This is an All-Hands-On-Deck Moment in Rhode Island

Published in the Boston Globe on June 25, 2024

Housing advocates are celebrating the $120 million housing bond included in the budget recently passed in the Rhode Island General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Dan McKee. Voters will weigh in on the measure on the November ballot.

The amount is nearly double the previous housing bond affirmed by voters in 2021, and underscores the crisis faced by Rhode Islanders to find housing, as well as its downward pressure on the state economy. Housing is clearly at the intersection of so much that makes life successful: health, education, workforce, community, child care. We’re grateful that state leaders have made housing a priority.

But it is still nowhere near enough.

The total needed is dramatically more — billions of dollars more. Housing is a national crisis, made worse in Rhode Island due to our history of underinvestment, the age of our housing stock, and the relative stagnation of wages. To add some perspective, Massachusetts just announced a $6.2 billion housing bond for its 7 million residents.

The bond in Rhode Island will help maintain some momentum, but this is an all-hands-on-deck moment for our state. It’s time for all R.I. corporations and nonprofits to participate in the solutions. For example, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island awarded the Local Initiatives Support Corporation a $4 million grant to address housing production, just one of the grants the insurer invested in the housing sector.

The investment has made a huge difference. The BCBS RI grant provided pre-development funding — nearly double our standard investment — to the new Crossroads Summer Street building. That project will replace the “the tower” — the agency’s older, single-room occupancy building on Broad Street — with 176 apartments reserved for residents earning at or below 30 percent of the area median income. The Summer Street building will offer permanent supportive housing to individuals who are at-risk of or transitioning away from homelessness. Because we were able to invest more, we also were able to leverage additional resources, which meant LISC could provide nearly $38 million in equity for the project. This investment in Crossroads, as well as others in the pipeline, has meant that Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island grant enabled us to ramp up the leverage of federal funds and national resources and invest — or commit to invest — nearly $120 million in the past 18 months.

More corporate citizens need to follow suit. If good health is your mission, health starts with housing. If you’re concerned about educational excellence, then good grades start with safe and affordable housing. If a stable workforce is important, consider where your employees will sleep at night. We can’t solve this crisis without everyone’s help.

In addition, municipalities need to find solutions rather than objections. Having residential options in commercial districts will enable customers to live near commerce and further encourage the repurposing of old and dilapidated mill buildings. Adding another floor to a building on Main Street will add customers for your local economy. So many communities work this way nationwide. It’s time that Rhode Island caught up.

Rhode Island is suffering from a nationally recognized myopia that has resulted in 87 percent of our state zoned for single family housing. With the average cost of a single-family house now above $440,000, that leaves large swaths of Rhode Islanders without viable options. House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi has made significant strides on this front, including passing legislation to allow accessory dwelling units, but the state needs to do more to mitigate zoning bottlenecks. It is a statewide problem that needs a statewide solution.

Jeanne Cola serves as senior executive director of the Rhode Island office of Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit financial institution that supports community development initiatives across the country.