Editor’s Note: Few issues are more pressing in Providence than housing.
This week we’re publishing two essays from renters in Providence. They continue a conversation that began — for us, in the Eye’s Readers Voices section, at least — last year, with essays arguing for rent stabilization and asking, “What happened to affordable construction?”
We will continue to dedicate space to this complex and consequential issue. And we invite you to join us. Feel free to send your pitches, drafts, and letters on housing in Providence to voices @pvdeye.org.
Much digital ink has been spilled on the housing crisis in Rhode Island. With average home prices soaring past $500,000, and with more renters sacrificing ever-heftier portions of their monthly income to rent, it’s no wonder some former city residents are fleeing for more affordable pastures in other states.
Governor McKee, House Speaker Shekarchi and the Providence City Council have each spearheaded legislative packages to tackle this problem, with proposed policies that include housing bonds, zoning reform, and the city-wide legalization of additional dwelling units (ADUs, sometimes also called granny flats) to add more housing stock. Yet the affordability problem persists even when we are moving the right direction.
With the City Council now proposing rent stabilization as a means of preventing surprise rent increases for tenants, I wanted to share my experience as someone who has suffered at the hands of a broken housing market. The debate about rent stabilization is far from abstract for me and many others in our majority-renter city.
I have rented all of my adult life in cities across the country, including Boston, New York, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C. Some of these moves were for the sake of adventure in my early twenties, as road-tripped solo in my beat-up used Toyota sedan. The rest were for job opportunities.
Four years ago, I moved to Providence from Massachusetts in search of both cheaper rent and available work. Before the move, I was living with my parents in the greater suburbs of Boston which was sparse with affordable apartments or entry-level work. I did find jobs in Boston, but the four-hour round trip commute from my parents’ house was mentally and physically unsustainable. And there was nothing in Boston proper that was even remotely affordable to my income at the time of about $35,000 to $40,000 a year. Unless I wanted to shack up in an Allston triple decker with a dozen college-aged roommates, Providence seemed like the right move.
Shortly after moving to Rhode Island I began work as a pipefitter at Electric Boat in Quonset Point, at an hourly rate of $16. (Starting pay at Electric Boat is now $20 per hour. This is still a hard wage to live on, but it is substantially better than before.) My first apartment was a two-bedroom in Elmhurst with one roommate where my portion of rent was $850 per month, which eventually increased to $900. I struggled to make ends meet, and would occasionally use food pantries for groceries, all while working for a multi-billion dollar defense manufacturer producing world class submarines.
Today, a few jobs and apartment switches later, things are better, but not by much. The total rent for my current East Side apartment is $1,900, split evenly between me and my roommate. Utilities can exceed $200 a month – split evenly, again – especially during the colder months when the heat has to be cranked up.
I now work in construction-equipment sales. And depending on how work goes in a given month, my portion of rent and utilities can exceed half of my take-home pay, especially as economic conditions from tariffs impact my customers and their capacity to buy from me. I expect this rent-and-utilities-gobbling-half-my-net-income situation to happen a few times over the rest of the year, just as it has happened over the past few months. This leaves little wiggle room for saving, investing in my retirement, paying for medical appointments, or enjoying life with friends in our city’s many wonderful restaurants or bars. In particular, it means that saving money for a home is out of the question. Even if I could afford a down payment, paying a mortgage or for emergency home repairs would be impossible. So would affording the city’s property taxes.
I am now in my thirties. And, at some point it feels like I shouldn’t have to live with roommates just to afford to live, as I would like to have my own space. It’s a little embarrassing to imagine myself in my late thirties or even forties living with roommates out of economic necessity. Looking into the future, I don’t see my financial situation improving enough to afford even just a studio apartment, let alone an actual house. When I look on Zillow for single-bedroom apartments to rent, I’m confronted with prices of upwards of $1,500 a month, before utilities. I experience a sense of economic dread.
This all leads to a feeling of impermanence. Every apartment I rent in this city feels temporary, as I’m always hunting for a better deal. Since moving to Providence, I have not had the ability to actually settle into a place to truly make it “home.” And even if I were to settle in an apartment there’s nothing preventing my landlord from selling the place, and displacing me because of new tenants (which has happened to me before), or forcing me to move because a new landlord raises the rent beyond my financial means (which has happened to my friends). What’s the point of hanging new wall art or getting new furniture if I’ll just be moving again in a few months? Where I live doesn’t feel like it’s up to me; it’s up to my landlord and how much they want to charge me.
I know that, despite my struggles, I am privileged to have some savings for when times turn tough. But the idea that I have to dig into those precious savings just to be able to afford to eat dinner and send a rent check to my landlord is absurd.
We renters of the city aren’t asking for much. We recognize rent will always be a little expensive. But the general financial rule is that about a third of your monthly income should go towards your housing costs. Anything exceeding that number qualifies someone as “burdened by housing costs,” as defined by affordable housing advocacy groups. It makes life tremendously financially stressful. For, as Northwestern law professor Eric Sirota has written, “The rent eats first.”
Daniel Morris rents in Mt. Hope, Providence. His interests are safe street designs, affordable housing advocacy, and live jazz. He is originally from the South Shore of Massachusetts.
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