two-bedroom unit.
Despite increased attention on the cost of housing in Rhode Island in recent years, the problem continues to get worse, according to Brenda Clement, HousingWorksRI’s executive director.
“We know it’s a problem that needs to be addressed not only for workforce retention and development, but also to improve people’s health and educational outcomes,” Clement said. “Housing advocates like me say that housing is the foundation and that nothing works right in your life unless you have that decent place to get up from every day and to go back to every night.”
The state has used federal money from the pandemic-response American Rescue Plan Act to fund some affordable housing initiatives, but that funding must be spent by 2026. That means the state needs to find additional funding if it is to support new housing.
Rhode Island voters will see a $120 million housing bond on the ballot in November. Question 3 would provide $80 million for low and moderate income housing, as well as funding for homeownership programs and supportive housing.
While quick to say that there is no silver bullet, Clement says it’s clear that Rhode Island hasn’t been producing enough housing units to keep up with demand. That comes down to resources — especially support for lower-income housing from federal and state governments — as well as economic conditions, and zoning and planning boards at the local level that can make housing production slow and expensive.
There are vital concerns about development, Clement says — quality of life and environmental concerns among them — but local governments need to look at where they can encourage housing production.
“I’m not saying to grow irresponsibly,” Clement said, “but we clearly have to do something [other] than what we’re doing now, because we’re not meeting the basic needs of our fellow Rhode Islanders.”
