If Rhode Island had more development and jobs…the housing wouldn’t be so unaffordable….

The median household income in Mass compared to RI is a 22% difference.

We lack good jobs because we don’t have good economic development and chase everything out of town because of things like it’s too tall, it blocks the abandoned Superman building, it’s too modern.

People tried to push against a building next to the interstate and Trader Joe’s that was proposed to be a company’s headquarters….because of TRAFFIC. Are you joking? What 8 story office building next to highway on/off ramps creates widespread traffic problems.

I’m not sure what that has to do with developments starting now?

They were built 70 years ago in a neighborhood that wasn’t (and still isn’t) prime in Manhattan (relative). NYC is an interesting case in affordable housing but it’s also ridiculously competitive and certainly not the most fair….

Also, the Fane Tower’s location is prime. It’s like the equivalent of Upper West Side - walkable to midtown and Central Park views??not equivalent to the Lower East Side circa 1950s. NYC is a terrible example. Lol

Hasn't worked in the last 15 years, but sure man let's build a bunch more and I'm sure they will drop the prices annnnny minute now.

Lol

So do you honestly believe housing stays empty forever if they’re considered “luxury” and nobody can pay that price? Or do they eventually reduce the price to whatever the market will allow, get filled, the new occupants old houses become vacant, and so on. Because that is how economics works my friend.

Does the city need more luxury apartments? I thought there were plenty of unsold units. They put some up at station row like 15 years ago and it's full pretty empty and was used for dorms for a while.

Back in the mid 1880's

Developers develop when it's profitable. It's profitable right now to develop luxury housing because owners can be sure that they will make a shitload of money in rent. It's not as profitable to develop affordable housing, since the rent recouped is far lower.

Yes, we should build. And one of the arguments for building is that rich people will stop occupying otherwise affordable housing and move into luxury developments. But there are only so many rich people, and at a certain point, building luxury housing will no longer be profitable and the filtering effect will diminish. Without that incentive, developers will have to accept a far lower profit and build housing for normal people, and it's not clear that they will do so.

That's why we need a public developer unmoored from the profit motive. It's also why we should fight to make sure larger allocations of affordable housing are included in luxury developments, because that's a unit you know will be affordable, as opposed to a theoretical unit that might open up because a rich person moves into a luxury development.

It's worth noting that the Fane project went through years of review and changes because of community input. Hell, it was originally going to be 3 buildings. I think the last design change was in the last year.

Yep. Main reason why the city never grows

> If NYC can do it, Providence can do it).

New York City is the economic capital of the western hemisphere. The tax base is incredibly strong and Manhattan, the smallest borough, is still about 10% larger than all of Providence.

It's absurd to assume we're capable of that and that's without getting into the reality that the early 1950s and and early 2020s aren't exactly the same landscape.

Even then, New York City and Manhattan itself still aren't cheap. The rent on that development is great for the 6,000 or so households living in them but it didn't do a damn thing for everyone else.

Massive L

Kind of sucks, looked cool

The I-195 land is the worst. Dealing with the city, the commission and the state, then every property owner within fifty miles with a commute through providence has standing to sue.

On what level? Vacant lots owned by the state don’t pay taxes.

When was benefit street poor? And which end? That was were Buddy lived and the Brown family etc, etc, etc.

The city was spending nothing. The building had a tax break for when it got built, but the Fane building would still be paying a heck of a lot more than the $0 in tax revenue that Providence has collected over the last decade for the land.

[deleted]

How? There isn't a huge plethora of underdeveloped land and the amount of tax money it'd cost to even add 1,000 units is going to have the net effect of property taxes (rent) going up for everyone else.

This is true. Unfortunately, the whole process was a mixture of proposal and draft. I think there’s space for community input but we need to get rid of all the barriers for development and investment in the area. At the very least they should try to attract new out of state business to the area with incentives. RI’s economic indicators are so bad😭.

Investors probably agreed. From the article:

“Fane did not elaborate on specifics about the risk factors, and a spokesperson declined to comment further. But he previously said the old design was no longer feasible because of the increased cost to build the tower, prompting him to propose the new design in December.”

Somebody probably didn’t get financing.

The rent won't be low when there are more people competing for housing than there is available housing. Demand exceeds supply by a wide margin now and it's only getting worse.

There is no solution that isn't built on adding as many units as possible. We're beggars, not choosers.

Only been in RI 13 years and this project confused me. It looked like it’d be the biggest building in an area that couldn’t support the traffic. The premise made sense, and affordable housing is super needed, and not just in areas that also require people have cars to get around.

https://shopnava.com/ or some of the spots on Hope St like http://phfactorstore.com/ might have some good options!