01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 13, 2005

The difficulty of finding affordable housing in Rhode Island is not only a social problem -- one that often makes it hard to keep families together, or drives them individually or collectively from a state where they would prefer to stay.

It is also a serious economic problem. Rhode Island's ever-widening gap between housing costs and average pay makes it increasingly difficult for companies to attract and retain a qualified workforce. And it means that many public-service personnel, such as firefighters and police officers, cannot afford to live in the communities they serve -- thus decreasing the effectiveness of these public services.

Housing construction in the state averages about 2,500 units a year, says the Rhode Island Builders Association, yet it must produce 3,500 units to meet the Carcieri administration's goal of 20,000 new jobs in Rhode Island over the next four years. Rhode Island ranks second to last in housing production -- even as the lack of housing and a housing-investment bubble almost reminscent of the Internet bubble drive housing prices into the stratosphere.

But things can be done. One is to support the proposals of Housing Works, a private-public coalition confronting the state's affordable-housing crisis. Housing Works recommends asking the General Assembly and the governor to support legislation to:

-- Increase by $2.5 million -- to $7.5 million -- state funds for the Neighborhood Opportunities Program, which since inception, in 2001, has financed construction or rehabilitation of 606 housing units. The program provides subsidized housing for low-income families and disabled people, and also develops homes that they can buy.

-- Provide $350,000 for the Supportive Services Program, which would help people learn the skills of such tasks as budgeting and paying rent.

-- Provide $600,000 to move 60 people out of homeless shelters and into rent-subsidized housing for at least two years.

--Provide $400,000 for a community-development fund, to help community-based nonprofit agencies charged with providing affordable housing.

-- Provide $100,000 for a statewide housing-land trust, making more land available for housing.

The Housing Works program, while no cure-all for a problem that is national in scope, would substantially advance the effort to boost the state's social and economic health. In enacting the program, Rhode Island would do well by doing good.