land. That eagerness has taken a thousand
or more potential units off the market.
That’s fine. Where do you want to put the
housing?”
In the 1990s, environmentalists making
a pitch for open space preservation
convinced municipalities that the least
desirable citizen of all was a first grader.
In his talks about land use, GrowSmart
RI Executive Director Scott Wolf likes to
hold up as exhibit one a 1995 report by
the Southern New England Forest
Consortium, purporting to show that the
cost of public education, supported by
local tax dollars, wiped out any revenue
gains from their parents. These analyses
were simplistic and flawed, even though
they made some good points, Wolf says,
but local councils got the message — and
it persists to this day.
“Children are public enemy number
one in many communities, because they
have bought into a false narrative,” he
says. “It’s a real case where the state’s
interest as a whole is undermined by what
many municipalities think is in their
short-term interest. If we lose a congressional
district, you can lay a lot of blame
on the child-resistant approach to land
use decision-making.”
Some of the carrots in Raimondo’s housing
package address these real and imagined
impediments. They include money
for voluntary partnerships between
municipalities and the state for technical
assistance in identifying potential development
sites, regulatory streamlining, and a
program, modelled after one in Massachusetts,
to offset the increased educational costs
of families with children — if the community
can demonstrate they exist. Some of these
depend on the successful passage of the twotiered
conveyance tax — and tax hikes are
never popular on Smith Hill.
Meanwhile, on the battlefields of openconcept
kitchens and double-vanity master
baths, the victories go to the fleet of the
wallet. Ben Carlson, a fifty-year-old woodworker
who won his February bid on a
house in Richmond and moved in May,
recalls his first open house.
“As soon as we walked in the door, they
told us that they already had a bid on the
house and if we were interested, we would
have to place a bid today. I thought ‘Oh, is
this the ticket to enter?’ It was gone by the
end of the day.” �
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RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l JULY 2020 33