Four candidates running for Providence mayor faced residents at a packed Elmwood Community Center on June 24, addressing housing, pollution, education and more.
The event was organized by a coalition of eight neighborhood associations and community groups: Elmwood Neighborhood Association, Elmwood & South Providence Crime Watch, Jacqueline Clements Park (JCP) Collective, People’s Port Authority, Reservoir Triangle Neighborhood Association, South Elmwood Neighborhood Association, South Providence Neighborhood Association and Washington Park Neighborhood Association.
The forum featured Democratic Mayor Brett Smiley, Democratic State Rep. David Morales, Independent candidate Allen Waters and Republican candidate and community leader Dave Talan. It was moderated by community leader and South Side developer Lanre Ajakaiye.
Smiley and Morales, the race’s two front-runners, exchanged pointed remarks throughout the forum before a crowd that appeared divided between the two, though Morales drew the loudest cheers, especially on housing issues.
For nearly two hours, the candidates answered questions on topics selected by the eight organizing groups and the moderator, along with several submitted by audience members.
Housing Crisis
Smiley began by promising more housing for the city while pointing to progress made over the last four years.
“The housing crisis is the most pressing concern in the city, and it is rooted in the fact that we don’t have enough housing,” Smiley said. “We’ve created 2,000 new housing units, 22% of which are permanently affordable.”
Smiley also mentioned Providence’s Rental and Essential Needs Transition (RENT) Fund, which was introduced to the City Council in March. The RENT Fund provides up to $3,000 in grant assistance to households earning no more than 80% of the area median income and facing risk of housing loss, according to a City press release.
As previously reported by The Providence Eye, Mayor Smiley estimated the RENT Fund will provide relief for 300 households, or 1,000 city residents. Eviction Lab found over 5,000 eviction filings in Providence over the past 12 months.
Morales responded by pointing to Smiley’s April veto of a City Council-approved rent stabilization ordinance. City Council failed to override the Mayor’s veto in May, coming up one vote short of the required supermajority of 10 votes to override.
“Providence is becoming too expensive,” Morales said, who supported the rent stabilization ordinance, drawing cheers from the crowd. “Unlike our current mayor, I will not veto rent stabilization. I will work with our City Council to enforce the law.”
Morales also said he wants to continue building new housing but believes recent housing projects have not helped the situation.
“Over 75% of them are either market-rate or luxury-rate housing, which tells me that they are not homes that are being built for us,” Morales said. According to Apartments.com, the average market-rate for a one-bedroom apartment in Providence is $2,153 a month.
Talan stated that he agreed with the Mayor’s decision to veto the rent stabilization ordinance and supported a similar approach focused on increasing housing supply. He also begrudgingly expressed support for gubernatorial candidate Helena Foulkes’s housing plan, which proposed building housing with prefabricated materials at roughly half the cost, according to Talan.
“We have a lot of space in Providence that we can build on,” Talan said.
Waters took a different approach, arguing that Providence has limited land available for new development and is already densely populated. He expressed support for cooperative housing, a model in which residents own shares in the cooperative that owns the building, giving them the right to occupy their unit.
“We can put thousands of people in homes in Providence and across Rhode Island by just having the state provide bridge loans,” Waters said.
Pollution and Waterfront Cleanup
Early in the night, Morales targeted Smiley’s alleged financial ties to Rhode Island Recycled Metals, which has a history of improper permitting and negative environmental impact at the port and its surrounding neighborhoods. The Providence Eye was unable to verify Morales’ claim that Smiley received campaign money from RIRM directly. However, reporting from WJAR in 2024 found that Smiley did receive $1,000 from the manager of RIRM.
“I have accepted thousands of contributions in my public service, and I think I’ve shown that a contribution never necessitates or issues an action,” Smiley said to WJAR in 2024 regarding the alleged contribution. In 2024, the Smiley administration issued a cease-and-desist order against the business, which is currently being contested in Superior Court after RIRM moved to dismiss the City’s lawsuit.
Morales argued that Providence should make major port-area polluters pay more through a targeted commercial tax, work with DEM on air-quality monitoring and penalize businesses that violate environmental standards.
“My opponent is good at sound bites, but they don’t actually work,” Smiley said. “It is illegal to tax individual businesses at a different rate. That’s an inconvenient fact that he continues to ignore.”
Smiley laid out his plan, which involved using pollution data and reporting to hold bad actors accountable, taking legal action against violators and shifting the port toward cleaner industries such as offshore wind.
The other candidates on stage had differing approaches. Candidate Waters felt that imposing penalties on corporate polluters would only scare them away from doing business in Providence and hurt residents in the long run.
“We only have a handful of corporate polluters,” Waters added, “I believe in capitalism. I believe in low taxes on businesses because that is the financial engine of this city.”
Talan, on the other hand, offered an opposing viewpoint: “The answer is not to tax these polluters; I don’t want more money. I want them shut down completely,” Talan said. “They need to do whatever it takes, environmentally, to clean up their act; that’s worth more to me than getting a few thousand dollars from them.”
Education and Schools
The candidates also addressed artificial intelligence and the future of Providence Public Schools, with Smiley framing AI as a workforce issue and Morales arguing that the city must first address gaps in staffing and student support.
“I don’t believe AI is going to take your job. I think someone who knows how to use AI is,” Smiley said.
Smiley said Providence schools should integrate AI and other technology tools into classrooms while also using the city’s workforce programs and community partners to expand technology training.
Morales said the city should focus first on students already struggling academically, particularly multilingual learners and special education students.
“We have many multilingual learners and special education students that, even without the rise of AI, are already falling behind,” Morales said.
The candidates also discussed the return of Providence Public Schools to local control. Smiley said the city must make sure new investments reach classrooms rather than administration or consultants.
“The community spoke loud and clear that they wanted their schools back,” Smiley said.
Morales said families and educators need to be more involved in school decisions after years of closures and underinvestment.
“All our kids across Providence Public Schools deserve a quality education, and our families deserve to feel engaged as a part of that process,” Morales said.
Waters decided to target the Providence teachers’ union in his response.
“The City of Providence, the Democrat Party and the communist teachers union have failed our Black and Brown children and the white children,” Waters said to scattered applause. “Before we move to AI, if you can’t read or write what’s the point of AI anyway?”
Talan stated that he was not afraid of AI and believed that, historically, technological advancements have created more jobs over the long term.
Sense of Community and ICE
In response to a question about preserving Providence’s character, culture and communities, immigration enforcement became another point of contrast between Smiley and Morales, with both candidates saying Providence should protect immigrant residents but differing over whether the current administration’s approach has gone far enough.
“Our administration is going to use every tool we have at our disposal to hold fascist ICE agents accountable any time they try to violate the rights of our neighbor,” Morales began. “We’re not going to have performative press conferences and signs on fences,” seemingly referring to the Mayor’s executive order prohibiting use of City property for civil immigration enforcement activities, which included installing signage.
Smiley pushed back directly, defending his administration’s public response to federal immigration enforcement and saying visibility from city leaders matters to immigrant communities.
“It is not performative to immigrant communities in Providence to see their mayor and their police chief standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them,” Smiley said.
Waters and Talan avoided bringing up ICE or the Trump Administration; however, both touched on the topic of preserving communities in Providence.
Talan focused on the importance of strong neighborhood associations, which he believes work hard to protect a community’s identity.
Waters claimed a “moral decline” among Providence youth has turned them into “savages.”
“We need a strong police force, strong law and order, children have to believe in themself, no more marginalization and feminization of Black and brown males, we need to bring our children up,” Waters said, to more scattered applause.
Morales immediately followed this comment by wishing the audience a happy Pride Month at the beginning of his remarks, which received laughter and applause from both the audience and Mayor Smiley.
Residents Thoughts
Joaquim Serpe, a five-year resident of Federal Hill, attended the forum to support Morales.
“I feel like city services have gotten worse, in terms of cleanliness, garbage and the city has also gotten so expensive,” Serpe said. “I don’t think the current mayor is approaching the situation with the level of urgency and care that it deserves.”
While Serpe is currently a homeowner, he said he has seen firsthand the importance of holding landlords accountable.
An undecided Elmwood resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said they hoped candidates would address food insecurity and the need to educate young people about where their food comes from.
“A lot of these kids think vegetables come from the supermarket and are surprised to learn about farms,” he said. “I saw kids starving, absolutely hungry, trying to figure out what they’re gonna do between Friday night and Monday morning. And nobody addressed that issue tonight.”
Greg Gerritt of Summit, a Morales supporter and a 30-year resident of Providence, said he was pleased with Morales’ performance. While he said Smiley is politically polished, he has not been impressed with Smiley’s results since he’s been in office.
“Smiley’s economic development policies all favor the rich,” Gerritt said. “We [need] to have economic development from the bottom up, which means you’re investing directly in the local communities, and Smiley has not done that.”
Waters and Talan
Throughout the forum, Waters brought a fiery approach to the stage, appearing to threaten residents and calling Brown University one of the most “anti-American institutions” in the country.
“All the white people in this city, you have a target on your back because of the liberal Marxist educations that are going on here,” Waters said.
As the debate continued, Waters appeared to lose support among some in the audience, while the other non-front-runner candidate, Talan, appeared to gain a handful of supporters as the night went on.
“If nothing else, I want to use the campaign to educate people on the things that need to be done,” Talan said in a statement to The Eye after the forum. “I’m enjoying myself doing this, and I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for The Providence Eye’s VoterGuide, which will allow users to enter their address and get a personalized sample ballot. We will also be including responses to candidate questionnaires in the ballot. To help influence the policy questions raised in the questionnaire, fill out our Voters’ Voices survey.
Further reading from partner publications:
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- Candidates seek to define themselves at the South Side Mayoral Candidate Forum by Steve Ahlquist
- Providence Mayoral Hopefuls Face Questions about Port Pollution, Recycling at South Side Forum by Jonmaesha Beltran, ecoRI
Jake Mittleman is a journalism and political science student entering his fourth year at American University in D.C. This summer he is covering elections as an intern at the Providence Eye.
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