Rhode Island officials say a newly announced $3.8 million federal grant will help the state to make more headway against its housing crisis.
Kimberly McClain, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, attended a news conference Wednesday in the state library at the Statehouse, complete with an oversized check.
“It is no secret that we’re facing a housing crisis in this country,” McClain said. “For more than a decade, housing supply has not kept pace with the demand … To lower housing costs, we must build more housing.”
The housing crisis is particularly acute in Rhode Island, where soaring home prices and meager production of new housing have put home ownership out of reach for many people.
The Pathways to Removing Obstacles program grant, part of a competitive national process, is meant to identify and remove barriers to creating and preserving affordable housing.
While the size of the grant may seem small in the context of Rhode Island’s housing crisis, officials say it will be valuable.
The money will be used in roughly 15 Health Equity Zones across the state, where residents work together to tackle local problems.
Among those attending the news conference were U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Reps. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, a host of nonprofit housing activists and Rhode Island House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, who was lauded for a sustained focus on housing.
Rhode Island Housing Secretary Stefan Pryor said that while the precise spending is not yet defined, the common thread is making the land use process in the state more efficient.
“In terms of the categories,” he said, the key areas are “zoning land use regulation, high construction cost and land acquisition cost, public perception [of affordable housing] and nonprofit developer capacity.”
Rhode Island’s housing crunch has developed over decades, and despite the allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars and the passage of many related bills, progress sometimes seems barely perceptible.
But Pryor, who is set to leave state government for a private sector job, cited some reasons for hope. He said the Housing Department and RI Housing have financed 2,600 homes in recent rounds; shelter capacity for the homeless has been significantly expanded; and state government capacity for developing housing has been increased.
Pryor said new Census Bureau data shows that 515 units were permitted during the first four months of this year — the most over the comparable period, he said, since 2007.
