It’s Getting Harder to Afford a Home
in Rhode Island, New Data Shows

If you make less than $100,000 a year, you can’t comfortably afford to buy a home in Rhode Island, according to new data from the think tank HousingWorksRI at Roger Williams University. And if you make less than $75,000, you can’t afford to rent.

In its annual housing factbook, which it released on Friday, HousingWorksRI once again paints a bleak picture for housing affordability in the state. More than one-third of Rhode Island households put more than one-third of their income toward housing, marking them as “cost-burdened” and at-risk, according to the factbook.

The group calculated that the lowest income that would enable one to affordably buy a home in Rhode Island is in Woonsocket at $119,123. Burrillville is the only municipality in which someone making the state’s median renter income of $45,560 can afford to rent an average-priced two-bedroom unit.

Despite increased attention on the cost of housing in Rhode Island in recent years, the problem continues to get worse, according to Brenda Clement, HousingWorksRI’s executive director.

“We know it’s a problem that needs to be addressed not only for workforce retention and development, but also to improve people’s health and educational outcomes,” Clement said. “Housing advocates like me say that housing is the foundation and that nothing works right in your life unless you have that decent place to get up from every day and to go back to every night.”

This story was reported by The Public’s Radio. You can read the entire story here.