The Valley Breeze, March 26th, 2019, Some call for affordable housing near train station
Some in the city are advocating for a requirement that any development within the new 150-acre Conant Thread District surrounding a coming commuter rail station include at least 10 percent of the project as affordable housing.
Gentrification, or the forcing out of lower-income residents due to redevelopment, has been high on the radar for both Kallman and Rudd, he said. He “didn’t want to put the kibosh” on their proposal entirely, but said if the 10 percent mandate comes to the floor as is, and not separated out from the rest of the zoning standards for the district, “there will very likely be an amendment made on the floor to strip that out.”
Rudd also emphasized that the 10 percent threshold is conservative compared to other cities, and is “a fair compromise.”
“The percentage is important to the current residents of the community to not only keep intact the cultural significance that exists, but will also ensure residents will not be priced out and displaced, causing the gentrification of that neighborhood,” he said. “Developers still stand to make an astronomical amount of money even with a 10 percent affordable minimum. This has taken place elsewhere and has not deterred development.”
Rudd said he feels there is a misconception on what affordable housing is.
“We are not talking subsidized or free housing. We are speaking working class otherwise known as housing affordable for the middle class,” he said. “These people work and contribute to the tax base. I think it’s important to define what affordable housing truly is because many do not know or deliberately define it incorrectly to scare residents.”
Kallman noted that a new report from the Economic Progress Institute found that half of Rhode Island renters pay more than one-third of their income on housing, “which is financially completely unsustainable. Particularly in a place like Pawtucket where there are so many tenements.”
She said she has a friend who put in something like nine offers on a house before she could find one in the city meeting her budget and to her specifications.
From 2000 to 2016, real median home prices increased by 29 percent, said Kallman, but young adult per capita real incomes increased only 1 percent.
“So the problem is obviously much larger than Pawtucket, but we’re going to have to figure out how to address it here, because it’s affecting us,” she said.
A new study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition identifies more than 1,000 neighborhoods in 935 cities and towns where gentrification occurred between 2000 and 2013, noted Kallman. In 230 of those neighborhoods, rapidly rising rents, property values and taxes forced more than 135,000 residents to move away.
