To the editor:

According to an administrator at Rhode Island Housing, when an “affordable housing” plan is locally denied and then appealed before the State Housing Appeal Board (SHAB), the SHAB routinely sides with the plan over local objections, even if local zoning ordinances would otherwise prohibit the plan. So, if the Warren Planning Board was to refuse the proposal for 119 Water Street, the developer would no doubt take the decision to the SHAB, who would most likely decide in favor of the developer.

In turn, the town could refuse to accept the SHAB decision and push it to the courts, but doing so would be costly and unlikely to overturn the SHAB decision. Sadly, at least for those opposed to the current intentions for the Water Street project, this in a nutshell is the case laid out at the Oct. 24 Planning Board meeting by the developer’s counsel: Affordable housing supersedes all local legal concerns.

If it is so unlikely that the town’s decision to deny the plans would hold, should the town simply save itself the trouble and greenlight the project now? I don’t know. But perhaps we shouldn’t, even if we know we will lose the fight later. Reason: The town has a lot more at stake than the property at 119 Water.

For if it is true that municipal regulations are irrelevant when conceiving affordable housing, theoretically anyone proposing an “affordable housing” project anywhere in town is free to design and build with impunity. If height and parking restrictions cannot be applied to 119 Water, how does the town prevail upon others with eyes on building or renovating additional 35+ foot structures – or 40’, 50’, 60’? What’s to stop them? And beyond Water Street? If developers buy a parcel in Touisset with the goal of putting up a ten-story apartment building, or a complex of them, as long as the plan sets aside 25% of units for affordable housing, what is to stop the development? Everywhere is fair game for code-busting “affordable housing.”

The state’s “Low Income and Moderate Housing Act” shuts down once a town reaches a 10% “affordable housing” threshold, or has a really solid plan for reaching it. For Warren, at 4.3% inventory, breaking free of the act could take years. A lot of irreversible damage could occur in the meanwhile.

Warren has local legal codes for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to establish limits and guidelines for those looking to alter it physically through construction, but the sum of legal codes is to provide safety and comfort to those within our community. Imagine our town without them. Perhaps the town should reject the 119 proposal as is, and provide the developer the opportunity to come up with a design that meets municipal compliance, which he likely won’t (can’t?), and let him appeal it to the SHAB. Even if we lose, Warren will have signaled to the State and to other towns our objection to this state law which neuters our municipal sovereignty in its pursuit of “affordable housing”.

Though the goals of the state law are worthy, the wholesale scuttling of a town’s self-determined regulations in order to reach those goals is not; it is reckless. Perhaps Warren should take a formal, bold stand against the law’s indiscriminate reach; to declare, in principle, our will toward municipal sovereignty. As Bob Rulli has argued, the affordable housing act is greatly flawed and must be changed. Maybe a bit of ruckus on our part, even if only symbolic, will set that change in motion.  

Jerry Blitefield
Beach Street