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6/3/2026
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Senate approves housing bills sponsored by Sen. Bissaillon
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STATE HOUSE – The Senate today approved two bills sponsored by Senate Housing and Municipal Government Committee Chairman Jacob E. Bissaillon to help create and preserve housing for Rhode Islanders.
The bills, which now go to the House, create a program to spur reuse of vacant buildings as housing and help protect families from losing homes.
“Our state’s housing crisis is an ‘all hands on deck’ situation. It’s a multifaceted problem that demands a multidimensional response. We need to build much more new housing, but we also need to be able to repurpose the many large, vacant buildings in our state into housing. We need to help people hang onto the homes they have. We need to be creative and bold and consider all the possibilities that will help us get to the place we need to be, where every Rhode Islander can afford the safe, comfortable home they need,” said Chairman Bissaillon (D-Dist. 1, Providence).
The first bill (2026-S 3159A), the Residential Reuse Incentive Act, creates a new program administered by the R.I. Commerce Corporation to help convert vacant buildings such as office buildings, former nursing homes or schools into multi-family residential or mixed-use development. The program, which is similar to programs created in New York and Massachusetts, would provide gap financing, remove zoning barriers to converting the property’s use, require affordable units to constitute a minimum of 20% of participating developments and set labor standards.
The bill requires annual reports on the program’s activities and economic impacts. The program would sunset Dec. 31, 2035, unless renewed by the General Assembly.
The bill is supported by Neighbors Welcome! Rhode Island, United Way Rhode Island, BuildRI, Rhode Island AFL-CIO and Sojourner House. Its House companion (2026-H 8142) is sponsored by Rep. June S. Speakman (D-Dist. 68, Warren, Bristol), chairwoman of the Housing Affordability Commission in the House.
The second bill would protect Rhode Island families from unfairly losing ownership of property they inherit.
The Uniform Partition of Heirs’ Property Act (2026-S 2394) addresses a situation that commonly occurs when a property is inherited by multiple heirs without a formal estate plan. In such situations, any of the individual “tenants in common” can force a partition sale, and some real estate speculators take advantage of that law by acquiring small shares of such properties, filing a partition action and then acquiring the whole property at less than market value, taking the home and depleting the family’s inherited wealth.
The legislation establishes basic due process protections during partition actions, including notice standards, a requirement for an independent appraisal, a right of first refusal for cotenants, and a legal process that must be followed if no cotenants exercise that right and the property is to be sold. The bill stipulates that such sales must take place on the open market and at a commercially reasonable price, not by sealed bids or auction unless a court finds it would be in the best interest of the cotenants to do otherwise.
The House has passed the bill’s companion legislation (2026-H 7210), sponsored by Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee (D-Dist. 33, South Kingstown, Narragansett).
For more information, contact:
Meredyth R. Whitty, Publicist
State House Room 20
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 222-1923
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