Housing Legislation News

Happy Monday!

We are reaching out to our community today with an important update on the ADU (accessory dwelling unit) legislation being considered in the House and Senate in Rhode Island.

Senate bill S2998 and House bill H7062 are scheduled to be considered tomorrow June 11 in Room 212 at the State House Tuesday.

The time will be dependent on when the Senate finishes their general agenda for the day which begins at 4pm, so it will likely be in the evening that this legislation gets discussed. You can email the House and Senate expressing your support until around noon tomorrow, or attend the meeting in person to speak in support.

Here is a link to the official Notice of Meeting for the Senate Committee on Housing & Municipal Government: https://status.rilegislature.gov/documents/agenda-20505.pdf

You will see on the agenda that they are considering a lengthy list of bills that could affect property owners and developers.

The meeting will be livestreamed here: https://capitoltvri.cablecast.tv

Here is a link to the actual text of the Senate ADU bill: http://webserver.rilegislature.gov/BillText/BillText24/SenateText24/S2998.pdf

We feel it is very strong in its current form, though we do feel there is one restriction they should amend and ease. As it is currently written, if the ADU is not intended for a family member, and is not going to be located in an existing primary or accessory attached or detached structure, and is going to be built new - then it will be restricted to lots with a total of 20,000 sq ft or more. We feel that this is an unnecessary restriction. We are able to build dozens of units on a fraction of a lot that size for our clients. A property owner should be able to build a reasonable quality unit on a smaller lot than 20,000 sq ft - provided it meets the parking requirement of 1 space per unit.

Please take 2 minutes to send a quick email in support of S2998 and H7062 to the legislators! Tell them to pass the bills! Read why below. 

You can email [email protected] a note of support, and include your name.

For support of the House bill, you can send the same email to [email protected] 

The House and Senate bills appear to be identical.

Here are some reasons we feel they should go ahead and pass these bills, feel free to include them in your email to the Senate and House:

1) According to the 2023 RI Annual Integrated Housing Report, more than a quarter of RI homeowner households are spending 30% or more of their pretax income on housing. Being allowed the freedom to earn additional income from unused available space on their property would go a long way to easing their burden. 

2) Boomers will need housing. Period. ADUs will allow them the option of either 1) moving into an ADU at a family members property and being able to live on the equity from selling their own home (we need people to sell more homes in order to have a healthy real estate market), 2) building an ADU at their own property to be able to rent out if income/expenses are the barrier to aging in place, 3) moving into their own ADU and renting their main house if they have no need for all the space and a new ADU could be built with specifications more suited for an older person. 

We should be allowing people to choose the living situation that is best for THEM and THEIR FAMILY. Not restricting them and forcing them to choose between struggling alone at home with health and safety risks, suffering an assisted living situation they didn’t want, burdening family who don’t truly have adequate space, or going homeless. Allow property owners to use their land and equity to reach the quality of life that should be attainable in America. 

3) The rental inventory is low and rents have risen sharply. We desperately need more housing units. Rents have increased over 25% while there have been essentially 0 new housing units added in RI over the past several years. It is no mystery the relationship between those two facts. The bottom line is that the net increase in supply has been less than 0.5% (2023 RI Annual Integrated Housing Report). Most people can’t afford land. Tapping into space that already exists and people own would go a long way to significantly and rapidly increasing the housing supply and slowing the rent appreciation statewide. 

RI needs statewide legislation that will force cities and towns to permit the creation of legal ADUs in a unified effort to create more housing units, stabilize the rental price appreciation, prepare for the near future influx of generational housing that will be needed, and allow struggling families to earn additional income and increase their equity while providing the crucial service of developing quality private housing. 

In the News

An article published today by GoLocalProv details how Rhode Island has been doing when it comes to unit development, focusing on Providence metro in specific.

https://www.golocalprov.com/business/Despite-Hundreds-of-Millions-Providence-Metro-Ranks-Among-the-Worst-in-Dev 

Let’s start solving the problem and support ADUs and unit production as many states have already done and seen positive results in both inventory and rental price stabilization.

We hope you found this update helpful and interesting and share it with anyone you think will find it useful. To reach us you can simply reply to this email with comments or questions, we’d love to hear from you!

Sincerely,

The David Sisson Architecture Team

www.ds-arch.com 

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