Brenda Clement, executive director of the Statewide Housing Action Coalition, discussed the future of affordable housing in Rhode Island with 25 students in Smith-Buonanno Hall Wednesday night.
Sponsored by the Roosevelt Institution, the forum allowed students to share opinions and ask questions about local and national affordable housing efforts in a casual atmosphere. The Statewide Housing Action Coalition is a non-profit organization that advocates for and organizes affordable housing in Rhode Island.
Recently released statistics detail a state debt of over $400 million, and the statewide cost of living has inflated six times faster than income, Clement said. Those numbers have made more people concerned about the state of affordable housing in Rhode Island, she said.
"The problem in Rhode Island is that the fastest growing jobs are all service-based jobs, retail jobs and low-wage jobs, and those jobs do not pay enough rent for a family to support themselves," Clement said.
Building an affordable housing unit costs about $200,000, which an average of seven or more sources generally fund, including the state and federal governments and private non-profit organizations, Clement said. "Rhode Island land costs are so high because Rhode Island has a finite amount of land," she said.
The mismanagement of the state budget impedes funding of affordable housing, she said. "Rhode Island does things very wrong in its budget," she said. Clement emphasized that "this year is going to be horrible - worse than ever before" for the homeless and the subsidized housing campaign because of the state's debt.
One student questioned how the Statewide Housing Action Coalition rates quality versus quantity of housing with its limited budget. "Some of them are easy choices - you have to meet fire codes and building codes, and those you don't have a choice on," Clement said. "We're trying to build units that families are going to be able to maintain and afford over the long haul, either through rentals or home ownership," she said. "So we want to make sure that they're good, solid (homes)."
The affordable-housing debate is relevant to students because many high-end condominiums downtown are expensive, Clement said.
"It's a particularly large discussion in Providence because none of the housing being built in Providence is affordable," she said. "It's also critical for students. My guess is that when you come out of college you're not necessarily going to be earning $75,000 right away and you're going to need to be earning that to buy or rent (a home) downtown right now."
Clement also asked the audience, "What's the first thing you think of when you think of affordable housing?" Answers included "dilapidated buildings," "project housing" and "housing put in not-so-nice neighborhoods."
"It (normally) looks like we're setting up families for immediate failure," Clement said. "But we're trying to get away from that image by building affordable houses that fit into their neighborhoods." Clement passed around images of affordable homes in more affluent towns such as East Greenwich and Barrington that defied such notions.
