One way to address R.I.’s housing shortage is by offering more home choices

Building more new homes can reduce displacement, lower prices, and improve everyone’s housing quality, according to Neighbors Welcome! Rhode Island

By Jennifer Hawkins and Seth Zeren

Updated April 9, 2025, 6:00 a.m.

Few Rhode Islanders doubt that we are facing a shortage of homes available to rent or buy.

According to a new poll commissioned by Neighbors Welcome! Rhode Island and conducted by YouGov Blue, 78 percent of Rhode Islanders say there are too few homes in their community that average people can afford. More than half of respondents (57 percent) identified the cost of housing as the most important issue facing the state.

But many people doubt that new market-rate homes help improve affordability for everyday Rhode Islanders. With the median price for a new single-family home approaching $500,000 and new apartments regularly renting for upward of $2,500 per month, it’s no wonder!

What’s driving those high prices? First, it’s the scarcity of homes; bidding wars regularly drive up prices. Over the last decade, Rhode Island has consistently built among the fewest new homes per population in the country. Just to get to the national average, homebuilding would need to quadruple — meaning more of everything: rental and ownership; single-detached and apartments; income-restricted and market-rate.

Many renters in Austin, Texas, are getting something no Rhode Islander would believe — drops in their rent at lease renewal time. After years of rapid building, Austin’s median home price has fallen over 7 percent across the market. A study by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office shows that even controlling for other demographic factors, communities that built the most market-rate housing had the least low-income displacement.