Part I
:: Trickle Down…
Issue 1
Volume 2
Shelter from the Bubble:
Low-income and affordable housing in Providence
by Ray Huling and Amy Stitely
There remains the question of accountability. CDCs must meet performance-based criteria to qualify for support from both agencies such as RI LISC and the city of Providence. They have board oversight as well, and, indeed, RI LISC requires a majority resident involvement. Additionally, residents of CDC developments have the opportunity to evaluate them. But does all of this add up to anything like self-determination for these neighborhoods? What control do residents have over their own fate? What initiatives come from them? Rau was a result of citizen action, but that forms the exception. In large part, the Providence’s Comprehensive Plan—unquestionably, a top-down document— determines which neighborhoods see what kind of development.
The question of control over development stands against the basic fact that in Rhode Island, from 1999 to 2006, housing costs rose 100% while income rose 10%. We’re talking about larger forces, here. Economists have suggested that one reason for the housing boom is that the influx of Chinese labor on the global market has kept interests rates too low, making mortgages too cheap. What does individual or even community choice have to do with this?
Another example: The Economist recently reviewed an analysis of two studies in London that demonstrated that over nearly 100 years the class levels in most neighborhoods did not change—rich areas stayed rich, poor areas stayed poor. One study took place in 1991, the other in 1896. How does one respond to forces (immigration, loss of industry, natural disaster, war, access to transportation, environmental degradation, capitalism itself) that constrain opportunity across such a span of time? Can residents stem their own recurrent geographical cycle of poverty? Or does it require the intervention of top-down planning policies from the government along with the cooperation of non-profit agencies such as CDCs?
Nobody really knows.
We can see the immediate value of developing low-income and affordable housing.
In the short term, we can now buy or rent a house; neighborhoods improve,
investment comes in, crime decreases. However, we don’t know what effect
this will have down the road. The variables will always remain too intertwined
for us to evaluate long-term impact. Should South Providence or West Elmwood
become like the East Side in fifty years, we won’t know if SWAP’s
or WEHDC’s work made it so. But, in the mean time, there will at least
be housing available for those who need it now. So long, that is, as we put
our strength behind them.
