PROVIDENCE -- A law that has communities and builders clashing over incentives that are supposed to promote affordable housing is going to get another look, this time from a task force that will recommend changes to the governor.
The panel, created Friday, will try to do what the General Assembly couldn't during its last session: mold a law that encourages affordable housing without overwhelming communities.
If all goes as planned, the panel will include affordable housing advocates, builders, planners, land-use experts, legal experts and residents from communities that are fighting affordable housing applications.
"I think all of us are aware of the controversy," said Susan Baxter, chairwoman of the Housing Resources Commission, a state housing advocacy board that is forming the task force. "We need to provide some relief."
The task force will study the state Low and Moderate Income Housing Act, passed in 1991 to encourage communities to provide affordable housing.
Communities where at least 10 percent of the housing meets the state definition of affordable -- meaning state or federal subsidies let the units sell or rent at below-market prices -- are supposed to be off the hook. In theory, they can reject proposals that take advantage of the law's incentives for developers, which include potential construction subsidies, a shortened application process and the potential for denser zoning.
Communities that are below 10 percent are ripe for such applications.
The controversy started last year, when the General Assembly made the law and its incentives available to private developers.
Lawmakers said they were responding to a severe lack of affordable housing and the weak response of most communities to the law. Just five -- Central Falls, East Providence, Newport, Providence and Woonsocket -- have met the 10-percent goal, and they were above 10 percent when the law passed.
In the year since the change, private developers have unveiled plans to build more than 1,700 new houses and condominiums, according to the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation. Whereas most of the units built by nonprofits have been affordable, most of the units proposed by private developers -- about 385 -- would sell at market rates, because the law requires only that one of every five units be affordable.
The General Assembly, facing criticism from communities around the state, revisited the law during its 2003 session, but the House and Senate could not agree on language during the session's final hours.
Housing Resources Commission members agreed Friday on two things -- that the state needs more affordable housing, and that the law, in its current state, is overwhelming communities.
Commission member Richard Godfrey, executive director of the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation, said the law is also creating confusion. Even the notion that communities are exempt if they are over the 10-percent threshold has been challenged, he said. A recent application in Providence seeks to take advantage of the law, even though 13.8 percent of the city's housing is affordable, according to the last count.
"The act needs some work," he said.
Baxter said the task force will meet this fall and present recommendations to the commission in December. The commission will review the recommendations and forward them to Governor Carcieri, she said.
The goal, said commission member Kevin Flynn, planning director in Cranston, is to come up with changes that have strong backing, "something that the governor's office can feel good about" and bring to the legislature. Whether those changes will represent a tweaking or a complete rewriting remains to be seen, he said.
Madeline Parmenter, a spokeswoman for Carcieri, said the governor "welcomes input from all interested parties" on the affordable housing issue.
