There's No Place Like It

A Look at Rhode Island's Crisis in Affordable Housing

BY SARAH GOLDSTEIN

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"SAVERS," THE EAST PROVIDENCE secondhand outlet, "and thrift store chic is not a choice for all of us," says Joyce Terry, eying a group of particularly fashionable, vintage-clad girls with belt buckles the size of hamburgers. It is newly spring on Thayer Street and kids emerge like bears out of hibernation donning the purchases they've been storing all winter long. Dusted cowboy boots, multi-colored stockings, cut up shirts showing signs of freshly tanned skin, and sunglasses, sunglasses, sunglasses. Just over five-foot-three, Joyce peers over racks of winter clearance clothing. Sales between seasons is her favorite season of the year.

Joyce is wearing a purple sweater and a decorative pin with an image of three houses and a car on it. The pin, she explains, is from the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. It is what the organization calls a "house pin," which it sells to raise money and awareness about the affordable housing crisis in Rhode Island. But for Joyce the pin is more than an emblem of political sensitivity. Joyce herself is homeless, and she relies on groups like the Coalition and People to End Homelessness to advocate for her and the 6,400 others in her position around Rhode Island. A 53-year-old single mother, Joyce became homeless as the result of a nasty divorce. "I am a battered woman," she says matter-of-factly, which, according to a recent report sponsored by the state Department of Human Services (DHS), the Rhode Island Community Development Block Grant Program, and the United Way of Rhode Island, is the third-leading cause of homelessness in Rhode Island behind rocketing housing prices and lack of income.

For now Joyce sleeps at Beneficent Church in Providence, one of a number of faith-based shelters in Rhode Island that act as emergency shelters or "overflow houses" but during a particularly harsh winter have been serving as longer-term housing because of a lack of viable permanent options. At the shelter Joyce has to be up at 6 a.m. and out the door by 7."I can never be sure when I wake up in the morning if it's going to be a good day or a bad day in terms of my ability to breathe," she says. Because of medical-related problems including a severe bronchial condition, Joyce is unable to work a full-time job, and for the past 12 years has received Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI), which is funded by the federal government and designed to assist people who have medical or psychiatric disabilities. Despite her physical and financial handicaps she maintains that she leads a "remarkably normal life." With modern amenities like a cell phone and a PO box, she is an accessible, bill-paying resident of Rhode Island-all she needs now is a place to reside.

A Problem's Changing Face

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Joyce currently works as a volunteer for People to End Homelessness, a non-profit advocacy group working to combat a continuing city and statewide crisis in affordable housing. According to the DHS report, in a city that boasts of undergoing a renaissance, homelessness is at an all-time high for the third year in a row.

Additionally, Joyce, and thousands like her in Rhode Island, are an example of what Eric Hirsch, a professor of sociology at Providence College and author of the DHS report, says is "the changing face of homelessness." As illustrated in the DHS report, of the first-time homeless in Rhode Island last year nearly 20 percent were employed at the time they become homeless, 28 percent have received some amount of college education, and the number of families and children in shelters both increased 8 percent. This means that many low-income families and individuals are merely one or two crises away from homelessness, an existence that Joyce and others in homeless advocacy work refer to as living "on the bubble."

In a response to pressure from groups like People to End Homelessness, Governor Don Carcieri has recently allotted the necessary funds for Harrington Hall, an overflow house for men in Cranston, to remain open for another three months. The temporary shelter, which was threatening to close March 31, would have left more than 100 people without a place to go-though Harrington Hall has only 88 beds, upwards of 20 people slept on the floor this winter. More than thousands of people in Rhode Island rely on such emergency shelters for housing but seasonal closings of this kind are not unusual. In fact, it is a trend typical throughout the country that states will remove funding for housing with the onset of spring. George Gaffett, another volunteer for People to End Homelessness says, "they figure now it's warm enough for people to sleep on the street."

While this may seem cynical, statistics and recent legislature both on the state and national level indicate it is increasingly difficult to remain optimistic. According to the DHS report, rents for two-bedroom apartments in Rhode Island average more than $1,000, which would require an annual income of more than $41,000 to be affordable; the median household income of Rhode Island's renters, however, is just over $29,000 per year.

Additionally, President Bush is proposing severe cuts to the Section 8 Voucher program in the upcoming federal budget. Section 8 Vouchers are designed to subsidize low-income housing provided the tenant can find an apartment in suitable condition and a landlord willing to accept the voucher. With Rhode Island's housing crunch, the vouchers are already extremely hard to come by; Joyce waited on a list for five years before receiving a voucher that expired before she could find a landlord who would accept it.

Carcieri, however, continues to allocate $5 million to the Neighborhood Opportunities Program, a program that creates subsidized housing, each year, and will soon be starting an Office of Housing and Community Development-the first of its kind in Rhode Island. Until now, Rhode Island was the only state in the country that did not have some kind of department of housing. In a recent press release the Governor said that the new Office of Housing "will bring together housing programs that are currently dispersed throughout state government and put them under one roof."

Moving On Up

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In an interview with the Independent, Mayor David N. Cicilline explained that the housing crisis is in part a consequence of the city's turnaround. "As Providence becomes one of the great American cities and it becomes more desirable for people to be in Providence that drives the price of housing up," he says. Gentrification is a trend as old as urban America itself. As developers move in and housing prices move up, moderate to low-income residents are forced out. But as the city gentrifies and real estate values in Providence continue to increase with zones like the Downtown Improvement District (DID) created to meet the desires of the city's most profitable residents and businesses, how can the city expand without leaving people like Joyce, quite literally, out in the cold?

Ward 1 Councilman David Segal, Ward 9 Councilman Miguel Luna, and Ward 10 Councilman Luis Aponte are currently working to get the city to adopt an "inclusionary zoning" ordinance, which, although still in its planning stage, would ideally require all developments of more than ten units to include housing which is affordable to low-income Providence residents.

"In return for producing and maintaining affordable units, the city would provide certain offsets such as fee waivers, or increased height or density, or other design flexibility," says Segal, bonuses that would not otherwise be possible under normal zoning regulations. Segal and Luna succeeded in introducing a similar program in 2003, known as the Housing Trust Fund. The fund was designed as a way to create stipulations for high-end developers moving into Olneyville, one of Providence's lowest-income neighborhoods. Essentially the fund is an attempt to mitigate high rents and increasing property taxes by requiring developers to make an investment in affordable housing.

In light of statistics like those of the DHS report, Mayor Cicilline insists that the city has done "comprehensive and aggressive work" to combat the housing crisis. He points to the recent, highly publicized lead abatement programs, the low-interest loans for first-time homebuyers, and an emergency home loan repair program. Various community development organizations such as the Elmwood Foundation and SWAP (Stop Wasting Abandoned Property) are non-governmental Community Development Corporations (CDCs) that work to renovate abandoned properties and turn them into low-income housing. These organizations get their money from various sources, including the city, which allocated $800,000 last year from the Community Development Block Grant program-a federal program that the Mayor applauds as "the heart and soul of community development."

A recent move by Cicilline that has raised eyebrows is his recommendation to follow through with a $100,000 grant to refurbish the Providence Performing Arts Centers doors. The money to refurbish the doors would come from the same program that allocates funds for CDCs that create affordable housing like the Elmwood Foundation. Ward 12 Councilman Terrence Hassett says, "I don't think I can offer a fair justification to my constituents-we can support the arts in other ways." Though allocations were made before Mayor Cicilline was in office, he has decided to continue the funding as part of a multi-year commitment to places like PPAC and other arts and entertainment venues. He believes it is a more complicated issue than simply funding doors: "It's important to really think globally about the impact of places like Trinity, and PPAC, and AS220, and Black Rep. They are part of the important economic engine of Providence and so you know you could pick out a door or a particular project and say 'I don't know how it's connected' but it's connected to a bigger set of goals."

Whether or not the City ultimately funds the doors, one thing is certain: no homeless people will be allowed to sleep in the PPAC's doorway, refurbished or not. Legislation like the "failure to move" ordinance makes it against the law not to move if a police officer requests you do so, particularly if you are sleeping on private property. Providence College professor Eric Hirsch questions the constitutionality of this kind of ordinance which he believes would be hard stand up in court, and Duff Morton, another volunteer at People to End Homelessness says that this kind of legislation is an example of the public not wanting to see poor people-"you know, people don't want to see Herbert-with-ten-bags sitting on a park bench."

A winter of record-breaking cold did not allow much choice of where to sleep as even the overflow houses were overflowing and thousands scrambled for protection against the wind and snow. George Gaffett says never before have so many people sought shelter and never before has it been this bad.

At the top of the Coalition's agenda is advocating for things like the inclusionary zoning ordinance and more money from the Governor for the Neighborhood Opportunities Program, which has not asked for an increase in funds since it began three years ago. And though still without a home, Joyce Terry continues her daily rounds of what she calls "trench social work-the purest kind" talking to anyone who comes by the office with questions, visiting shelters and soup kitchens to check conditions, and helping a regular contingent of folks that rely on her as a source of knowledge for how and where to get help.

Sarah Goldstein B'05 has a belt buckle the size of PPAC's doors.

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