Housing discussion lacked full scope of issue
The April 27 public presentation in Newport, billed as Housing & Business: Community Conversation, was decidedly not a conversation. It was a one-sided rationalization for the state’s takeover of citizen control of housing in their communities.
Speaker of the House Joseph Shekarchi headlined a presentation sponsored by the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce. This event, hosted by Rep. Terri Cortvriend, was about the affordable housing legislation passed in the last three years. There were no questions from attendees, and the other side of the affordable housing issue was not presented, or even mentioned. There are at present 11 town councils that have joined Portsmouth in passing resolutions opposing the loss of much of the discretion their Planning and Zoning Boards exercise, as well as the council’s control over writing residential zoning code.
In almost half of the towns in our state, the councils – on a bipartisan basis – have voted to enter Superior Court to obtain a temporary injunction on the housing laws passed in the recent Assembly sessions. This is being done to both evaluate the actual impact on the infrastructure of their towns and its cost. They also intend to ask the court to rule on the constitutionality of the 35 or so laws passed, and specifically how Article XIII, the home rule section of the Rhode Island Constitution, applies to that legislation. While there are conflicting interpretations on the home rule provisions of the state constitution, there can be no dispute on one fact: two years ago, local government wrote and administered residential zoning code; now they do not. Citizen oversight of that process is also now gone. In addition, the new laws put an end to the protections in the zoning code for single-family homes on single lots…