 Thank you so much and thank you for joining us here at Housing Works Co at Roger Williams University at the beautiful downtown Providence campus and we appreciate you very much coming today and here today we'll give you a little sneak peek of some of the facts and information in the fact book and I know a number of you are joining us at lunch as well too. We'll hear from Dan McHugh from the Joint Center on Housing and Dan's joining us this morning as well too. Dan please wave and thank you and you'll hear more from Dan at lunch if you're coming to that as well too. I know some of you are not coming to lunch and so as you leave in the back of the room we'll give you your copy of your back book so please make sure you stop by and pick that up and we have copies of some of our other more recent reports too from our scholar series on student homelessness and gentrification issues so those are also in the back of the room for you to grab. A couple of things too I also in the back of the room if you haven't yet visited we have our colleagues from the US Census here as you know we'll be doing the census next year really really critical in Renn Island for us to get a complete and accurate count. Many of the programs that we rely on from the federal government are based on population and formulas and if we lose a in congressional seats and if we lose a congressional seat that will be a huge impact in Renn Island on key programs like CDBG and home and other things basic tools that we use to build and develop housing in addition to a wide array of programs and I know our colleagues at the Census have some information and data for you to share so please if you're here representing organizations please bring that information back to your organizations try to host and hold as many public awareness events and engagement events that you can in your organizations post things in our housing developments we really need all hands on deck to make sure that we get an accurate count so thank you for being with us today we appreciate it. A big big thanks from me to our great housing works team we have Annette who you'll hear from in a few minutes who's backbook mother and has really been working very hard through most of the year really it's a year-round project but particularly the last couple of months pulling the details together. Amy Kull I don't see yet but Amy is our events and communications person and has been doing a wonderful job as she always does pulling all of the details together. We have Carinella Grant who joined us most recently not recently anymore I can't stop saying that but in March working on our healthy homes work and Christina Brown our policy analyst and I'll see Chris but I think she's still greeting people at the door but Chris has done a number of things including recently helping to author the student homelessness report that I mentioned so we have a great team and you'll hear more about the work throughout the day so we'll start with Annette who will give us a quick overview of the fact book and then I'll call our panelists up to for their comments and their thoughts so turn it over to you Annette. Annette Brown Thank you. Good morning. Can everybody hear me? Okay great thank you. So thank you very much for joining us today Brenda thanks for kicking us off as Brenda mentioned my name is Annette Warren I'm the Research and Policy Director here at Housing Works. I'd like to start by offering thanks to many who make this book possible. Brenda first who always supports my ideas and offers helpful and expert critiques of how to get where I want to go and even applause my detours sometimes. My Housing Works colleagues who likely hear too much from me over the number of months but intensifying in those last weeks and others who have joined our research family over the last couple of years. Dr. Par Belstadt is here with us UNH I don't see our summer intern Jeremy Berman but Jeremy did a huge lift on this year's back book as we delved into comprehensive plans. I'd also like to thank our Bonner Community Fellows one of whom will be at our lunch they only started a few short weeks ago but some of our website has already been updated our town and city pages due to their work. Also our colleagues at Grossmart who can't be here today they moved out of our building down the street who provided some advice regarding our trans our approach to transportation and then at the local level the staff at ripped up have offered some guidance and help with this book as well as planners and zoning officials across the state who we called upon to get locally reported data regarding building permits or to get some clarification as we looked at the comprehensive plans and zoning ordinances in particular the city of Providence's inspections and standard staff who worked very much for a while to get me Providence's 2018 building permits. It's not as easy as you think and last but not least our advisory board as well as our sponsors. This year's housing works housing fact book really attempts to untangle the myriad aspects of what it creates what creates housing affordability and how we can provide more of it. I hope it comes to be thought of as a user guide to housing affordability for advocates who may not be aware of the infrastructure and planning and zoning issues as well as for our leaders in state and municipalities who may need more information regarding the crisis of housing affordability that thousands of Rhode Islanders face every day. So why are we here? We are here because opportunity for well-being starts at home whether you are older and one of the 16% of our population who's over 65 or younger 20% of our Rhode Island population under 18 and still enjoy jumping on beds. We know that housing affects educational outcomes a little under 20% of Rhode Islanders have bachelor's degrees. We know it affects our health outcomes with millions of dollars that come into our state for safe water, lead, asthma, all sorts of housing conditions that are related to our public health issues and our economy both our macro economy and jobs as well as our micro economy and whether or not people can succeed based on how much or little they get to spend on their housing. Ultimately when I've come to understand and I've learned at a conference a number of years ago and I've always wanted to use this quote so I apologize it doesn't seem germane to me it's germane but this sums up what I see as a conundrum of civilization which is managing coexistence in a shared space. This is a Patsy Healy British urban planner who summed up planning in this way and really we have one planet, one municipality, one neighborhood and we have to all kind of live together in a way that is mutually agreeable. So how do we do this? Well we take a bunch of people whether they are residents, developers, business people, elected officials and they may want housing, real estate development, roads, bridges, public transportation and they go to a government source, might be federal, state, municipal and they either need funding or they need zoning to allow it and throughout these different operations there are many conflicting interests and missions to serve. So the results unfortunately are often like this where we are double knotted and really can't move ahead and certainly can't move ahead quickly. However there are many of us here in this room and throughout our state who actually work to make it this. This particular photo is of 60 King Street which was celebrated just last year, 60 new rental apartments from our friends at One Neighborhood Builders from an old knife factory. So this year our approach has really involved an intense amount of work and an earnest intention to report what we found. There's always room for improvement so I urge people to get back to me if they feel like something wasn't represented just right and how can we improve on that but the intention here is to start an earnest conversation. So our goal is to how to ensure our success more often than not and what we know is that across the United States, whoops, in many municipalities they are really thinking about housing in innovative ways. Not all of these are going to fit the Rhode Island landscape but in some cases the city of Minneapolis has eliminated single family zone. Many other municipalities are looking to create zoning that would allow for some of the new forms of homes that we know can cost-save some of the tinier homes, some of the ADU accessory dwelling units. We even have adult dorms now and the latest article that I downloaded are granny pods. So for those of you in that grandparent stage look out for that pod coming soon to your local neighborhood. Many of these are being done not just for affordability but also to overcome a long history of discrimination that has resulted in significant disparities that affect many life outcomes. Our state right now is in the process of doing a strategic plan on housing and on transportation. There is a nexus between these two that we attempt to look at in this book and we are really hoping to provide some grist for the mill in discussion across state agencies with private stakeholders across our municipalities and our neighborhoods. So this year's book we again look at state, regional and municipalities. The regions here are the same ones used by the Protecting Future Housing Needs report done in 2016. For the deeper dive of those in the room these are the US Census Bureau Public Use Microdata Areas or PUMAs for those of us who want to be cool. Most of them align with Rhode Island counties except for Providence County which actually breaks out into four regions and we're using these to look at systems that are not confined to a municipality like transportation. So in each section we have researched some new facts to add to the story of housing affordability. So starting with our statewide housing indicators updated this year for the first time since 2016 is an estimate of what was called decreased purchasing power in private in prior years but it's really representing a cost to our state our local economies and the well-being of each Rhode Islander. As you can see here we are estimating nearly three quarters of a billion dollars that is spent in overspending on housing that could be used in many other ways by the renters and homeowners in Rhode Island. Also new this year is a little project that involved looking up all of the federal programs that the National Center for Healthy Homes assigns as contributing to healthy homes. These funds come from a number of agencies and within multiple departments within those agencies. We're really pleased that the Rhode Island Alliance for Healthy Homes under Carinell's leadership is now a program at Housing Works and we hope to begin to connect the dots for better outcomes of Rhode Islanders within healthy homes. Our standard measure of affordability worsened again this year where there's even fewer municipalities where an income of 50,000 will afford to buy a home and only four at 70,000. We had an alarming increase of nearly 24% in the number of students reported as homeless. That is a different measure than what HUD considers homelessness and lastly our per capita contribution did spike this year to $21.90. However that is going to be a temporary bump as those bond funds are expended by the end of this year. So we look forward to a day where we actually have a permanent funding stream so we don't have to you know plan developments only within these bond funds. So since publishing the project projecting future housing needs we've continued to look at the regional data. I like I said I urge you to look at the website. I find it helpful to look at these systems across regions. I'm not from Rhode Island so I think in larger geographies and so I apologize if this is different for some people here but I go to South County a lot and people do talk about South County. They don't necessarily just say they come from one municipality or another. So we are looking at a cross-section of factors on these pages. Housing, transportation, jobs, health institutions, and education. In this year's book we I was inspired by the work that Chris Brown and I got to do in our class at Roger Williams under Professor Jeanette Williams with the Community Partnership Center and our colleagues at Grossmart where we took a look at potential transit-oriented districts, development districts. So each regional page also provides an estimate of affordability that uses the proprietary data we get from the Warren Group and this is Pair's specialty and we really come to the conclusion that in most of our regions a majority of current renters and homeowners could not like re-buy a house in that same region. If you look at this from a state level you're looking at 60% so if you were one of those people living in Cranston or Newport you probably couldn't buy there again at this moment. We also provide examples of the different kinds of long-term affordable homes across each region and one thing many of them have in common is the receipt of building homes Rhode Island funds. We also take a look at the TOD sites that are actually already in our state that are being built right now, Pawtucket Central Falls, Conant Thread District as well as the Warwick City Center and while it is not designated as a TOD all of downtown Providence is a naturally occurring TOD. Given its proximity of the Providence train station to Kennedy Plaza the mixed-use zoning that is allowing for high density development and the downtown transit connector which is currently under construction that will extend frequent transit access from Providence station to the hospital district. They've also zoned many other areas that are served by the R Line on Broad Street in North Main. Our biggest changes formatting-wise came to the municipal pages this year. I really urge you to look at the municipal overview page on page 33 before you dive into this section this year because there are things new that you need to understand how they came about. So the first section the top of the page are housing costs for single family and rents. We only have a five-year comparison now. We polled and that was okay for most people. Also there was a change to the methodology of Howard Island Housing collects those rents so only a five-year comparison was possible. Our affordability gap is now bigger in terms of being able to present the graphic larger for people to read what the difference is between what people have to pay in their local municipality versus what a regional income is as well as a new look at cost burdens which actually gives you a number of people who are considered cost burden. Now at the state level 148,000 seems a little high to get your head around but when you go down to the regional level those numbers are more digestible although they're still alarming because you basically learn that about a third of households across our state across our regions are housing cost burden. And then lastly and this is the big one we've added a section on housing and development conditions which looks a generalized overview of access to public water and sewer and I emphasize generalized overview especially for the planners in the region I'm not saying a percentage of households that are served by that infrastructure I'm trying to get people to start conversations so they can ask those deeper dive questions. We also looked at multi-family zoning by right of three units or more yes I read every single municipalities municipal zoning table and I'm still here to talk about it okay we also populated the 10 most common housing strategies from all 39 municipal comprehensive plans or in some cases where I had to talk to a planner directly because their comp plan was not available we also contacted all the municipalities directly about their building permits and some of the things and 14 actually either told me yes the census bureau numbers are right or they gave me locally reported data which unearthed things like accessory dwelling units or multi-families that were being created out of a reuse of another building which would not be reported in that building permit survey. By including the local data providence went from one unit which was reported on the building permit survey to 892 units of the other municipalities that reported those disparities were not as great so I'm not suggesting that there is like a thousand percent increase in all of these units across the state but in order to understand how we are creating units what kind of units we are creating it would be great to have this discussion statewide. Finally in looking at the long-term affordable homes created since the 2005 low and moderate income housing chart which I am all too familiar with we create a net gain which means we're not looking at group home beds which is a number that fluctuates it's also licensed beds they don't represent production. Sadly in some cases we also see a loss in some municipalities that is not for lack of effort by Rhode Island housing and our other partners it is sometimes because a landlord just does not see the value in extending that affordability. This round of BHRI is the first to offer preservation as a use which is great however it also now means less funding for the creation of new units. One note I want people to understand is the number of BHRI units reported is the number of units funded so they may not be yet showing up in that actual built number. We've pulled all of this together in an effort to create helpful realistic conversations about how to confront the barriers and build potential including through a hard look at whether these strategies are working and how they can be bolstered if not. We also have to have a discussion about funding for more infrastructure around our villages or upgrading in settings where there's urban and suburban areas to allow for more density. Built out is only a concept within the reality of current zoning. In concluding I would like to remind people we are part of the HomesRI coalition. Katie in the audience homesri.org please go visit the policy agenda we hope to move forward construction and preservation of affordable homes rental subsidies for low and very low income households supportive services for those in supportive housing and removal of legal administrative regulatory and economic barriers to the creation of quality homes. With that I think I'm on time. Thank you. Thank you so much Janette and thank you especially for all of your hard work getting us to this point so and more to come sorry to tell you but glad to have the information today. I'd ask our panelists to come up and while they do that I do want to acknowledge a couple of people in the room including our housing works advisory board members if I know a number of you are here and some more will be joining us at lunch please raise your hand if you're a member of our housing works advisory board our chair Steve and Tony is in the back and Michelle and Adrienne and Rhonda and Amy and the whole bunch of other people I'm sure missing somebody are joining us so thank you again as always for all your support and guidance. I'd also mentioned HomesRI but I want to give a plug and we have some information in the back of the room about an upcoming forum on December 11th that HomesRI and LISC housing network and LISC are taking the lead in organizing and so we're very happy I will be talking a lot more about housing at that forum and we're also happy that the governor just announced yesterday another forum on November 14th to talk about housing issues and workforce housing and some more details as that develops as well so feels like we're building some momentum here and have an opportunity to kind of shine a spotlight on some of these important issues and we hope that the factbook remains a helpful tool in that process and I'm sure it will. So with that I will turn it over to or introduce our panelists. Oh I'm sorry before I do that so I don't forget I want I already acknowledged the housing works team and thank you Annette for mentioning Pierre who was sitting right in front of me and I still forgot to mention to you but Pierre thank you for all your guidance as well. I also want to thank the Roger Williams team here we've been now part of Roger Williams family since 2014 and it is just wonderful to work with so many of the support teams and services here and I know Heidi and Molly are here today and our friend Melanie from Advancement Office have been so helpful in organizing the event this morning and also this afternoon and we appreciated our new Roger Williams president will hopefully be joining us at lunch so if you're enjoying coming at lunch you'll have a chance to hear from him briefly as well. So with that I thank our panelists and we have some longtime friends and supporters here today but we asked them to come to give us some reactions to these these numbers. Unfortunately some of these numbers are not new numbers for sure it's a persistent problem as we know but again trying to make the connections between transportation health and economic growth is what we try to do constantly with the back folks so we to my left and at the far end we have Carol Ventura here at her not her first backbook event but her first backbook event as new ED at Rhode Island Housing so yay. A longtime friend Ana Noves from Department of Health who was here also on a panel that we had not too long ago on gentrification brief and other things and is our one of our go-to people among a number of other colleagues at Department of Health here to give us the healthy homes perspective and then a long-time friend and supporter Scott Evadijan who many of us know is the former mayor of Warwick and now general manager at Ripton I know his colleague Amy Patine is here as well too and his team has been enormously helpful as we again try to weave the transportation and housing link as Scott knows my transportation is near and dear to my heart my father for many years worked at Ripton started cleaning buses on the third shift and then ultimately when he retired was the director of transportation and so I know a lot about Ripton history as well and so always happy to see worlds collide together so thank you for taking the time to join us today with that I will turn to Carol first to talk about her general reactions and then also ask you to think about this question or leave this question into your comments about the scoring of applications for low-income housing tax credit and bond funds and other housing programs how does the score I'm taken to consideration the presence of public water and sewer and public transportation some of the issues that Annette raised as key things that we need to start thinking about but please just give us your general thoughts too thank you well there's a lot of information in the fact book and congratulations to everyone on the team for another successful launch of a fact book I know how much effort goes into playing this process for me the biggest takeaway is although we're making progress we continue to see people course-burdened in Rhode Island and that's that's unfortunate I mean we're creating jobs but people are still paying way too much for housing and we're not developing enough housing I think we're preserving at a pretty good pace but we're just not developing fast enough to keep up with the demand and I think if you look at the fact book you can look at how expensive it is to live in some parts of the state buying the home in some of the rural areas is it's just outrageous the average Rhode Islander cannot afford to live in many communities in the state the housing bond I think has has helped deploying 40 million but it's going to be gone as Annette mentioned by the end of the year that money is going to be going in we may produce and preserve a thousand units but we're still falling short I think the fact book puts it front and center for elected officials and municipal leaders that we need to do more and that they need to focus on the needs of the residents in the community I don't think all of the news is bad though I think you've highlighted a lot of key developments that have happened over the past few years and I'm happy that Rhode Island housing played a small role in making that happen so I think that's a great thing just we're going to be back there so let me talk a little bit about the planning that's taking place right now so Rhode Island housing and the Office of Housing and Community Development are partnering to look at three key state documents and that is the state's consolidated plan the analysis of impediments to fair housing and also the state's strategic housing plan which has not been since 2006 so we are conducting a series of community events engagement public meetings pop-up events that's from my communications group I don't quite know what yeah they tell me it's great so we are collecting a lot of data and you know it's not too late we are collecting data through October 31st you can go to our website and under research and I think it's research and policy there is a web page that you can see all of the feedback that has come in from this process as well as completing a short survey and I encourage everyone please complete the survey we need as much feedback from all Rhode Islanders as possible it's the only way we're going to come out in this planning with a path forward that accommodates all Rhode Islanders not just one specific population but everyone in Rhode Island so once we close down the survey in October we will then our consultants will step up and start analyzing the data and feedback and begin forming begin to form goals and strategies and policies around what everyone has provided and then after the first of the year we'll re-engage with the public to show you these goals and strategies and policies again take your feedback make adjustments as necessary and finalize these documents in the spring so that's where we're going shall I go right into the fight plan all right so in terms of Rhode Island housing housing resources Commission in the Office of Housing and Community Development and the alignment of state and federal programs with transportation let me first speak to what is probably the most powerful tool we have in the state of Rhode Island to build affordable rental homes and that is the low-income housing tax credit Rhode Island housing is the allocator for this state of Rhode Island we get approximately three point four million in housing tax credits and it is a highly competitive resource right and so it can take a developer three or four years to get a project funded through this process we score proposals that come through the door and it's outlined in the state's qualified allocation plan it's probably 200 pages that you will never want to read but buried within that document yeah we'll read it yeah yeah yeah yeah in July on the beach yeah yeah and scoring really determines the projects that funded right so that's it's about cost effectiveness and leveraging and also within the document is additional points for proximity to public transportation properties that are located within growth centers access to public infrastructure like sewer and water so there is scoring for those areas the one thing I want to mention though it's a balance right because if we want to create affordable housing in Gloucester in Richmond and in those areas we're not going to have access to public infrastructure right we have to rely on septic systems and wealth so it's a balancing act as we want to create affordable housing opportunities across the state the Housing Resources Commission is the agency in charge of allocating the state bond funds and we are partnered with the Housing Resources Commission in that we administer the funds on their behalf well this current bond does not have priority points for access to public transportation or public infrastructure the the scoring and the threshold criteria actually references the comp plan and also the land use plan and and both of those documents make a priority for development within areas that has that have public infrastructure and also access to public transportation so those are two areas where I see the nexus between scoring and aligning federal and state resources with public transit and public infrastructure thank you keep going down the line and our good colleague from Department of Health if you can talk a little bit about your reactions but also obviously Department of Health has been doing a huge amount of work on social determinants of health and the critical disparities across our state in those areas and how can we continue to build our relationship working together on health and other disparities sure thank you so first congratulations it was an amazing it's an amazing job that you do every year bringing bringing us and together to reflect on housing and and unfortunately while we do have some good news I think the overwhelming feeling continues to be of how much more we need to do and how consistent the bad news continue to be but that being said it also as Carol was mentioning it it requires maybe a different approach and a different kind of coalition and strategic thinking of how to address housing where we move away from our traditional focus so when I when I think about housing I think you you think about housing first in absolute like just do you just have enough housing then you think about housing do you have enough safe healthy affordable housing then you think about do you have enough housing that offers people who are the most vulnerable population what they need do we have enough supportive housing doing do we have enough recovery so and and when I think about it this way it's like no no no and so we don't have just enough housing playing we don't have enough safe affordable housing we do not have enough supportive housing recovery housing in our state so it says to me that whatever solutions we're going to be thinking about strategic plan we need to bring a different set of stakeholders and a different framework to that conversation so at the Department of Health yes we've been doing a lot addressing as social environmental determinants of health we put the social environmental determinants of health as a lead overarching priority for the work we do and we use that as the lens to which we do everything at the Health Department so you our key or flagship kind of intervention and initiative that reflects that is the health equity zones where we are truly relying on our community and the power that exists within the community the voice of our residents the voice of the stakeholders that live in a place to let us know what health means to them to let us know what are the problems that they think we need to fix to let us know what are the assets that are in their communities that we can rely on to help us move forward and housing comes up every single time it's supposed to be a health initiative but it is about housing it is about transportation it is about education it is the lack of trust in community and police relationships those are the issues that are impacting people's health and so unless we agree that we can no longer think about health in that isolated three capital hill perspective where we're talking about diabetes and obesity that health means that we need to be talking about housing that we need to be talking about transportation that we need to talk about education then we are going to continue to have the same bad data not bad data excellent data that really bad because there is what we are facing so even a housing strategy to say that the same way I think about health and I say that health cannot just be about diabetes a housing strategy cannot just be about housing and safe and affordable housing it needs to be about the strategy for the communities that we're talking about what are the needs of the population that we're talking about what is the state of transportation in those communities what is the access that people have to affordable housing to supportive housing to housing period my oldest son not to bring not the oldest number three I have four years so my my child number three who is a grown man of the 29 this year he was moving from one place to another looking for a house and he was looking for an apartment to rent for him and his young daughter of five and his wife and he looked for over a year trying to find an affordable apartment in Rota in not just Rhode Island he wanted to stay in Patak it I'm from Patak it he wanted to stay close to mom and to grandma for the kids but he took him over one year I remember when I rented my first apartment in Rhode Island in Patak it was like $500 a month for a three bedroom apartment 20 years ago not that far not that not that man he could not find anything that was cheaper than a thousand dollars in Patak it for a two bedroom apartment that is crazy nothing included by the way so those are the issues that we facing but why was it hard for him because maybe he doesn't have the income that he needs he's not making he's not a rich man he's a young guy starting his life he has a good job but between the two of them they can't so we need to address employment policy as we talk about housing because the affordability is not just affordability of the housing but it's how can the individual afford that house so we even thought kind of jobs do we have that make people not just survive but leave and it means that our education policies need to lead us to create and graduate kids from school that can go off to college or to a job so those are the ways that I I think about housing that makes it extremely complicated but that means also that at the end of the day it is the right folks that are in this because it cannot be a housing solution with the housing advocates and the usual housing partners we need to bring all of those different sectors so we're talking about a vision for our communities in Rhode Island of which housing is a critical component along with everything else I think you're preaching to the choir about how how do we make it action right and how we do it and just I mean thank you for sharing your your your personal connection on this we hear it all the time a minute I I hear or somebody knows I work in housing it's only two seconds later that I hear a housing story about something somebody in your family some other group somebody that they know that's looking for housing just curious how many of you have the kind of the same experience that you have with a kid who can't find a place to buy or rent or or is some family member that is housing issues raise your hand you don't have to share your story just just curious lots of hands going up not not a surprise so yeah our own housing works team we know we have people so that's that's it right and trying to make that connection and make people understand that I'd say it all the time affordable housing is kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of issues and I'm knowing even new cultural reference has nobody under 30 knows who I'm talking about anymore but but it's it just doesn't get the respect because I think people think oh that's not me but in reality it is you and it's all it's all of us and when we start to kind of tell that story and broaden the message a little bit more people seem to understand it and understand the connections and know that it's about their son it's their daughter it's their mother who's trying to age in place is you know all of those connections so telling those stories better and more frequently is also what we need to do so so with that let me turn to our last panelist here Scott to talk about the key findings and his reactions but also to try to address the question about how do we make public transportation a more relevant topic for municipalities and so that they understand the connections to their local economy thanks kinder first and foremost congratulations have you in your in your not new role but new role in the agency it's going to be a great partnership between housing so we move 58,000 people a day somewhere in the state of around and we like to say Amy's in the back and we like to say that we connect people to work to school until life now one of the ways that that we do that is in attempting and trying to look at all of our roots ridership we are there we're there gaps where can we fill in better and one of the initiatives that Amy did that went through as our planning director was a creation of the R-line and now you look at the high frequency that was created there and the number of people who take the R line every day and you try to piece that into how how do we expand that into other areas so that we have that high frequency and the downtown transit connector will do that in the six stops between the trains to Providence Station and Rhode Island Hospital but then we need to think more on how how does transit work into all of the other pieces and working with the Department of Health and Rhode Island Housing and lots of advocates there are there are different ways that that can happen and so we are currently undertaking a transit master plan for the state to look at what is the future how how do we can make how do we make those connections and how do we connect those dots across the state when really what RIPTA has evolved into over the last 53 years is a Metro Providence transit system and so how do you still do your statewide mandate to be everywhere but really focus on where the urban core that's actually using the service so we've done a lot of analysis as to where we are and I can tell you that right now the average American household spends about ninety seven hundred dollars a year in transportation costs and so when you try to piece that all together it's the second largest outlay in any home so continuing on the not young and not hip trying to understand what motivates trying to understand what what's the motivator factor here there was a focus group up at Brown with a group of millennials who were talking about transportation so I went to sit in the back and listen so I could understand you know I remember the you couldn't wait to get your driver's license that was your that was your ticket to freedom that showed that you were you were becoming an adult right and you could actually see that we're that you had a future so you couldn't wait to get your license you couldn't wait to get your first car and I wanted to understand the rationale that so many people have today would they don't want so I went and listened and it was eye-opening and this one young woman got up and she said basically so how much do you pay in your monthly car pink how much do you pay for insurance and how much do you pay in car repairs and what about the gas to put in the car every week and what about all the other things that you need in order to do that and you you know your triple A and all the other things that go along with that she said I choose not to do any of that because every other year I could take a big trip to Europe and that's how I choose to use my money so it made me start thinking more and more and say okay let's look at it so just let's go with the notion that $9,700 a year is what the average home spends on transportation if we were I'll probably get myself into trouble for suggesting this but if we were to look at that $9,700 and know that it only costs $840 a year for your yearly bus pass you're looking at a $9,000 disposable income that you can use for other things so Carol one of the things I want to do is figure out how we can add the first two years of your bus pass into your first mortgage and relieve that family of the burden of transportation as you first are going into your first home and you have that gap on now all of a sudden it eases the pressure from some of the the pressures that are on a family trying to figure out how do you make that work I mean it used to kill me as mayor of work that two people working full-time minimum wage jobs use 85% of their income on the average rental apartment in the city of what if you could find them so there's not a lot so if we can reduce that that stress on that family and their in their housing then we can help work and all the other things that we need to be able to put into place to make work so I don't know how we can structure a mortgage to include transit but I'm sure we've got to be able to figure out a way to do that because that would free up over the first two years $18,000 for the average home to be able to use another and it would once we get people into the habit of taking public transportation we basically know that we've captured that once we can get the first time someone rides and we can show them that it's easy it's convenient it's safe it takes you to where you want to go we pretty much know that we can keep them coming back so that's one of the things that we've been thinking about what we would like to do we have a fact sheet that shows how we get to the $9,700 and shows what the transportation component of all that is but it's going to take a whole change in thought of we cannot continue to let riptive be seen solely as a way that poor people go to work and so we've got to change the way that we operate we've been doing some more you know express service and trying to show people that there are reasons to take the bus I'll tell you that Rhode Island College just recently became the first public institution we use your student pass as your bus pass adding 4,500 riders a week and for a student that was already paying a fee to Rhode Island College to have that redeploy to give them their bus pass instead of working on parking lots you know see this is how things change I used to go to businesses and say come to work because we have lots of surface parking we don't have a parking meter anywhere in the city it's a wonderful thing now I go and say to a business you that surface parking lot could be better used for other things if you would help get your employees to take transit those are the different those are the different connections that we need to make as a total package of saying you know let's look at the zoning codes and I know you spent probably more time than anyone looking at them and that but let's look at the zoning codes and do does it do we really need to require one parking space per job in an industrial park when we could instead build more buildings there have more better for public transportation to get people there and basically improve everyone's quality of life so just no thank you very important on discussion just curious on from folks and I agree with your comment about the need to shift I mean if any of you go to any other major city using public transit is kind of a more wide scale used by everybody but just curious who's been on the bus in the last 60 days raise your hand oh more than I thought good glad to see that that's my people but I mean any of us you know if you've ever been to DC or New York I mean using public transportation is just kind of natural there and everybody uses it so that's the the goal right to kind of move towards that I think the other piece of the conversation and I know in my own community of the tuck it and I see Jan from the Tuckett Foundation and other and and others you know we the council has been struggling with housing and affordability around the TOD district and unfortunately has put that discussion on hold right now and to me it's like oh you killing me guys you know this is a logical place to put affordable housing or at least to have some affordable housing options so there's still a lot of of education that you need to do a local communities as well too so so with that I'll throw out one more question to all of you and anyone can jump first just I mean a lot of what we're talking about whether it's transportation housing health outcomes is controlled at the local level either through zoning or other programs so can you talk a little bit about what your departments or agencies do to develop relationships help educate municipalities around that your topic and issue and your thoughts about what we could be doing more to kind of again help communities develop and work towards mutual goals so who would like to start I can say what we are doing we do engage with municipalities a lot and from a variety of of perspectives I think that are the ones that most people know about we have the lot poisoning prevention program we do lead inspections review enforcement all of that it's done in partnership with local communities and local municipalities specifically and without the partnership with local municipalities will not be possible to accomplish and we've seen tremendous improvements in the relationship and in the response that we've had in that program but the one that I think I'm the most proud of it's absolutely our health equity zones because so our health equity zones is where we are doing braided funding approach we're bringing funding from a variety of sources to give communities seed funding to do needs assessment or an assessment in general come up with a plan of action and implement a plan of action I am proud to say that some of those health equity zones are led by municipalities and when the municipality is not the backbone organization the municipality is a key partner and at the table we've had with least can I see team here they are one of our backbone organizations they lead the Pawtucket Central Force health equity zone the cities are totally involved with the mayors being a key partner at the table we have Bristol leading a health equity zone and that's led by the city of Bristol and so that's for me the key aspect it's to have the municipalities the local government be part of the conversation from the get-go be a partner and be someone that you can rely on because in from a public health perspective we do not have a local public health infrastructure in this state as we all know so we need to build and rely on our local municipalities and local community partners to be that voice I think that's key the partnerships I remember well I better run island housing a long time almost 20 years but I remember over the past 20 years where we would run into roadblocks right we would propose or a developer would propose housing in a certain community and not to point to any communities but a number of suburb communities and it was this reluctance locally to embrace affordable housing and and I don't know what the perspective was I don't know what people think we were going to finance in their communities but now we have examples right we have sweetbriar we have comma point we have shannock falls and we've demonstrated to our partners in the municipality that affordable housing isn't a blight on the community it is an opportunity for the people that live in your municipality to have a place to live right so I think it's the partnerships that we've developed over time and demonstrating what affordable housing looks like and who lives there has really moved us forward and so ripped it has consistently been one of these amorphous groups not quasi-public so not really state government not really sure that they are government so except for Amy in the planning department going out and meeting with people in the community pretty much ripped it stayed on its own until the last year and a half and I think they're still really a little bit from some of the changes that are going on but trying to get out to virtually every community in the state and talk about service that we provide and what can make service better we're the deficiencies and trying to be seen as part of a response so I think one of the one of them changing moments was when Newport suffered their power outage a year ago in January I had been just a few months and the new director EMA I worked with for many many years said you know we're gonna need you guys to be part of this response and I think that was a point of change for the mentality at the agency and the authority saw that we could be part of actually helping to solve the problem in being a good resource there so a lot of the community involvement that's happened in the last year has been because we are doing the transit master plan but a lot of the outreach also is a new initiative to be out in the community going to city and town council meetings explaining service having our flex group there to explain how we can better use service we've been out I've been probably taking Kate Cantwell's group three or four times talking and just sitting and trying to resolve issues locally because we know that's where we can really have the biggest impact and I know we have a couple of heads is here as well too so I'm glad that I know Newport has another sir here so thank you for joining us as well before I open it up to some Q&A from our questions from the audience I do want to acknowledge a few other folks when I did my first round of advisory board members I know I forget to mention Nancy's career and Nancy is our also our state director of our HUD office a critical partner so thank you Nancy and I see Kelly Mahoney from URI in the back as well too Kelly thank you for joining us and wearing his Red Island Realtor hat this morning but he also we have counselor David Salvador here who's always been a consistent supporter of housing so thank you David is always for being here and I know you'll be joined later on at lunch by some of your other colleagues from Providence City Council so thank you and then I was remiss and not acknowledging one of our members of the board of directors of Roger Williams and a long time friend of housing Doris De La Sandoz and Doris is here and previously had worked at the Housing Resources Commission as well too and so I know she always gets housing as well so thank you again Doris for coming and supporting us wearing your multiple hats so so I'll stop there and open it up to you for comments or or questions of our panelists or or for a net we'd like to start us that's my group today go right ahead and please say your name and where you from to just so everyone can go sure Mike Somalia worked with the Department of Health and I live in Providence and my question is for Mr. Adesian so working in Providence I have colleagues who live in Westerly and they take the bus in every day and they love it they rave about it it's the same the low fare I live two miles from work and so when people say well you should take the bus too but it actually cost me more than transportation but I've heard you mentioned something about inner city urban planning do you say a little bit about what you envisioned for the close to downtown sure they don't turn transit connector connector will open in January right Amy we were debating whether we're going to make the date but I think we figured out that we still will make that date you don't have five minute frequency from Providence station to the hospital and you'll have a number you have six stops all the way along but you'll never wait more than five minutes when she get out there to get a bus and we're hopeful our board just gave us approval thank you Michelle to look at how we can create a different downtown fare with the goal being that as you start to understand that you don't need to move your car at all all day if you did bring a car into the city and you could go anywhere you need to go in the city with minimal amount of walking we think that we can really be in a large amount of ridership there the other part of the other feature of all that is that these stops are going to have real-time boards in them so we'll tell you when the next to sell a train to Boston is leaving so we'll give you we will have an ability to program where you'll know the flights leaving T.F. Green so that you will be able to be connected all the way through and you know part of our goal at some point is to have someone who is coming here to go to Newport for a vacation in the summer get off the train and private station take the rip to bus to the ferry take the ferry to Newport take the rip to bus to their hotel all using one fare problem and so then you have a seamless ability to move people and if we can do things like that and we can be creative and innovative then I think we'll see ridership continue to grow developer have on if we can't pay for the brexit more to build any of the levels where there's market rate we're not going to improve our housing and there is a 30 percent gap to fill it with other things we have nothing to fill that acceptable content at this point it has opportunity so it's called that census chart it's has it's right at all but it doesn't have to cash so I would think that the lobbying like all these departments all of these are doing this with legislation I just wanted to know that I did not plant that question but I totally agree with it so I'll let the panelists react I think all of us own right whether or not it's an agency public agency we all own it and let's not wait until the 14th let's do it now right if we don't start lobbying now then inevitably it's going to be too late and I also think that from being tea thinking about it differently and being creative maybe we're not talking about another housing bomb maybe we are talking about a healthy communities bond or a community development bond that can bring all of those different components that we think we need in place and I think as long as we continue to go at things from a very silent perspective it makes it harder for that partnership but if we can create that vision for our local communities and go at it from that perspective maybe it's a different approach that has different results and creates a new collaboration and a new partnership and let's be honest the people of this state have been very generous when they have looked at bond issues on how they are they are they're much smarter than they get credit for on how they view issues that get presented to them and we've never had a housing bond that hasn't been approved I think people understand the importance of that and where it fits into not only their own personal situations but where it fits into a community so a push and a concerted effort I think you know there's always been a good coalition whenever there's been a housing bond out on the ballot and I see no reason why that probably won't even be expanded this time. So just on your comments as you know we I've been working with our colleague Jen at One Neighborhood on kind of just this health equity so health equity fund looking at some models from other states and I know you and Rhode Island Housing and others are joining us at that discussion coming up in November. I think housing advocates have also been very clear that bonds are great but dedicated funding stream and kind of consistent funding and money so that we're not necessarily at the whim of voters we've been extremely lucky three times but but I always get nervous and when we're just only relying on that obviously political elections can can often be difficult challenging times as well too and so and many many other states have kind of dedicated funding and dedicated money into housing so that there's some consistency as well too so I want my cake and eat it and eat it too I want both so I'm not saying either or but I don't want to take the dedicated funding stream off the table either because I think it's been part of the problem as well so any other questions Christina so I really appreciate all of what you spoken about on the intersection of health and housing and transportation but I would just love to hear you speak a little bit more about racism and disparity it creates and how it intersects with all of these issues and also housing. I guess you want to speak to me. No. I know we only have a little bit of time but I would love to hear all your opinions on that. Any other thoughts or I mean I think Scott started to talk about it earlier you know the perception of kind of public transportation in Rhode Island is that it's just for poor people and that you know kind of changing that perception around that I think affordable housing obviously already has those image issues and what we tried to talk about is that it is really in everybody's problem it's you know your son my mother everybody's everybody's on uncle and other family connections so but you're absolutely right I mean and I serve on the State Housing Appeals Board and unfortunately here regularly from and it's not even it used to be hidden you know that people but the last the political environment that we're currently in has kind of emboldened many of those comments and the overt comments around racism and classism that come up at zoning board meetings planning board meetings everything else is alive and well and I mean it just continues to amaze and shock me every time when I when I hear it as well so I think you raise a good point I think it's something as a community we don't talk enough about and it's kind of those big questions I think the has this have been trying to get at it as well too but just trying to get people to realize that we're all all together in this that all of it we all do better if everyone in our community does better and I think that was the foundation of the source of income down that's right to make sure that people who have a rental subsidy aren't discriminated against when they knock on the door for an apartment so I would encourage everyone to support that bill moving forward we were not successful in getting that bill passed so I'll look to everyone in the audience to put up their hand and help us as we try to move that bill forward and I think as you mentioned at the end of the day it is a conversation that needs to be happened we do talk about equity we do talk about the social determinants of health but at the end of the day are the issues of racism and discrimination due to racism that are at the root causes of many of those it is people looking at you and treating you differently because of the color of your skin because of your accent because of how you look because of where you come from I can tell you I I a few years ago and I've told this story before but my I think he's the unlucky one my number three again that's another damn story but then we had I was outside in my garden and I was gardening and he fell from a tree and he fell from a tree broke his arm and I took him to the hospital I didn't change my clothes I went where I was and I was treated terribly at that hospital people look at me and I saw a black woman with dirty clothes on an accent nothing else so when I got tired of that and I pulled my idea which I say to people that's probably illegal and I shouldn't have done it but I did that and I told them do you know who the hell you're talking to you're talking to the executive director of the department of health at the time now I am the deputy director but at the end of the day I didn't I shouldn't be needing to pull an idea to be treated fairly or for my son to get pain medication for his arm or for my son to be having an MRI done within less than an hour when he fell from a tree had a concussion and was throwing up already three times in that emergency room that was my story and the only reason that that happened it's because of racism it's because I do have an accent because I was looking like a poor dirty old definitely black woman but those are stories that happen to many people people who cannot pull out an idea so it's on us to make sure that we do address those things it's on us to make sure that the policies that we have in place don't perpetuate those inequalities we all know about Fred lining at how much that was a policy that we created so how many more policies are we still having in place that still create those inequalities and those disparities if I overlap a mapping of our burden of asthma in children and I overlay a map that has where affordable housing or poor housing is and I overlay a map of where Medicaid rates are Medicaid and birth children that's all the same spots so how much are we creating concentrated poverty and concentrated burden of disease and concentrated lack of opportunities for people that at the end of the day are driven by those discrimination those racism those policies that we create and that we also have the power to change agreed and as we've got you know that your zip code matters more for your health outcome your health expectancy the outcomes and your educational attainment and even your job advancement more than any other numbers that are associated with you and so looking at things holistically and as a community are critical so thank you Kristina for raising that raising that subject time for I think maybe one more question and then we'll let people start to walk over yeah hi Jordan welcome for the center for justice just generally speaking you know I said this a few times in the past but there's nothing that works on housing for folks and we can talk about and all things for that purpose my question is what are we doing to put the choice back in the hand there's nothing affordable housing but they still need housing so what can we do to make a housing voucher for the section 8 program in Rhode Island you know obviously we can't change the federal laws in our state but what is the state doing with states only resources to provide choices to try to de-concentrate some of that poverty we're just discussing you know talk a little bit here I can I think I think that your spot on about the housing choice voucher program being a tool unfortunately it's it's limited right we only have a finite number of vouchers in the state of Rhode Island that can be deployed and I think if you look across housing authorities in Rhode Island they all have different priorities right and in many instances their priorities are to house the people that live in in their communities right they're not prioritizing the homeless people who perhaps have zero income so that's one opportunity to change the landscape is to have housing authorities across the state prioritize homelessness in their scoring as they deploy their vouchers I think the continuum of care program has done and the participants in the continuum of care have done a great job in terms of applying for and receiving rental assistance which is is being deployed for people who are homeless and you know Michelle Wilcox is here nobody knows more about people with zero income than Michelle and the folks at Crossroads so are we doing enough absolutely not can we do more yes it's just a matter of how do we find the resources and how do we get the will with with some of the people who control the resources to the deploy them in a different way. One of my unfinished bits of business as mayor was never being able to convince the city council to put affordable housing bond issue on the ballot so that we could leverage state funds as well but I think that local communities have to have a state unit as well. Tell your former colleagues about that one former colleagues thank you and thank you all again for coming and participating I wanted to mention to you at the back of the room in addition to the census data and some of the other material there's also a slip of paper encouraging me to provide feedback to the fact book we're always looking to improve and add to the document so if you're willing to be one of our guinea pigs or one of our folks who work and give us some more details or participate in the focus group please take one of those papers and contact or talk to Annette. We will be if you're joining us for lunch there'll be fact books passed out at lunch so you don't need to take one now but if you're not able to join us at lunch and would like a copy Annette and Christina and Paranelle will make sure that you get a copy before you leave and again thank you so much to our friends and colleagues for joining us this morning thanks to Ron from Roger Williams for doing all of the technology for us thanks Ron and and look forward to seeing many of you over at the west end a beautiful day for a nice leisurely stroll past the ripped of transit lines and Rhode Island housing office and all the good stuff so thank you