Class War in Charlestown: Affordable Housing and the CCA

A tent in Burlingame is NOT
affordable housing

During its six years of existence, the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) and its representatives on the Town Council and Planning Commission have generally voiced support for only three solutions to Charlestown’s failure to comply with the state’s affordable housing law. These are:

1. Defy the law and talk about trying to change it so Charlestown does not have to comply. This has been the town’s default position. Planning Commissar Ruth Platner has been a big proponent of this approach. Her term expires in 2012.
2. Send low-income people somewhere else. Planning Commissioner Linda Fabre has stated that she doesn’t understand why Charlestown can’t meet its mandate by giving people vouchers to move to Westerly. Her term expires in 2012, too.
3. Convert foreclosed properties into affordable housing. Former CCA President and present Town Council Vice-President Dan Slattery is a big fan of this approach. He will also be up for re-election in 2012.

Despite the CCA’s distaste for affordable housing, the controlling CCA bloc on the Town Council voted to earmark start-up money from the town’s $1 million affordable housing bond for two outstanding 100% affordable rental projects brought before the Council’s August 10 meeting,

This commendable action does not mean that Charlestown will actually allow those two projects to be built. In addition to the normal problems of securing financing and permits, the project developers must get past the Ruth Platner-led Planning Commission. Many a fine and worthy project has gone to its death at her hands.

One of the projects, called Churchwood, is rental units for low-income senior citizens. Ruth Platner HATES senior citizens’ housing. Her reason: seniors own cats. Cats kill birds. So if you love birds, don’t allow more senior citizens to live in Charlestown.

The other development, Shannock Cottages, is rental units for working families. Ruth Platner HATES housing for working families. Working families have children. Children are required to go to school. The income limits on the housing means the kids will go to Chariho, not private schools. Chariho costs Charlestown money.

So the morning line on the survival of these two projects is 8 to 1 against.

But what about the approaches the CCA favors?

Let’s take the idea of converting foreclosed properties into affordable housing. On its face, it sounds like a great idea – take otherwise wasted property and turn it to a good purpose.

State law requires that for housing units to qualify as affordable, they must have a deed restriction that the property will STAY affordable for 30 years and not be flipped back to market rate when the market rebounds (presuming it will at some point).

Maybe we can work with that, and the other state requirements, but we still have one insurmountable problem to this favored CCA solution: we don’t have the housing stock.

We need to add almost 300 mostly rental units to meet the minimum state mandate of having 10% of Charlestown’s housing be affordable.

Charlestown simply doesn't have many foreclosed properties

But according to Amy Rose Weinreich’s report to the Council on August 10, there have only been 10 foreclosures in Charlestown so far this year. Tax assessor records show only nine bank-owned foreclosed properties in town. RealtyTrac.com, the leading internet database for distressed properties, lists only 17 foreclosed properties in the 02813 zip code.

So we have somewhere between 9 and 17 foreclosed properties in total. We simply don’t have the housing stock to fulfill Dan Slattery’s fantasy.

But how about Linda Fabre’s idea about paying people to leave? Well, there are a few legal – mostly civil rights – problems to the voucher idea. But for those of you who follow the news outside of Charlestown, there may be an opportunity for our CCA government leaders to explore. Let’s buy Central Falls.

We have the 2006 voter-approved million-dollar affordable housing bond plus additional earmarked money. The two projects awarded $50,000 development grants on August 10^th probably won’t spend all the money since I’m giving 8-1 odds that the projects will be killed by the Planning Commission.

We might have just enough left to buy Central Falls. A merger with another, more solvent municipality is really the only way out for the troubled city. As much as it makes sense for Central Falls to merge with Pawtucket, Pawtucket isn’t too keen about the idea. Neither are Lincoln or Cumberland.

Welcome to North Charlestown!

But for Charlestown, it could be ideal. We could call it “North Charlestown.” Counting CF’s housing stock in with our own, we would easily meet the state affordable housing mandate and we would have a place to send senior citizens with cats, working families with children and anyone else who doesn’t fit into Linda Fabre’s or Ruth Platner’s vision of our rural paradise.

After hearing some Planning Commissioners crack jokes about less affluent up-state communities like Central Falls and West Warwick, I wonder if anyone in power here in Charlestown really cares what happens up there.

Central Falls is not open space, so acquiring it would be outside the norm for Charlestown. But given the improbability that Charlestown, under its current leadership, will ever undertake any constructive solutions to our community’s needs and the law’s mandates, this could be the best solution we can hope for.

Author: Will Collette