Newport focuses on workforce/middle class housing

For Newport to fill critical public and private industry jobs within the city, it needs to focus on development of workforce and middle-income housing in a city that is more than 90 percent developed.

That’s the assessment of Mayor Xaykham (Xay) Khamsyvoravong, who when asked if the lack of workforce and middle-income housing is causing a workforce shortage in the community, he definitively answers “yes, absolutely.”

Newport is the leader in Rhode Island in the development of affordable housing, with more than 16 percent of housing characterized as affordable, well surpassing the state’s benchmark of 10 percent, according to HousingWorks RI. The mayor says that over the last 20 years, some 24 units of new housing have been built.

The federal government defines affordable housing “when it consumes no more than 30 percent of a household’s income.” When assessing a community’s overall available affordable housing, officials use the community’s median income as a guide. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Newport’s median household income is $81.330.

Very few Rhode Island communities meet the 10 percent threshold and Newport’s neighbors, Middletown (4.8 percent) and Portsmouth (2.66 percent) are well below that mark.

While calling on those two communities to do more to build affordable housing, Mayor Khamsyvoravong says Newport is challenged with developing workforce and middle-income housing, defined by Rhode Island Housing as those earning from 80 percent to 120 percent of the area median income. 

Who are these people? “Our civil servants, our police officers, our firefighters, schoolteachers, our public employees in city hall,” the mayor says. “People who make our institutions run – nurses, professors at Salve,” and the “next class of employees – doctors, medical residents, the scientists who come to NOAA, our Naval services personnel.”

Newport will be the new home for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Operations Center for the Atlantic, a regional facility relocating from Norfolk, Virginia. With it comes 200 new jobs, officials say.

Not only is the lack of workforce/middle income housing a concern for public employees, but also private industry, where Mayor Khamsyvoravong says for “major employers, housing is a concern.”

“They are the community fabric that makes this a special community,” says Mayor Khamsyvoravong, referring to all those requiring workforce or middle-income housing. 

“It is important for our community character,” he says, not only providing housing for new workers, but “we need to fight as hard as we can for people to stay here.” Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released data showing that only Newport, among Rhode Island’s eight cities, had lost population, some 1.2 percent over the last year, dropping the year-round city population to 24,717 from 25,012,

Meanwhile, the city is focusing on ways to increase workforce housing. Here are some other of the mayor’s observations, and that of other agencies:

• While the city does not yet have a precise number of workforce/middle income housing needs, the mayor says a Chamber of Commerce study of the east bay, from Barrington to Newport, projects a need of some 9,000 workforce/middle-class housing units. 
• The biggest impediment to building, he says, is zoning and available space, with 90 percent of the city built-out, according to a recent housing study.
• That same housing study characterizes the city’s zoning laws as “kind of archaic,” and Mayor Khamsyvoravong says the city is undertaking a “full and complete overview of zoning,” along with looking at streamlining some smaller zoning issues that would make it “more efficient” for contractors.
• The mayor says the city is competing with other municipalities for employees, with housing affordability a significant issue.
• The city has developed a position of senior level planner, dedicated to housing issues, along with hiring a housing a fellow through a Rhode Island Housing grant program.
• In announcing its Workforce Housing Innovative Challenge Loan Program, Rhode Island Housing says that “in recent years, most new housing has been built in the ‘luxury’ segment of the market. Housing targeted to people who cannot afford ‘luxury’ rents has been built, but typically only where subsidies were available,” but not for “middle-income household (that) are housing cost burdened.”