Rhode Island House Speaker Joe Shekarchi on Thursday unveiled 15 bills meant to help the state make progress in the housing crisis.
During a Statehouse press conference, Shekarchi expressed disappointment that Rhode Island remains last in the nation in per-capita housing production, despite the allocation of tens of millions of dollars in recent years.
He said the latest housing package is meant to chip away at a problem of supply and demand.
“Until we have more production and at a faster rate, we will continue to see rent and housing prices rise,” Shekarchi said, adding that the situation affects low-income residents more sharply.
Among other things, the newly unveiled bills would allow for streamlined municipal permitting, provide for residential uses in commercial zones, and allow municipalities to count mobile homes as affordable housing.
Shekarchi called housing a key economic development issue for Rhode Island.
“People ask me, ‘why do you keep introducing housing legislation? The House has already passed, over the last three years, more than 30 bills.’ Well, my answer is, look around. Have we solved the problem? No, not even close.”
Shekarchi said the gap between the cost of housing and what many people can afford developed over decades, and could get worse with lower interest rates, but he said the state remains focused on improvement.
Other parts of the package include:
— A bill passed by the House on Feb. 14 giving homeowners the right to develop an accessory dwelling unit for a family member with a disability or within an existing housing footprint.
— Legislation to establish an 11-member commission to study how to stimulate a bigger pipeline of planners, planning technicians and related staff.
— A measure to make clear in considering wetland buffers that there can be no local regulation of coastal or freshwater wetlands beyond the requirements of the state Department of Environmental Management and Coastal Resources Management Council.
Shekarchi said the bills do not pose any additional costs for cities and towns.
“Anybody who has better ideas, please come forward,” he said.
The bills must clear votes in the House and Senate to move to the desk of Gov. Dan McKee.
The number of housing permits in Rhode Island went into freefall over recent decades and has not come close to recovering.
Shekarchi declined to cite a target for how many permits the state should be issuing each year, but he called it unacceptable that the state ranks last nationally in housing production.
He gave a shout-out to state Rep. David Morales (D-Providence), who is developing a rental subsidy bill, with a budgetary impact of about $5 million, and said Rep. Jackie Baginski (D-Cranston) is developing a bill to prohibit the use of artificial intelligence in determining rental prices — a practice, he said, not yet seen in Rhode Island.
Asked by a reporter if a proposed $100 million housing bond to be decided by voters in November is too small, the speaker said he would like it to be larger, but that budget constraints and the state’s borrowing capacity may preclude a big change in the amount.
