09:54 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 14, 2005

William F. Hatfield, Bank of America, market president -- Rhode Island; Steven J. Issa, regional president, Sovereign Bank New England; Thomas W. Kelly, president and chief executive, BankNewport; Joseph MacAurele, president and CEO, Citizens Bank of Rhode Island and Connecticut; Robert O. Pare, president, Centreville Savings Bank; Merrill Sherman, president, Bank Rhode Island; and John Warren, chairman and CEO, Washington Trust Co. sent this column.

THE AMERICAN DREAM is based on the belief that hard work, persistence and a little sacrifice bring opportunity and fortune. Study hard, get an education and a good job, and a comfortable life is yours.

Central to that scenario is the promise of a decent place to live, in the community that you and your family call home. But finding a place you can afford in Rhode Island is becoming too much of a dream.

We read with great distress about Mary Leatham ("Sky High," April 13), a University of Rhode Island research associate who simply cannot afford a home in South County for herself and her two sons. She has a master's degree. She has a decent income. She has excellent credit. Yet she is forced to spend 40 percent of her pay on rent. And buying a decent house in the community where she lives and works is simply out of the question. Just imagine the difficulty for those working full-time at minimum wage who yearn to safely house their families.

We're bankers. We're taught to think in numbers, percentages, returns on investment. And we say this: Rhode Island's skyrocketing housing costs are adding to a negative bottom-line effect on our state's ability to grow, create jobs and attract new businesses. Since 1999, home prices have risen 11 times faster than wages. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is more than $1,000 a month. More than 1 in 10 households spend more than half their monthly earnings on housing. Ninety-five percent of all Rhode Island jobs won't buy a median-priced single family home.

These are haunting numbers. And they will only get worse unless we do something about them. Rhode Island is adding families at a steady clip, but we are simply not building enough housing to keep up. We already rank near the bottom of America in per capita housing production.

For the 10,000 households we added from 2001 to 2003, we only built 7,800 new homes.

Rhode Island is in crisis, one that threatens the vitality of our economy. Accordingly, we have joined HousingWorks, a coalition of more than 70 businesses, religious groups, professional associations, government and community groups and charitable foundations, to raise public awareness and propose some solutions.

HousingWorks inaugural policy platform calls first for a modest $4 million in increased investment in housing in 2006, through four bills before the legislature. The additional funds will build more homes and house more families: 2.5 million in additional dollars for the extraordinarily successful Neighborhood Opportunities Program, which has created more than 600 affordable homes since 2001; $950,000 to help our most vulnerable residents find and remain in housing while they stabilize their lives; $400,000 to support the organizations -- community development corporations -- that build most of our affordable housing; and $100,000 for a statewide housing land trust that will ensure that the homes built today are affordable forever.

Will $4 million solve Rhode Island's housing crisis? No. But the HousingWorks platform is a critical next step and a sound investment in Rhode Island's future. More than any statistics, stories like Mary Leatham's paint a chilling portrait of our current reality. It is simply not a portrait that our state can afford.

There are too many of these stories in Rhode Island. And whether or not you have one of your own to share, this is a crisis that affects you. It is a crisis that affects all of us. We support the HousingWorks 2005 Policy Platform because we believe that Rhode Island's economic health depends on a decent place to live for each and every one of us. We encourage you to do the same.

Call your legislator and support the HousingWorks Platform. Invest in Rhode Island's future today.