PROVIDENCE, R.I. — As Congressional leaders negotiate over the size and scope of the Build Back Better Act, Homes RI, a multi-sector coalition of advocates, joins National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) in urging Congress to ensure that any final economic recovery package prioritizes housing investments targeted to serve America’s households who face the greatest, clearest needs. The Build Back Better Act must include investments in rental assistance, public housing, and the Housing Trust Fund at the historic levels approved by the House Financial Services Committee and drafted with the Senate Banking Committee.
“Rhode Island has been positioning itself for a serious housing inventory shortage for decades. Now, we find ourselves in a place where demand for housing outpaces the supply. Our shortfall of homes is in the tens of thousands,” said Housing Network of Rhode Island Executive Director Melina Lodge. “This infrastructure bill offers a once in a lifetime opportunity to Rhode Island’s leaders to invest in and support the production of thousands of new homes, provide funds to preserve and maintain our aging housing stock, and to improve access and housing stability to the most vulnerable Rhode Islanders by investing in expanded rental subsidy programs.”
Rhode Island, like the rest of the nation, is in the grips of an affordable housing crisis, most severely impacting the lowest-income people, Black, Indigenous and people of color, people with disabilities, and other historically excluded groups. Nationally, there is a shortage of 7 million homes affordable and available to the lowest-income renters, in Rhode Island, that number is nearly 22,000. There are proven solutions that can address the affordability crisis, but current funding levels from Congress leave three out of four eligible households receiving no assistance at all. This shredded social safety net contributed to increased homelessness and an impending eviction tsunami during a global health emergency.
“Every week the statewide Coordinated Entry System receives over a thousand calls from Rhode Islanders in desperate need of shelter. We try to help them as best we can, but there is virtually nowhere for our neighbors and their families to go,” said Kristina Contreras Fox, Senior Policy Analyst at RI Coalition to End Homelessness. “There are nearly 500 people living on the streets of our state, a number five times higher than our count pre-COVID, with winter on the way. Access to safe, secure, affordable housing is the only solution, and that’s what we need right now from Congress. Housing ends homelessness.”
Despite the clear and urgent need, only one in four households who qualify for housing assistance receive it due to decades of chronic underfunding by Congress. It is imperative that our leaders support investments that would ensure equitable access to housing for all Rhode Islanders, including those disproportionately impacted by the disaster of the pandemic and historic discrimination. Given that Rhode Island approved the fewest residential construction permits for new units than any other state last year, these investments are crucial to boost development to meet the housing needs of our residents.
Homes RI and NLIHC’s HoUSed campaign urge our Congressional leaders to enact historic investments in the country’s affordable housing infrastructure, including $90 billion to expand rental assistance to 1 million households, $80 billion to preserve public housing for more than 2.5 million residents, and $37 billion for the national Housing Trust Fund to build, preserve and rehabilitate 330,000 apartments affordable to the lowest-income people. Any spending cuts to the Build Back Better Act must not come at the expense of these proven solutions to America’s housing crisis.
“Year after year we see that affordability and safe, secure housing continues to elude Rhode Islanders,” said Brenda Clement, Director of HousingWorks RI at Roger Williams University. “In 2020, for the first time since HousingWorks RI started to measure affordability against the state’s median household income in the Housing Fact Book, there are no municipalities in Rhode Island where a household earning the state’s median income of $67,167 could affordably buy a home. Urgent housing needs across the state, and the continued barriers to the development of new homes, underscore a deep need for adequate funding to address the affordable housing crisis. The Build Back Better Act can be that bridge.”
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For more information about the HoUSed campaign, please visit www.nlihc.org/housed.
For our call to action detailing how to contact your congressional leaders, click here.
