Housing Crisis Task Force - Monday, February 24, 2025 - 5:30 P.M.

You ready?.

Good afternoon, members

of the committee. Today is Providence Housing Price Task Force. Today is Monday, February 24. Madam clerk, please call the roll. Chairwoman Mary Clay Harris.

Present. Vice chairman Pedro Espinal is absent. Councilwoman Adia Graves? Present. Councilwoman Sheldon Peterson is absent.

Councilor Justin Reyes? Thank you. Have three present, two absent. We have a quan. Thank you so much.

Before I have to bring that first item in,

I would like to welcome Liana.

Thank you for joining the House of Christ Task Force since she's from the legal department. And we also have Miguel Young who is gonna be leading us up. So we're in a new direction right now, and I'm excited about it. Madam Clerk, please read item one. Item number one, respecting relative to the outline of the final report of the housing crisis task list.

Okay. So at this time, I'm gonna turn it over to Gail Young to take us through this final report, the meaning behind it, how it came about, who worked with it, and all of this other stuff. So we're ready whenever you want us.

Thank you. Ready to say my name into the the record or Well, hi, everybody. Miguel Youngs. I am on the policy team, the deputy director of policy. We've talked a lot about this stuff.

I'm very excited to be here. To try to reflect back what is the results. Or it's not the result. It's these sort of ongoing work.

Just before you get started... I'm so sorry, Miguel. Yeah. I would like to enter this as a... Into our record as item Exhibit.

888. Sorry about that. I think we should have eight eight. Second. It's been...

Motion's been made and second. Correct. All in favor? Aye. Alright.

Slides noted. Let's continue.

Great. Thank you. So I'm just going to lead

us through some slides that I prepared

that I hope can just set a little bit of the context, the content, what we're working on, how we got here, and where we want to go together, like, truly together. So the

first slide

is just, an introduction, and you'll have it in front of you. And these slides are about the draft out, which I shared with you. And that outline is based on all the work you all did, which I'm sure you remember. There's a lot. I went back...

We went back and looked. There was 11 meetings. Actually, really... This is the twelfth meeting, I believe. I believe it's the twelfth meeting.

And one thing I'm very grateful for, I wanna add, that there was requests to have these binders. That made our task of going back and sort of capturing all of the information you got so much easier. So whoever requested the binders, just... I just wanna thank you because All take credit. Every...

All of them in South India takes a credit. It... I know it

was a lot

of work to make them, but, you know, it was it was it was work well spent. And we use those binders to review all of those presentations we got from all different agencies. There was, I believe, the police department got here. We had developers in here. We had people from the administration talking about the sort of whole big problem that is the housing crisis.

And sort of analogy I used with the chairman earlier when I was talking to her was I was really thinking about it. You you got... You all sat there with 11 lectures. And, you know, you could go to Brown College and take 11 lectures on something, and they give you a degree. So you all kinda, like...

You did enough to earn a degree on this. So those 11 meetings, we try to capture this outline. The expert testimony, and then also what's been added because it's been almost a year since you all left, a lot has changed. And we've heard from each of you coming to the office, new issues, new priorities. There's a new president since we last met, so that's a whole another issue.

And we tried to actually incorporate notes because every time we meet, every time you and the policy team, we take copious notes, and we did our best to include things that you've asked us about or we've been working on on behalf of you that just fit really well into this whole process. So that was... That's the addition that's been made. It's everything in that binder plus everything that was brought to us. And the goal the goal here is to take this outline, which really is just a blueprint, and turn it into a final report that can drive policy change.

That's the word I use, and I think that's a good way to start it. Maybe the next slide. So it's just sort of what I just said. Where this outline came from, all the information in it and from conversations you all have had. We really believe in capturing the work you've done in this outline.

We didn't wanna, like, add to it because, again, 11 meetings is a lot. And a lot of information was in there, and it gave us plenty to take from. And I was I was I was like, wow. I'm sending them a pretty dense outline. But when I was really thinking about it, this captures a pretty big binder.

So it was a task to sort of consolidate it for you all. So I'll share you the next slide, please. So what is India? We tried to just do a couple snapshots. There's the overview of the housing crisis.

We put some data in, the data that I think we've all heard a million times. And I can speak personally. This data, when it comes to how fast rent is increasing, how fast homeless is increasing, how slowly new housing is being developed, We all... We've all heard this stuff so many times. Like, every time you open the newspaper, it's sort of like a different thing.

It's a different thing that Rhode Island is leading the country in. Mhmm. And it's usually bad. And what was a big theme in the presentations to this task force is how all of those are kind of connected. That's what the crisis is, that there are agencies, there are people in the state who are sort of targeting each issue specifically.

And I think the the the goal of this task force was as the legislative body of the city was to try to get, like, a holistic view of the issue. Like, what are all the things contributing to each other? So we did include those numbers just for everyone's reference, and we tried to cite everything. Something else in this outline, which you'll notice... Probably the first thing you'll notice is all the the paragraphs at the top.

This was an attempt to sort of give you a feel of the type of writings that can happen in this report, how things can be explained and how things can be tied together. And to me and to us, that is the tower of a report is you can sort of say a bunch of facts, and you can get a bunch of people to sort of nod and agree to the facts. But you can really take people's understanding to a next level if you sort of explain how it all ties together, including using specific examples, including using specific quotes that were said before us, phoning and citing experts. All of that can be done in a report, and those are the things that are often lost when we have to have these conversations in isolation over and over and over again. So that's really what this outline is trying to sort of demonstrate to y'all, what that writing can look like.

None of this is a final. Just wanted to give you an idea of what the writing can look like. And if you can kind of imagine writing like this and then all the rest of it, all of the outlines sort of having that type of writing too, then it goes on and just be sort of bullet points so you get an idea of what will be expanded. Okay. And then...

Well, let me let me let me say it this way. By looking at everything this task force focused on, we sort of identified the key challenges. And this is what, you know, weaves its way through this binder. And I'm be a little bit more frank. It's what...

When we step outside, what we all see, what you all see in your wards and in the city every day. We talk about affordability. We talk about the housing supply. We talk about tenant protections. We talk about incentives for new development.

We talk about the sort of intergovernment slash sort of agency coordination, which I think was a big focus toward the end, like, the sort of coordination. You feel like... The feeling that there's a lot of people out there doing the work, and it'd be just a a more coordinated effort and shelf work capacity, which is a really another big thing that we've heard at the end. All of that, those are sort of like... That's sort of like a top level overview of the challenges that we saw, especially as articulated in the buyer.

And then, ultimately, the goal is to make some recommendations. This is typical. I think all of you sit on other committees and have sit on other subcommittees. This is something that a lot of them ultimately do. That's actually how they end.

They end with recommendations. And the way the way that... I guess next slide. Sure. Sure.

This next slide is a good one. So this is how we're thinking about the recommendations. Because when you really talk about the housing crisis, obviously, it can be very overwhelming and intimidating because some of these problems have been ingrained for decades, and you can't snap your fingers and make them go away. But there are things that this council can do, and that's what we're... And and in the slide here, I'm calling concrete and immediate, actionable.

We wanna have recommendations like that because I think that's what the point is. That's why you all come here so frequently to do things. But, again, the power of a report, the power of being able to use words to write about things, you can also start to articulate a vision. You can actually talk about the bigger picture problems, the things that you see the future. What is the future that Providence needs?

Not something that can happen next week, next month, but next decade. Like, what do we... What do we want to see in this city? And I think this report can also talk about that. I've read a lot of reports.

It's part of my job. I'm fortunate to be able to be in this building every day. I get reports from different cities, different reports from different committees. And part of what really inspired us was a similar report that came out of. And I think they did something similar, which was you don't you don't want to have a report that's only aspirational goals.

You know? You don't wanna do that because then people read it, and then they think to themselves, oh, so then what I... What is actually the next step? But you also don't want a report that's only, like, concrete because then people will say, well, what about the big... The goal is to kinda be able to combine both, and that's what I would like to accomplish with the report.

Alright. So, yes, the report. That's the goal. And all of this is up to the task force, of course, but this report can be a way to sort of conclude... Formally conclude the task force task force's work.

You know, the the term is up. People... Council potentially changes. You wanna conclude the work of the task force. And oftentimes, that's always done is through a final comprehensive report that has those recommendations in place.

And then what will it serve as? What will that report actually do? You know, I thought about using this word, and I think it's a good word to use. It's a legacy document. It gets entered into the public record.

It will be here after all of this. If you go into the public portal, you can read stuff from the eighties, the seventies, from the... This will be there. So I think that's really, really, really important for future generations to kinda see that this work was done. So it's not a road map.