On Feb. 26, Rhode Island House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi announced a package of nine bills that aim to address the ongoing housing and homelessness crisis in Rhode Island through policies such as encampment protections and municipal building reuse. The package is the sixth annual housing package Shekarchi has introduced since he assumed his current position in 2021.
“As home prices and rents continue to rise, more Rhode Islanders are being priced out of the communities they call home, deepening our state’s housing crisis,” Melina Lodge, executive director of the Housing Network of Rhode Island, wrote in a statement sent to The Herald.
“There’s going to be more homelessness if people can’t afford to buy or rent,” said Emily Martineau, Shekarchi’s deputy director of communications. She added that homelessness “goes hand in hand with the increase in housing prices.”
Martineau said that the package of bills was designed to promote housing production. “Shekarchi’s belief is that when we’re dealing with a shortage of housing, the best way to address it is to create more,” she said.
The SAFE bill, one of the measures in the package, would help cities and towns in Rhode Island to quickly set up Supportive and Functional Emergency Units — a form of temporary housing — in response to extreme weather or other disasters.
“This winter, we had at least three Rhode Islanders freeze to death,” Martineau said. If “winter is coming and we need to find shelter for people, this (bill) would give municipalities the ability to do this quickly,” she added.
Another bill in the package, sponsored by Shekarchi, would update Rhode Island’s Homeless Bill of Rights to “ensure that unhoused individuals are given at least a 15-day notice before an encampment is disbanded,” Martineau said. She added that Rhode Island was the first state to create a homeless bill of rights in 2012.
As part of the package, State Representative June Speakman (D-Bristol, Warren) sponsored a bill that would change state building code requirements to allow housing units to be approved with only one staircase. The legislation, which she first proposed two years ago, would allow for the construction of buildings in smaller lots.
“The advantages of a building with a single stair as opposed to two stairways is that you have a lot more floor area available to build bigger apartments and corner apartments,” Speakman said, adding that a single-stair building provides “more housing options.”
Another bill in the package — also sponsored by Speakman — would create a commission to review Rhode Island’s Condominium Act if passed.
In the past two years, the number of Rhode Islanders who have contacted Speakman about problems with their condominiums “has grown and grown,” Speakman said. She said she has heard stories of people buying condominium units at affordable prices but struggling to afford rising condominium association membership fees. Existing laws that restrict the price at which owners can sell their units have also posed issues, she said.
“The condo laws that we have on the books in Rhode Island need a good, hard study and a good, hard reform,” Speakman said, “so that’s what the commission is going to do.”
Other bills in the package aim to reduce parking requirements in areas with high public transit access, limit tax rates for the construction of residential units that include a percentage of affordable housing options and support the redevelopment of vacant state-owned buildings into housing.
“This legislative package builds on prior efforts to reduce obstacles to residential development,” Lodge wrote. To her, it “represents meaningful progress toward increasing housing supply and affordability across Rhode Island.”
