What Does 10% Affordable Housing Mean?
Under Rhode Island’s Low and Moderate Income Housing Act, most cities and towns in Rhode Island are “incentivized” to provide 10% of their year-round housing as low- or moderate-income housing (LMIH).
The “incentive” is that in towns without 10% deed-restricted, affordable units, developers can file development proposals known as “Comprehensive Permits” that allow them to build at much higher densities than zoning or environmental objectives would usually allow as long as 25% of their units are LMIH.
Under the law, affordably priced homes do not count as LMIH; in order to qualify as LMIH, these homes must instead meet a set of restrictions. To count as this type of housing, the dwelling units must be deed-restricted for at least 30 years during which time they can only be sold to buyers who meet the income requirements of the RI Housing Authority, and they must be built with a government subsidy. The subsidy that most developers choose is a density bonus that overrides local zoning.
As of 2023, the last year for which data is available, only Central Falls, Newport, Providence, and Woonsocket had met the 10% threshold. Charlestown, along with 34 other cities and towns, has less than 10% LMIH. Charlestown has 130 LMIH units and would need about 245 more to reach 10%. And each time 10 more dwelling units are built, the town needs to provide one additional LMIH unit because the number needed to achieve 10% grows with the total number of houses built.
Comprehensive Permit developments that contain the minimum 25% LMIH only provide 15%, not 25%, towards the LMIH quota, because all the housing in the development, including the large number of market-rate units also permitted, counts towards the total number of housing units and increases the total that controls that ever-elusive 10%.
All towns, whether they have met the 10% LMIH or not, must allow Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). ADUs may provide housing that is affordable, but they do not count as LMIH units. Their numbers do however count towards the total housing stock, thus increasing the number of LMIH units a town is required to have.
Charlestown voters approved a $1 million affordable housing bond in 2004. Part of that bond was combined with $3.5 million the town received from FEMA to reimburse for Superstorm Sandy expenses, $1.9 million from Building Homes Rhode Island, and other funding sources to build the 24-unit ChurchWoods, dedicated in 2016. The 11-unit Shannock Village Cottages (2019) and the 7-units on Edwards Lane (2014) were built with still other sources of funding that were combined with the town’s bond. The remainder of Charlestown’s LMIH units are in private developments, which also include market-rate units because they received density bonuses for the LMIH units; are Habitat for Humanity homes; or consist of some state-owned LMIH units.
Charlestown, at 3.5% of its housing stock as LMIH, has a higher percentage of deeded affordable units than Foster, Glocester, or Little Compton and has roughly the same percentage as Barrington and Narragansett. Charlestown was at 4% LMIH until the state sold some of its own LMIH units in Charlestown to market-rate buyers!
If Charlestown’s 10% quota is to be achieved by for-profit developers using Comprehensive Permits, then approximately 1,650 more dwelling units would have to be built with these permits before the town would reach 10% LMIH.
Charlestown has no public water or sewer and depends entirely on private wells and septic systems. Non-profit developments, such as the homes on Edwards Lane and the units in Shannock Village Cottages, are built at lower densities, provide 100% affordable housing, and have fewer negative impacts on Charlestown’s groundwater than the high-density, for-profit, mostly-market-rate comprehensive permits that developers may propose, the densities of which can be 3 to 10 times the allowed zoning density.
The RI General Assembly, including almost all of our own representatives, continues to pass bills that overturn local zoning without regard for the impact on groundwater in towns like ours which depend on private wells for drinking water and without regard for the natural resources of statewide importance that the rural towns have worked to steward. Charlestown’s Planning Commission has historically worked hard to protect our town’s environment, but the legislature continues to pass legislation that works in opposition to that goal.
You can learn more about the author, Ruth Platner, on her profile page.