Miguel Youngs, the former deputy director of policy for the Providence City Council, is now running for Ward 1 council member.
In the midst of his race challenging incumbent John Goncalves ’13 MA’15 to represent neighborhoods from Fox Point to downtown, Youngs sat down with The Herald to discuss his prior experiences and visions for a possible council term.
Goncalves was not responsive to The Herald’s emails, calls or texts requesting an interview.
Young, who was born and raised in Rhode Island, paid for his tuition at Rhode Island College by working as a cook at McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, he told The Herald.
Following his graduation in 2015, Youngs did custodial work at the Providence Performing Arts Center, while also working at Trinity Repertory Company and Rhode Island Historical Society.
“I would go in the morning and reshelve books, check people in, operate the microfilm for them. And while I had that job, I read a lot of the books,” Youngs said. “My mother is a local historian, so I already always had a sense of local history. But that is where I learned a lot about the history of the neighborhood we’re in now.”
As the deputy director of policy for the City Council, Youngs researched and created reports for the council members, as well as penning several ordinances.
After deciding to run for a council seat, Youngs called each of the current 15 members to alert them of his plans. He has also quit his policy position.
“If I’m gonna run for the city council, I don’t want to work for them,” he said. “Almost like a moral thing, right? I want to do it correctly.”
Eight members of the City Council — a majority of the 15-person group — have endorsed Youngs in his run against Goncalves. Youngs has also received endorsements from organizations including the Rhode Island Working Families Party and the Providence Teachers Union.
Rent stabilization and public education
During his interview with The Herald, Youngs highlighted several legislative priorities that he hopes to pursue during a possible council term. Of these include one of the biggest debates for Providence voters: the question of housing affordability.
In 2025, the City Council’s Housing Crisis Task Force found that almost half of renters and over a third of homeowners are spending beyond their means on housing. Rents have skyrocketed in recent years across the city.
“To be able to live in the neighborhood you grew up in is a privilege I would like anyone in Providence to be able to experience. But the unfortunate reality is it is so rare and so difficult,” Youngs said. “So many people have been priced out.”
Youngs says he’s lived in eight different apartments across the city.
“I don’t think it should be this way, but the nicest apartment I’ve ever had in Providence was my first one. Every apartment since then has gotten more expensive and worse,” he added. “I feel like it should be the opposite.”
In the spring, the City Council approved a rent stabilization ordinance that would have enacted an annual 4% cap on rent increases. But it ultimately failed to pass when Smiley — a staunch opponent of rent stabilization — vetoed it.
Notably, the incumbent Goncalves had previously refrained from taking a stance on the ordinance, and eventually voted against it.
“It’s a big policy. There’s a lot of ins and outs,” Youngs said. “If I were to be elected, I’d be very interested in reintroducing it, and getting back into the nitty gritty and the details.”
He added that there are a number of policy methods — including zoning laws and tax breaks — that he would hope to employ in order to increase the supply of affordable housing in Providence.
“I’ve spoken with a lot of landlords, a lot of developers and a lot of tenants,” he said. “And if I’m elected, I would continue talking to all those groups. I wouldn’t shun any of them.”
Youngs also pointed to housing as an important factor in the education of Providence students. Housing instability is “having a very meaningful, measurable impact on student outcomes as well,” he said.
He recalled how during his time working for the City Council, the Providence Public School District had called for more funding for school bussing due to an increase in student homelessness.
If elected to the Ward 1 seat, he hopes to expand school bus companies to a wider geographic region to pick up students who may have been displaced from their homes.
Urban planning and improving infrastructure
When considering the construction of new housing, Youngs noted an important limitation: “We don’t have a lot of space, so we have to be able to build housing in a way that we don’t therefore create (a need for) cars,” he said.
“The more people we have using multimodal forms of transportation — whether it be the bus, bikes, scooters, other ways of getting around — it takes pressure off of our infrastructure to accommodate cars,” he said.
Youngs explained that while he is an avid biker, he has struggled with gaps in bike lanes across the city. As a city council member, he aims to finish connecting those lanes.
“I think that we have become somewhat complacent in accepting the way our city is designed,” he said. But it doesn’t have to be this way, according to Young. He pointed to the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier as an example of “meaningful public infrastructure built in the face of climate catastrophe.”
Youngs says he has a humble view of the role of a local politician — equating it to the “servant-like” janitorial work he did in his 20s.
“When you walk into the theater … you don’t expect there to be spills everywhere,” he said. “You expect the toilets to be clean, and that is a perfectly rational and reasonable expectation for a patron. If I was doing my job, that was just the expectation.”
“As a counselor, that is the attitude and value system that I would bring to being a public servant — which I think is a word we don’t use enough,” he added. “Constituent service is a lot like customer service, in one sense.”
Youngs will face Goncalves in the Democratic primary for the Ward 1 seat on Sept. 9. With the lack of a Republican candidate, the winner of Wednesday’s election will very likely be elected to the council member position.
Michelle Bi is a metro editor covering City Hall & Crime and State Politics & Justice. She is a junior from Oak Park, CA and studies English and IAPA. In her free time, you can find her playing guitar, the LA Times crossword or one of her 115 Spotify playlists.
