On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- RI becomes a Wall Street Journal poster child for Democrats’ need for bailouts and big budgets
- Arlene Violet’s plea to stay in public eye
- McKee’s search for people to blame
- Rhode Island government- the newest real estate developer
- Who’s out and who’s in? An update on the CD1 race.
- McKee and Silva: the disastrous duo
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Talk about housing has been all the rage in Rhode Island over the past year. Unfortunately (and tellingly), it doesn’t seem to be a policy area in which activists, politicians, and journalists believe data ought to be front and center. Sure, we get numbers about the effects of the problem — housing costs $X; Y number of people are homeless; it takes a middle-income family Z number of months of income to cover their housing — but nobody seems inclined to use data to understand why those conditions hold.
Folks do seem pretty confident, however, that a big part of the problem is local zoning and a reluctance to accept multi-family housing in every corner of the state. Progressive activist and politician Cynthia Mendes made an April Fools joke about Rhode Island “remov[ing] the zoning ban on multi-family homes” to “swiftly eliminate the classist practice of single family only exclusionary zoning!”
While not as extreme, Democrat Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi recently unveiled a package of bills with the following explanation:
“We are experiencing a housing crisis in Rhode Island, and it is a homelessness crisis as well – our state simply does not have enough housing, and the folks at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum are feeling the brunt of it,” Democrat Shekarchi said at a State House news conference to unveil the legislation.
While such legislation tends to require a degree of parsing I haven’t done, two of the provisions would give all homeowners the right to add “accessory apartments,” whether under the roof or separate from the main house, by right, without zoning permission. This seems like a de facto ban on truly single-family housing zoning. In any event, the implication is clearly that the state needs more density and apartments. The legislature is fighting, in the words of Providence Journal reporter Patrick Anderson, “the dark arts used by housing-averse municipalities.”
But here’s an interesting fact I haven’t seen anybody note in the Ocean State: According to data from the U.S. Census, Rhode Island has the third-smallest percentage of housing that is single family, after New York and Massachusetts. Only 60% of Rhode Islanders report living in such homes — making ours one of only nine states for which that number is lower than 70%. Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts are all known for high housing prices, which goes pretty far toward ruling out single-family housing as the key culprit. In fact, matching the U.S. News ranking of “The 10 States With the Most Affordable Housing” produces no observable correlation with their single-family ranks.
Iowa is #1 in affordability, but #20 in single-family home percentage. West Virginia is #8 in affordability and has the highest percentage of single-family homes. Affordable state #2 is Ohio, which is 29th for single-family homes. (None of the ten most-affordable states rank lower than Ohio for single-family homes.)
One might do better to look at the percentage of land owned by government, although it is clearly not sufficiently explanatory. Among the top 10 states for affordability, the percentage of land that isn’t privately owned averages less than 10%. Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island average over 15%.
To the extent there’s correlation here, however, I’d suggest its probably related to some other factor. States that are doing whatever it is that produces unaffordable housing also tend to take more land off the housing market for government purposes and suppress single-family homes, for that matter. What that something is, I don’t specifically know, but Rhode Islanders should remember that there are two ways to make things affordable: lower the price of those things or ensure enough opportunity that people can earn the money to afford them. Rhode Island should focus on the latter.
Featured image by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash.
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Guest: Jessica Drew-Day, Jessica@jessicaDrewDay.com
Host: Darlene D’Arezzo
Description: Jessica Drew-Day shares with us how she learned to begin to exercise her political citizenship. The process she engaged in helped her learn more about how Rhode Island state government works and her journey empowered her to become a candidate for the RI House of Representatives. She shares the process she went through and the things she learned in a step by step manner. Her message is simple and assuring: try it; you can do it too!
On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- Rhode Island FC’s search for a new stadium, as Pawtucket Stadium is yet to be built
- Borrowing (instead of raising) money for the Superman building
- Quattrocchi and Kislak’s pedophilia debacle
- What Powers has to watch as the new RIGOP chairman
- How RI government represents the underpass homeless
- Who’s out and who’s in? An update on the CD1 race.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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It’s interesting to watch these partisan ideologues bash the newspaper that contributed so much to their careers. One wonders whether they’ve ever considered whether their work-product and the journalistic culture they’ve perpetuated has contributed to the paper’s plight:
Now that it is no-longer-proposed, we are free to look at Fane Tower renderings in detail, beyond the gut reaction that it is odd and would be misplaced in Providence. Structurally, the building would have been akin to a tree trunk that began to split near the ground. The strength comes from the middle, providing the support for the flaring ends. Rhode Islanders should contemplate the visual metaphor.
Years ago, I came to the conclusion that the problem with U.S. politics and governance is not that it’s too conservative or too progressive, but that our system was no longer extracting the best from each impulse. A contingent that insists that we keep moving is valuable, and a contingent that insists on slowing down so as to preserve what is important is also valuable. As we become more divided, culturally, we’re losing the central support to make these tendencies better together than separate.
Rhode Island’s peculiar trait appears to be marrying this division within the same movements and individuals. We have progressives who don’t want anything to change — at least anything that’s important to their day-to-day lives. They’ll champion the continuing cultural revolution in which they can partake only as a matter of fashion, but when it comes down to it, they want the capital’s skyline to remain locked in time. They want jobs for workers and housing for low-income families, but they don’t want anything that is distinctly a business change their view as they drive home.
On the level of special interests, the situation is arguably worse. We’ve got the NIMBYs, to be sure, who insist that things should change but “not in my back yard,” but we’ve also got the radical progressives whose demand is that all changes serve their narrow ideology. On the other hand, the state has no business interests to speak of to offset these groups, all of them having been absorbed by the fundamentally corrupt government-insider gang whose interest is not business or development per se, but only that they be able to take a cut of whatever does happen to happen.
In a culturally homogenous society, the culture could provide the ballast to keep these factions from tipping the boat. In a diverse state, the political system could play a similar role by making it in politicians’ interest to triangulate. When the self-serving interests of those politicians represent the only “conservative” impulse, however — that is, the only restraint on radical change is that they must be able to profit from it — the system falls apart.
With the Fane Tower project killed off, the Pawtucket soccer stadium on the ropes, and the Superman Building project groaning under its own weight, we may be seeing the tipping collapse of the edifice that allowed insiders to pretend things were fine as the federal government kept money flowing after the real estate bubble popped and then COVID saved the state government’s fiscal neck. As the illusion crumbles, Rhode Islanders need to find our center, and we can only hope its foundation is still intact.
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Guests: Jim Palmisciano and Sarah R, Forward Party members, https://www.forwardparty.com.rhode_island
Host: John Carlevale
Description: From time to time a third party movement emerges at the national and/or state level. The reasons for this are discussed. The National Forward Party asserts that it “is fighting for the American people with practical, common-sense solutions. While other political parties look to divide America into different camps, the Forward Party aims to bring them together.” It further describes itself as “not left, not right, FORWARD.” Guests describe their local RI focus: Rank Choice Voting; redistricting; ballot access; bringing people together to work on common solutions; and more.
On WNRI 1380 AM/95.1 FM, John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss:
- The Speaker’s revealing exit from the CD1 race
- Magaziner’s puppet show for coffeehouse unionization (as the puppet)
- Bureaucrats’ vulnerability to non-credible businesses
- McKee’s reckless spending on government raises
- Neronha’s flip-flop between partisan and responsible lawman
- Laffey’s curious presidential run
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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Guest: Ellen Schroeder, PhD, URI
Guest Host: Susan Orban, Washington County Coalition for Children
Description: The Greatest 8 project is geared to helping parents to help their young children develop mental wellness skills at an early age. This is a skill set that is functional throughout the life cycle. The eight skills are foundational and are a valuable guide in helping parents, teachers and others who care for and work with children to help them promote mental health in children for life. Visit www.thegreatest8.org for more information.
And we definitely should not understand the alternative to be aggression and disregard of others’ humanity. Still, we have to recognize that it will not stop with the cause of the day. Just as it did not stop with same-sex marriage, it will not stop with the trans demands. Similarly, it did not stop when America proved it would put a black man in the White House (why wouldn’t we?), but instead, the racial activists upped their demands and sowed greater division.
On this or that issue, there may be good reasons to accept particular policies, but we have to recognize that it will not stop there, and we’ve very nearly given up our senses of both reality and identity as a nation — which was a shared sense that strove for freedom, no matter what the radicals say.
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