Forty-five tiny cabins assembled off Route 146 in Providence in February 2024 to temporarily shelter people experiencing homelessness will be ready for occupancy by the end of February 2025, Rhode Island’s acting housing secretary told a panel of senators Tuesday.

“I’ve not given a date in the past because we’ve disappointed so many people,” Secretary Debroah Goddard told the joint gathering of the Senate Oversight Committee and Committee on Housing & Municipal Government. “But I would say probably within four weeks we will be open.”

It’s been an agonizingly slow process to open ECHO Village, which will be managed by House of Hope, a Warwick community development corporation.

The one-room cabins off Victor Street were supposed to have opened by the end of March 2024. Then the project was pushed to the end of spring, then the fall, and then to some time this winter.

Part of the blame has been placed on the state’s fire and building codes. The state’s fire marshal told a legislative committee in December that his office found it difficult to determine which section of the state fire code applied to the pallet shelters. Staff decided to go with the one used for hotels or dorms — which the state also used in its initial application submitted last January.

Fire permits were ultimately approved in April. A building permit was issued last June.

“It’s seven months that this project has been under active construction,” House of Hope Executive Director Laura Jaworski told senators Tuesday. “That’s still incredibly aggressive and [a] remarkable time period to have done what we have done on that site.”

All that remains is hooking up each of the cabins to a Rhode Island Energy transformer — something the state initially requested last July, Housing Department Spokesperson Emily Marshall told Rhode Island Current in an email.

“At that time, the site still had significant work to do before it could be electrified, but the request was made early in the process knowing that, given supply chain issues, it could take many months for RI Energy to acquire a transformer,” Marshall wrote.

Goddard called the delays “inhumane.”

“We need to have a collective mind and a collective will across government, across communities, across actors to address this,” she said. “I want to keep looking forward.”

Senate Minority Leader Jessica de la Cruz, a North Smithfield Republican, still had doubts about the state’s new timeline.

“By the time the end of February comes, we’re looking at spring,” she said.

Tuesday’s meeting was called by Senate leadership in order to review the state’s plan to address homelessness, which has faced scrutiny over a lack of emergency shelters amid recent cold snaps. 

It also served more as an informal confirmation hearing for a housing secretary who has yet to undergo the chamber’s formal vetting process.

“This is the first time I’m meeting most of you,” Goddard told the joint panel. “I hope I have the chance to show you that my manner is generally very straightforward — sometimes too straightforward.”