PROVIDENCE – The release of the 2020 Housing Fact Book by HousingWorksRI on Friday, Oct. 17, means that no one in the state – the Governor, the R.I. General Assembly, the news media, the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, the banks, the colleges and universities, CommerceRI, or the R.I. Department of Health – can plead ignorance about the dire situation that the state now finds itself in when it comes to how the affordable housing crisis is strangling future economic prosperity in Rhode Island.

And, there is no “Easy” button to push to solve the problem; it will require a comprehensive strategy of thoughtful, strategic investment strategy – with investments far beyond what has been promised in a statewide election on bond issues for early in 2021, along with a dedicated funding stream in the state budget for continued affordable housing development.

In 2019, some 187 new affordable housing units were built – but the need is in the thousands, according to Brenda Clement, the director of HousingWorksRI, which publishes the annual Housing Fact Book.

Any affordable housing strategy will also require a willingness to deal with the underlying issues around racial equity and class distinctions – uncomfortable conversations to have, for sure.

What gets measured gets done
Much like the Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook, the 82-page, 2020 Housing Fact Book has created a detailed, data-driven document that illustrates the critical lack of affordable housing in Rhode Island – as well as breaking down the challenges facing every town and city in the state.

As the executive summary of the 2020 Housing Fact Book says, “In 2020, the pandemic and related shutdowns revealed stark disparities in housing and economic security; the community-wide value of safe, healthy, affordable homes became undeniable.”

While the 2020 Housing Fact Book is based on 2019 data, additional indicators have been incorporated, including disaggregated data for race and ethnicity.

The findings should surprise no one: “Housing cost burdens remain stubbornly high, especially across the lowest income brackets. The lowest income groups for those with mortgages had cost burden rates that were up only one percent over last year, but renters’ cost burdens and severe cost burdens increased significantly across nearly all incomes.”

• Eighty-one percent of renters with incomes below $12,765 are cost burdened, and 60 percent severely so. Last year, those same categories were 77 percent and 52 percent.

• The inclusion of racial and ethnic data also exposed disparities regarding homeownership and renting. Whites are the only racial group to have a higher rate of homeownership than rental. At 67 percent, it far exceeds the rate of ownership for all other groups, which range from a low of 29 percent for Latinos to a high of 47 percent for Asians.

• For 2019, the list of municipalities where it is affordable to own or rent remained quite low. There is only one municipality where a household at $50,000 income could affordably buy; at $70,000, there are now three – down from four in 2018.

• For renters, based on two-bedroom apartments, no municipality is affordable on the state’s median renter income of $34,255 and income of $50,000 is adequate in only three municipalities. Currently, Rhode Island’s “housing wage,” to afford a Fair Market Rent two-bedroom apartment, is $21.16 an hour – more than twice the state’s minimum wage.

• The Fact Book’s newly expanded section applied the lens of social determinants of health to the housing landscape in Rhode Island: age of housing stock, lead exposure and air quality, weatherization, and overcrowding. Key findings from this expanded inquiry were that three-quarters of the state’s housing stock is over 40 years old, a circumstance that correlates with elevated lead poisoning and asthma rates.

• Overcrowding – another factor of particular concern during the pandemic – is a problem among renters, particularly Latinos. Only 15 percent of Rhode Island’s population is Latino, but more than a quarter of Latino households are over-crowded.

The critical shortage of housing during the coronavirus pandemic – wherein shelter is paramount to safety – emphasized the shortfall in the production of homes for Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness.

Translating what the numbers mean
On the eve of the public release of the 2020 Housing Fact Book, ConvergenceRI interviewed Brenda Clement, the director of HousingWorksRI at Roger Williams University. Here is the interview:

ConvergenceRI: I feel like I have this conversation with you, with every report that you put out, which is always so detailed, defining the housing crisis that we seem to be stuck in. My first question: What will take to awaken and shake Rhode Islanders for people actually do something?
CLEMENT: As you know, all of the data and information that we show in the report is not new.

Housing cost burden issues and other issues have been persistent problems in Rhode Island for a long, long period of time.

I am hopeful that COVID and the challenges that it has raised, both as part of the public health crisis and an economic crisis, have opened up our eyes a little bit.

Maybe 2020 is the year that we finally see clearly the need to invest in housing in a meaningful way and to make the case and to show that a safe and decent place to lay your head every night is critical if we are going to grow economically and keep people healthy and strong.

What does affordable housing need? It needs money; it needs resources in the budget; it needs local communities stepping up and making changes in zoning laws and ordinances that allow development where development makes sense.

It means housing advocates need to look differently at how we do our work. Every time I ride by all the now-vacant commercial and retail space, I think about how can we repurpose and re-use those spaces. Again, as with any crisis, there are many opportunities.

ConvergenceRI: Can you talk about how everything is interconnected? It’s not just housing, it’s health care, it’s the pandemic, it’s the lack of job growth. It’s the lack of opportunity. And, it’s the way in which we need to redefine community.
CLEMENT: You are exactly right. Housing advocates like me say all the time, and you’ve heard me say it before: “The path to economic opportunity and to better health outcomes and to educational attainment begins at your front door.”

Nothing works right in your life if you don’t have that safe and decent place to get up from every day and to go back to every night.

This is a larger discussion about community – and about making sure that everybody in the community has at least their basic needs met.

ConvergenceRI: Can you talk about the strategies to build an engaged community?
CLEMENT: Again, I think state investment and federal investment in housing and production, obviously, are critical.

But most of the decisions about where housing gets built and developed are local decisions made by local communities.

Advocates like myself, and others, have realized that we need to do more work on the local level, educating people about the needs, but also dealing with the underlying issues around race and class that we can’t deny are part of these discussions.

ConvergenceRI: In November of 2017, I went on a bus tour sponsored by Barbara Fields at Rhode Island Housing to showcase how investments from a previous housing bond were being spent, for a number of state senators. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “Senators go on an amazing journey, deep into resilient city neighborhoods.”] Were you on the tour?
CLEMENT: I was there at the beginning but there wasn’t room on the bus.

ConvergenceRI: Their mistake. Peter Simon used to do a tour for students at the Brown School of Public Health…
CLEMENT: I’ve been on that tour, too.

ConvergenceRI: If you could design a tour today, what would the tour consist of? We can call it the “Brenda” tour. What would you showcase?
CLEMENT: [laughing] Many of the examples we have in Rhode Island and also in nearby Massachusetts can show, particularly for suburban and rural communities, what I mean by affordable housing, and what I mean by density.

Again, part of the problem I think with resistance at the local level is that people have an old image about what is affordable housing – they think high rises, they think big developments.

The reality is that for the last 20-30 years, the developments have been much more following the community development corporation model, where they integrate, repurpose and re-use existing structures in neighborhoods and communities, so that it fits into the context of the community.

I would like to show them some of the interesting models that they have come up around small house design, and how greyfield sites and strip mall spaces have been repurposed.

That’s a great idea; I love the idea of a tour.

ConvergenceRI: There is often, I believe, a lack of visualization when people talk about affordable housing. We use words but it doesn’t resonate as much as if there was an actual way for people to see it with their own eyes.
CLEMENT: You are absolutely right. Again, with all crises, there are opportunities I think it is forcing all of us to think differently. There are ways to do our own work differently, and I think we need to push ourselves to do that.

ConvergenceRI: What are the big takeaways from the 2020 Housing Fact Book?
CLEMENT: Again, the persistent nature of housing-cost burdens are critical. Way too many Rhode Islanders are housing-cost burdened; they spend more 30 percent of their income toward their housing costs.

Even though demand is high, production is low, and even though we had a relatively good year in the increase in the amount of low-term affordable housing, units that were produced last year, it was still only 187 units, and the need is for thousands of units to be built. We have a lot of catch-up work to do.

The huge rise in unemployment numbers in the state is sobering and shocking. We know why it has happened, but we also know that the impact it will have; evictions and foreclosures are likely to be very profound and challenging in the state.

The eviction moratorium that is currently in place has provided some short-term relief, but we are pushing more and more renters and small property owners to a financial cliff come January, when this moratorium expires. That is extremely worrisome; with the last real estate meltdown in 2008, it took us years to clean up the foreclosure mess.

We are trying to think proactively about how to prevent that from happening again.

ConvergenceRI: In December, a new coalition of housing advocates, HomesRI, met at RIC, to push an agenda for new investments in  affordable housing, including a bond. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “The path to opportunity begins at the front door of your home.”]
CLEMENT: We did that, and the Governor included a housing bond in her budget, as well as including, for the first time, a dedicated funding stream for housing in her budget that was introduced in January of 2020.

We were off on a good beginning. Then came COVID-19. In fact, one of the last hearings at the State House, one of the last times I was in that building, was when we had a hearing in early March before the House Finance Committee on the budget about the housing bond.

Then everything got sidetracked. We were pleased when the Governor proposed some additional funding for the housing bond. But, as you know, the legislature has not met and did not put a bond on the ballot for November.

There is some promise that there will be a special election sometime in January or February, but there are no guarantees on that. We don’t know for sure where we are with that. The ball is back in the legislative court at this point in time.

ConvergenceRI: Is there a way to hold elected officials accountable?
CLEMENT: By putting a housing bond on the ballot. The Governor proposed it in the budget, the legislature, for me, needs to authorize the budget.

With our colleagues at HomesRI and other groups, we are putting pressure on all of our legislators and legislative leaders to pass a budget that includes a housing bond. And, hopefully, a dedicated funding stream for housing.

Elections matter. Voting matters. Our colleagues at HomesRI have been doing a lot of work around voter registration and get out the vote efforts.

I am hopeful, with some of the new folks that are likely to be serving in both the Senate and the House after the November election, that we will have some folks we know care about hosing issues – and who are willing to take more of a leadership role on housing issues, so that’s a good thing.

Whoever is in there, we have to continue to make the case that this investment makes sense for the state, and failing to invest in housing has huge costs.

ConvergenceRI: You cited the phrase, “The path to prosperity begins at the path to your front door.” Another phrase I’ve heard is: “Housing is where jobs go to sleep at night.”
CLEMENT: That’s a Nick Retsinas version of it.

ConvergenceRI: Is there a need for a new phrase to communicate the current dire situation?
CLEMENT: I think the two phrases still say it well: That the front door, and that safe and decent place, is so critical to many. For too many Rhode Islanders, that stability isn’t there now.

The coronavirus pandemic has shown us, over and over, and the public health crisis with it, many of the workers that we rely on – the health care workers, home health aides, people who are cleaning the office buildings and public spaces to keep us healthy, these are the people most impacted, the people who are most housing insecure.

It drives me crazy that we call them “essential workers,” but yet we do not provide them with basic needs such as housing and homes. Another key finding is the fact, looking at the race and ethnicity data, home ownership rates for Blacks and Latinos are far below the national average in our state.

The number of renters who are cost-burdened and who are minorities is also a challenge. It’s the same for everyone: the path to opportunity begins at your front door, and everybody needs it and deserves it.