New report shows Charlestown lags on affordable housing

Despite CCA propaganda, the need is severe

By Will Collette

Habitat for Humanity house in Charlestown
Partly funded by state affordable housing bond

One of the very first articles I wrote for Progressive Charlestown was on the hard numbers behind Charlestown’s affording housing crunch. Since then, the Progressive Charlestown team members have written often on the topic, while the Charlestown Citizens Alliance has pushed a misleading, if not downright false, perspective on the story. 

Here are some key facts: of Charlestown’s 3,318 year-round housing units, only 53 qualify as long-term affordable. Almost none of them are rental units.

In order to meet the minimum number required under Rhode Island law, we need to add 279 more units of long-term affordable housing, and most of them should be rentals.

Take a look at the new HousingWorksRI 2011 Fact Book for the hard, cold statistics and read on. 

Of course, we all love our rural environment and natural treasures. The CCA position has been that to meet the state’s mandate, we will need to destroy that rural environment and trash those natural treasures. They would have you believe that we will need to fill in Ninigret Pond so some unscrupulous developer can build some Stalinist-looking apartment blocks. Maybe just half of it.

Instead, the CCA wants the town to either (a) be exempted from state law, (b) be given credit for the drop in home prices, as if we are the only town suffering from that or (c) spend our Affordable Housing bond money to create affordable housing from abandoned or distressed properties. 

Before addressing those CCA fantasies, let’s look at the data.

Charlestown’s average home price has rebounded slightly from 2009, going from $288,000 to $350,000. Assuming buyers have the kind of credit history and down payment that even allows them to think they can get a mortgage, buyers will need an income of at least $95,490 to buy that average home.

Problem: the average annual income of Charlestown residents working in the private sector is $36,036.

So there is an almost 3:1 gap between the average Charlestown income and the income needed to buy the average Charlestown home. Assuming you can get a mortgage.

In 2009,  HousingWorksRI listed the average rent in Charlestown for a two-bedroom apartment as $1,170. For that rent to be considered affordable (i.e., 30% of your income), you would need an income of $46,800. HousingWorksRI doesn’t have any rental data for Charlestown for 2010. However, we know from the data that came out during Charlestown’s property reassessment that there are only six apartments in Charlestown and very few other types of rental properties. 

Our lack of affordable housing means that many town workers, police and firefighters can’t afford to live here. It means that the adult children of residents can’t afford to buy a home for their new families and stay here. It means that senior citizens who need to downsize can’t find the right type of housing to stay here.

The CCA’s argument that we should get credit for what we already have misses the point of the law. Market fluctuations may mean houses cost less to buy now, but that does not mean Charlestown has a stable bank of affordable housing. It just means housing is cheaper – but household incomes, job security, the value of savings and the availability of credit have also declined. As most people in the market for a home know, in many respects, it’s harder to find an affordable home because you can’t get financing.

And we can’t pretend we have rental units, affordable or not, when we simply don’t have them.

So should we go ahead and drain Ninigret Pond, bring in a bevy of sleazy developers and build those big apartment blocks? The CCA would have you believe that PC (and town Democrats) want that to happen. I would prefer you to believe the CCA cooks and eats kittens in their secret clubhouse. On those points, I guess we’ll both have to live with disappointment.

Recent positive steps to grant development funding to two non-profit developers for 100% affordable rental units (one in Shannock, one in Cross Mills) show the kind of affordable housing construction that makes sense for Charlestown. All five Town Council members voted yes to launch these two projects and even the Planning Commission hasn’t yet found a reason to sabotage the projects. I think that’s the smart and painless way to go.

The CCA proposes that we should reclaim abandoned, foreclosed or distressed properties. I’ve written in prior articles that re-purposing otherwise unused property is a terrific idea. But in Charlestown, we don’t have the housing stock. According to town statistics, HousingWorksRI and RealtyTrac.com, we only have between 9 and 20 bank-owned and distressed properties. There are NO properties currently owned by the town due to tax forfeiture. Just as we can't claim we have rental units that do not exist, we can’t pretend we have abandoned properties waiting for rehab that the numbers show we do not.

The HousingWorksRI report shows some tiny progress in Charlestown since their last report. In their last report, Charlestown only had 49 long-term affordable units; now we have 53. That drops the magic number for Charlestown to comply with state law from 283 to 279. At this rate, Charlestown will be in full compliance with state law in just under 70 years!