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Rhode Island
To tackle Rhode Island’s rise in homelessness, Governor McKee proposes $16.6m for one-time fund – The Boston Globe
Joseph Codega Jr., a budget officer with the state’s Office of Management & Budget estimated this tax could generate approximately $2.5 million in fiscal year 2025 and $5 million the following year, according to a memorandum sent to the House and Senate Finance Committees on Monday, which was obtained by the Globe.
“My administration is committed to improving the housing outlook for Rhode Islanders — whether they are experiencing housing insecurity, seeking rentals that families can afford or working toward first-time home ownership,” McKee said in a statement.
The budget amendments were considered welcome news by leaders at the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.
“As the number of Rhode Islanders needing shelter, housing, and Housing Problem Solving grows, funding must also increase to support the need,” said Juan Espinoza, the development manager for the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.
The news comes as providers and advocates for the homeless are expected to gather at the Rhode Island State House on Tuesday to press state officials and lawmakers to steer $30 million to fund Rhode Island’s homeless response system at the current level.
Simultaneously, approximately 346 winter shelter beds that were funded last fall were expected to be phased out or closed at the end of April when the state’s contracts with several providers were expected to expire. Closing those beds could increase the state’s homeless population and create an additional strain on the state’s “homeless response system, healthcare system, emergency response system, city and town services and other systems,” said Espinoza.
The state’s Housing Department said many of these shelters will receive extensions for the next several months.
In response to questions posed by the Globe, Housing Department spokeswoman Emily Marshall said only 47 shelter beds will close at the end of April. Funding for additional seasonal beds at Providence’s Emmanuel House is being extended through September, while 30 seasonal beds by Westerly Area Rest Meals (WARM) for families in Kingston is being extended through July, she said.
Contracts for a 120-bed program in Warwick run by Open Doors and a 30-bed program by Tri-county Community Action’s Family Shelter in Burrillville are being extended through September, said Marshall.
The state was able to increase seasonal shelter beds by 32 percent compared to last year by leveraging multiple state, federal, and municipal funding sources, said Marshall.
“While federal funding for these efforts was temporarily increased in the wake of the COVID-19 emergency, the fact remains that this one-time federal funding will not be available in the future,” she said. “As the governor has indicated, it is important to identify new recurring funding sources that can help address our housing and homelessness challenges over multiple years — and to partner with municipalities, nonprofits, and advocacy groups to help fund and carry out this work moving forward.”
Data collected by the state’s Homeless Management Information System showed 529 Rhode Islanders experienced unsheltered homelessness at the beginning of April 2024, which is a 645 percent increase in unsheltered homelessness since January 2019.
Even with the new budget amendments that direct funding to tackle the shelter shortage, “there are still over 500 people outside with the existing resources in place.”
The one-time $16.6 million commitment from the governor’s office “is half of what is required to level-fund existing resources,” said Espinoza, who added that providers and advocates will push for a larger, permanent funding stream for the rest of the year, and for 2025.
“These extensions are suitable for the short term, but in the long term, we need to address the root cause of the growing number of people in need,” said Espinoza.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.
New East Bay Bike Path bridges are open and ready for bikes
What’s it like to ride over the new East Bay Bike Path bridges? We sent a reporter to try them out.
I’ve long thought bike paths are among Rhode Island’s premier attractions, up there with the beaches, the mansions and the bay.
We like to knock government, but credit where it’s due, the state has done an amazing job building out an incredible pedaling network.
It’s clearly a priority.
At least I thought it was.
But they’ve just dropped the ball on what should have been a beautiful new stretch.
The plan was to finish a mile-long connector from the East Providence end of the Henderson Bridge all the way to the East Bay Bike Path.
There was even $25 million set aside to get it done.
Except WPRI recently reported that it’s now been canceled.
The main fault lies with the Trump administration, which is no friend of bike paths, and moved to kill that $25 million.
But it gets complicated, as government funding always does.
To try to rescue that money, the state DOT reportedly worked with the administration to refunnel it into a road project. Specifically, the $25 million will now be spent helping upgrade the mile-long highway between the Henderson Bridge and North Broadway in East Providence, turning it into a more pleasant boulevard.
That totally sounds worthy.
But it’s insane to throw away the bike path plan.
Especially for a particular reason in this case.
They’d already put a ton of money into starting it.
When state planners designed the new Henderson Bridge between the East Side and East Providence, they included a bike path.
It’s a beauty – well protected from traffic by a barrier, a great asset for safely riding over the Seekonk River.
The plan was to continue it another mile or so along East Providence’s Waterfront Drive, ultimately connecting with the East Bay Bike Path, which runs all the way to Bristol. Which, by the way, is one of the nicest bike paths you’ll find anywhere.
But alas, that connector plan has been canceled.
So the expensive stretch over the Henderson Bridge to East Providence is now a bike path to nowhere. Once the bridge ends, the path on it continues a few hundred yards or so and then, just … ends.
Too bad.
We were so close.
Most of the stories on the issue have been about the complex negotiation to rescue the $25 million by rerouting it to that nearby highway-to-boulevard project. But I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of that bureaucratic process here because it loses sight of the heart of this story.
Which is that an amazing new addition to one of the nation’s best state bike path systems has just been scrapped.
You can knock the Rhode Island government for blowing a lot of things.
The PawSox.
The Washington Bridge.
But they’ve done great with bike paths.
And especially, linking many of them together.
Example: not too many years ago, Providence bikers had to risk dicey traffic on the East Side to get to the more pleasant paths in India Point Park and on the 195 bridge to the East Bay Path.
But the state fixed that by adding an amazing connector that starts behind the Salvation Army building and beautifully winds along the water of the Seekonk River for a mile or so.
That makes a huge difference – and no doubt has avoided some bike-car accidents.
We were close to a comparable stretch on the other side of the river – that’s what the $25 million would have done.
But it’s now apparently dead.
Online commenters aren’t happy about it.
On a Reddit string, “Toadscoper” accused the state of being “complicit” with the feds in rerouting the money from bikes to cars.
And there was this fascinating post from FineLobster 5322, who apparently is a disappointed planner who worked on the project: “Mind you money has already been spent on phase one so rejecting it at this point is wasting money and also against the public interest … but what do I know? I only worked on the project as an engineer … I didn’t get into this to build more highways. I do it … to give back to communities and give them more access to their environment.”
Wow. One can imagine the state planning team is devastated. That’s not a small consideration. Good people go into government to make life better in Rhode Island, and it’s a bad play to take the spirit out of the job by first assigning a great human-scale project and then, after a ton of work, trashing it.
A poster named Homosapiens simply said, “We just accept this?”
Hopefully not.
The first stretch of the path over the Henderson Bridge is done, money already sunk.
What a shame to leave that as a path to nowhere.
It doesn’t have to happen.
Between Governor McKee and our Washington delegation, there’s got to be a way to get this done.
There’s got to be.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
WARWICK, R.I. (WPRI) — Two people are dead and another person seriously hurt after a crash involving two vehicles on the highway in Warwick Saturday.
Rhode Island State Police said the crash happened around 1:34 p.m. on the ramp from Route 113 West to I-95 South.
According to police, a Hyundai SUV that was driving in the middle lane of the highway started to drift to the right, crossed the first lane, and then crossed onto the on-ramp lane. The car struck the guardrail twice before driving through the grass median.
The Hyundai then struck the driver’s side of a Mercedes SUV that was on the ramp, causing the Mercedes to roll over and come to a rest. The impact sent the Hyundai over the guardrail and down an embankment.
The driver of the Hyundai, a 73-year-old man, and his passenger, a 69-year-old woman, were both pronounced dead at the hospital.
A woman who was in the Mercedes was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital in critical condition.
State police said all lanes of traffic were reopened by 4:30 p.m.
The investigation remains ongoing.
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Watch 12 News Now on WPRI.com or with the free WPRI 12+ TV app.
A federal judge on Friday tossed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit aiming to force Rhode Island to hand over its voter information as part of the Trump administration’s push to acquire voter data from several states.
Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy wrote that federal law does not allow the DOJ “to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” siding with Rhode Island election officials. She added that the DOJ did not provide evidence to suggest that Rhode Island violated election law.
McElroy, a Trump appointee, wrote that she sided with the similar decision in Oregon. That decision ruled that the DOJ was not entitled to unredacted voter registration lists.
“Absent from the demand are any factual allegations suggesting that Rhode Island may be violating the list maintenance requirements,” she said in her ruling.
Rhode Island Secretary of State Gregg Amore (D) praised McElroy’s decision. He said in a statement that the Trump administration “seems to have no problem taking actions that are clear Constitutional overreaches, regularly meddling in responsibilities that are the rights of the states.”
“Today’s decision affirms our position: the United States Department of Justice has no legal right to – or need for – the personally-identifiable information in our voter file,” he said. “Voter list maintenance is a responsibility entrusted to the states, and I remain confident in the steps we take here in Rhode Island to keep our list as accurate as possible.”
The Hill reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The DOJ called for the voter lists as it investigated Rhode Island’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allowed Americans to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license.
The DOJ sued at least 30 states, as well as Washington, D.C., in December demanding their respective voter data. This data includes birth dates, names and partial Social Security numbers.
At least 12 states have given or said they will give the DOJ their voter registration lists, according to a tracker operated by the Brennan Center for Justice.
The department stated after it lost a similar suit against Massachusetts earlier this month that it had “sweeping powers” to access the voter data and that, if states fail to comply, courts have a “limited, albeit vital, role” in directing election officers on behalf of the administration to produce the records. The DOJ cited the Civil Rights Act as being intended to unearth alleged election law violations.
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