The housing crisis began a long time ago, so it’s understandable that moving forward takes time. But that offers little solace for people hurt by the high cost and lack of housing they can afford, and the situation restricts efforts to grow Rhode Island’s economy. This week, the state unveiled a new plan for adding 15,000 new housing units over the next five years. But some communities have resisted attempts to add more housing. So does the new state plan have the right stuff, and what will it take to make more progress? This week on Political Roundtable, I’m going in depth with Rhode Island Housing Secretary Deborah Goddard.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Ian Donnis: You helped to unveil a new state housing plan this week, the first, in almost 20 years. It identifies a goal of creating 15,000 units of housing over the next five years. If it’s been a bit of a struggle in recent years to make progress against Rhode Island’s housing crisis, why will this plan have more of an effect?
Deborah Goddard: Well, first of all, having a plan helps, but we are on an upward tick. So bringing it together, policy and funding in a concerted planI, I think will make all the difference in the world. It cannot solve all the problems. We are going to have to continue to work every day to break down the barriers we’re going to have to make sure we’re investing our funds well, but I really feel like it’s something we can get our hands around.
Donnis: There are a lot of moving parts to the plan. We know that zoning is entrenched in communities across America, and that’s just one piece of the challenge. So how will you benchmark progress against the various elements of the new plan?
Goddard: So there are some, obviously some concrete metrics we can use in terms of the 15,000 permitted, the additional rental housing financed.
But very importantly, the towns have to bring, this will become the state guide plan element, the housing plan and towns and communities will have to update their comprehensive plans to be consistent with that state guide plan. So they’re gonna have to put in concrete terms which of the many options that we’ve recommended or others we haven’t thought of. Are they putting in place to get their very concrete goals met? And it’s going to have to be approved. And we will be working with state planning to review those proposals and approve or reject them based upon whether they really appear to have an effective route towards making the production goals.
Donnis: Almost 66% of voters last year approved a $120 million bond last year to create more housing in Rhode Island. That suggests that support for building more housing is fairly widespread in Rhode Island. But when push comes to shove, oftentimes people say, build housing, but not in my town, not in my neighborhood. They don’t want things to change. How do you overcome that mindset?
Goddard: A few ways. First of all, I think we start talking in plain English about who we’re serving. And in the plan you’ll see, we identify if you’re at what we call 30% of median or 50% of median. This is what we mean by affordable. We’re putting jobs and careers next to that definition. So we gotta start talking that way. We’re talking about our daycare workers, our light truck drivers, our accounting clerks. People are going to start seeing themselves in that and get over what this phrase affordable means I think. Number two, we are creating tools to help communities visualize what housing can look like, also a toolkit for municipal officials to help them understand the development process and what they can do to move it forward. I also wanna help create and foster a voice amongst the business community and the faith community and others about the need for housing and what it brings to every community, particularly employers and the economic development side of housing. And then finally, the department, and in particular me, I have to be that voice out there all the time. Last night I was down in Narraganset where there were affordable housing collaboratives. Wonderful group of people trying to do the hard work at the local level. And Narraganset passed its own bond bill recently. So I think the housing crisis has gotten to the point where it is hitting middle income America and. I wanna say the upside, because it’s a perverse upside, is that shared need and that shared concern brings a different voice to our debate, I think.
Donnis: You took part in a news conference with Governor McKee this week to roll out the new housing plan. The governor said that he and you have gone around to various communities to meet with local officials and try and get buy-in from them. One community where officials would not meet with you was Johnston, where the town faces a lawsuit over plans to cite a public safety complex on what had been planned as a large apartment complex that would help chip away at the housing crisis. When there’s a community that’s a bit of an outlier, like Johnston, what’s your approach there?
Goddard: And let me be clear. I was yesterday referencing one of two opportunities to meet with communities. We did meet with every community before I was even on board, including Johnston, every community on the plans we were making, what were their issues? So Johnston did participate. When we created the municipal goals, we then reached out and offered a great community, a moment opportunity to have a Zoom call with us. And that’s when Johnston, one of 13 towns that didn’t take us up on that invitation. Johnston has been in the headlines, but we know that we’ve got opposition, as you mentioned in many communities. And so I think it’s the same thing in terms of being that pesky voice. But as I said yesterday too, we are also ready to prioritize communities for discretionary state funds, funds that they may want to improve their roads or their sidewalks, improve their park spaces. We’re willing to prioritize towns that are making the effort to open up their community for those funds. And as much as everyone, I call it a carrot. you heard me yesterday say, and I mean it, I also think it’s a, it’s a nicely outfitted hammer because it’s gonna be funds that they want.
Donnis: We’re talking here with Rhode Island housing secretary Deborah Goddard and Governor McKee recently introduced a budget amendment meant to streamline the governance structure for housing in Rhode Island. When you were appointed as housing secretary last November, I believe it was, were you surprised that the state had not done more to streamline housing governance?
Goddard: Actually, this goes back to when I was being asked to consider to consult early on in August of ‘22. Someone said they want some help setting up the Department of Housing, and I thought, what? And I googled Rhode Island. And I saw this thing called the Housing Resource Commission, but you had to go to the Department of State, state Department’s website to get any information and there was no department. So right then I went, huh, what is this setup in Rhode Island? I was surprised to read that there are more than one organization with almost the same legislative top line mission. I am surprised that funding decisions are, maybe with some organizations that don’t have direct line accountability. But the basic goes back to there are too many hands in all spaces without direct lines of accountability and responsibility. And what we’re saying is, let’s make sure there’s one place that the governor, the electorate, our partners know is responsible and accountable for housing policy, for ensuring that housing finance decisions relate to those sets of housing priorities. So to clean it up, but not to exclude anyone.
Donnis: I’m old enough to remember back in 2005 when then Governor Don Carcieri created an executive Office of Housing and Community Development. It was meant to streamline the housing governance, and here we are years later, and apparently the work was not done. I wonder if you looked back at that and what went wrong so the same mistakes might not happen again.
Goddard: I think one thing was that there’s been a lot of input into this and then, and we got to the point where we filed the legislation. So we’re beyond that hump of, okay, you’ve got a report now, what are you gonna do? You’ve got some ideas. We filed the legislation, so one way the other decisions are gonna be made on these recommendations. I think that’s probably the biggest, biggest difference.
Donnis: I believe you’ve said that some of your best efforts have been with public housing authorities and there’s been talk of creating a public developer here in Rhode Island. I wonder how you envision what that would look like.
Goddard: That’s interesting because one of my statements has often been, we have public developers and they’re called public housing authorities. Why would we create another one? So we did a survey because the bond language says public housing development. What do we mean by that? Lots of people think they own that language. And the surveys have come back very, very heavily. Lots of housing authorities did respond, but we got a lot of folks responding. Yeah, it’s public housing authorities and please don’t create another agency. I was at the Harvard GSD last week on a panel.
Donnis: Graduate School of Design.
Goddard: Yes. And spoke about this. and afterwards speaking to people as diverse as Melina Lodge and Dan Denvir, I think we’re coming to an agreement that this is rooted in public housing authorities. We want them perhaps to do some stuff differently. so now I’ll be working with folks to say, what, what is this? Because we also, if we’re gonna work with public housing authorities, we want to have them have the option and the ability to grow the housing stock, but we can’t ignore the stock they have and we can’t ignore the folks that are living in stock in dire need of capital improvement. So we’ve gotta create a program that addresses both sides of this.
Donnis: Advocates say violations of tenant rights are fairly widespread in Rhode Island. What role can you as housing secretary play in addressing that?
Goddard: That’s an area, honestly, I have not waded into, we did do the Landlord-Tenant handbook. I think it’s something that the governance legislation will also create an inter-agency council on housing. And I think that’s the kind of place where, for instance the Attorney General will be on board and DBR will be on board. So I think that’s gonna be a place where we can hammer out a lot of these things. Of course the connection with housing is people losing housing and people coming into homelessness because of that. So, but I also don’t wanna overstep. I think, there’s issues, it’s a consumer affairs issue, it’s an AG issue, so I wanna work with our partners. I don’t wanna overstep into someone else’s territory.
Donnis: Speaking of homelessness, it seems like at some points in the past, the governor’s administration has been a little bit behind the curve as winter approaches and more people are facing the worst part of homelessness in the winter. What is your thinking on how the state is doing with that now?
Goddard: Yes, we’re putting it on the calendar. Our primary round funding will be going out at the end of this month instead of in the summer. So we’ll have our regular contracts in place. And as of July, we’re putting out an RFP that will be a rolling basis for our winter beds that’ll go out in July.
Donnis: Is the Superman building, which has been vacant for many years. Is that part of your portfolio as housing secretary?
Goddard: No, it’s not.
Donnis: Okay, well that’s a thorny issue, so you’re probably perhaps fortunate to not have that on your desk. There was a recent piece in the New York Times arguing that sprawl, although often considered a dirty word, can play a role in creating more housing. Does that have any application in Rhode Island in your view?
Goddard: You know, I took that article out to read it and I haven’t finished reading it. It’s an interesting argument. I don’t think it’s really sprawl writ large. It’s like sensible sprawl if there is such a thing. I think yes, every community should do its share. And again, if you don’t have a lot of infrastructure, if you don’t have a lot of public transit, that share may look different. It’s gonna be less. You know, particularly from a fair housing perspective, every Rhode Islander should have the option to live wherever they want. But we’ve gotta be sensible. We’ve got issues of water supply, issues of land that will be underwater sometime in the foreseeable future. we want our green spaces, so it’s a balance amongst all of that.
Donnis: That’s all the time we have, so we need to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me, Rhode Island Housing Secretary, Deborah Goddard.
Goddard: Thank you for having me.
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The death this week of Dominick Ruggerio at age 76 marked the end of an era for the Rhode Island Senate, a chamber now facing the prospect of generational change. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF politics column posting around 4:00 this afternoon on X, Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, and at thepublicsradio.org/TGIF.
That’s it for our show. Political Roundtable is a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer is James Baumgartner. Our editor is Alex Nunes. I’m Ian Donnis, and I’ll see you on the radio.
