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5/6/2025
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House approves bill to encourage affordable housing development
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STATE HOUSE – The House today approved legislation sponsored by Rep. June S. Speakman, chairwoman of the House Commission on Housing Affordability, to make various improvements to Rhode Island’s Low and Moderate Income Housing Act to encourage the construction of homes Rhode Islanders can afford.
The bill is part of the 12-bill housing package backed this year by House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi (D-Dist. 23, Warwick), who has made housing the top priority of the House and has worked to enact such a package each of the five years he has been speaker.
The legislation (2025-H 5801A) builds upon changes made to the Low and Moderate Income Housing Act through another bill Representative Speakman (D-Dist. 68, Warren, Bristol) sponsored in 2022 (2022-H 7949Aaa). This year’s bill incorporates feedback from housing advocates, developers and municipal leaders to further clarify standards and findings required for development and remove subjectivity in the process to encourage the equitable, sustainable development of the affordable housing Rhode Islanders need.
The bill encourages municipal planning boards to consider the community’s need for affordable housing when it reviews projects. The bill recognizes that adding to the state’s low- and moderate-income housing inventory must be a sustained effort by all municipalities and is critical to achieving the state’s housing goals.
“It’s important to remember that, even as it remains unmet in most communities, the 10 percent affordable housing standard set in the Low and Moderate Income Housing Act is intended as a minimum, not the end goal. We have a serious housing crisis; we need many more homes that ordinary, working Rhode Islanders can actually afford, and we are always going to need them. Our laws must encourage every community to work diligently toward their creation,” said Representative Speakman.
The bill makes numerous technical changes and reinstates as an optional step a master plan review as a first step a developer could take in the process of filing a comprehensive permit, so that they can design a development that is more likely to integrate feedback from the community. It also removes wetland buffers from the density calculation of developments proposed under the act, since they are not part of the calculation for conventional developments.
The legislation now goes to the Senate.
For more information, contact:
Meredyth R. Whitty, Publicist
State House Room 20
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 222-1923
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