Amid RI's housing crises, HUD secretary, McKee tour Newport public housing. What they saw.

NEWPORT – Inside the soon-to-be-renovated Florence Gray Center on Wednesday, Gov. Dan McKee and U.S. Housing and Urban Development Assistant Secretary Kimberly McClain shot a couple of hoops. The two had just completed a tour of the center and neighboring public housing complex Park Holm to see how federal and state investments in communities like Newport are paying off.

“Housing is about income, it's about stabilizing families so they can do well in school, and when they do well in school, that translates into really strong opportunities for the young people in the State of Rhode Island, so we’re going to continue working on that,” McKee said.

Newport is one of six communities in Rhode Island that meet the state’s 10% minimum affordable housing benchmark and yet there is a waitlist of 10,000 applicants vying for the roughly 50 units that become available at Newport Housing Authority’s public housing properties per year.

“I’m just so excited to have this attention to housing because it's so important.,” said Newport Housing Authority Executive Director Rhonda Mitchell, who guided the federal and state officials around the properties on Wednesday. “I mean, the crisis is undeniable, and to know we have the support of our mayor, of the governor of our state who has been incredibly supportive, to have our HUD officials, the regional administrator as well as the assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations, it means so much, and to have the support of our residents, who saw the families come out from Park Holm and applaud the work that’s being done. They’re proud, I think, of their homes and community and they deserve all this attention.”

McKee and McClain were joined by U.S. HUD New England Regional Administrator Juana Matias, RI Department of Housing Secretary Stephen Pryor and others as they toured around the two Newport Housing Authority properties. They walked past the construction skeleton for the future Park Holm Phase IV project, a 51-unit complex of townhouses and peeked inside a completed Phase III apartment.

“We know that affordable housing is really working family housing,” McClain said. “It is housing that our children as they graduate from college need or if they choose not to go to college, they are working in our communities and supporting all of us.”

The RI Department of Housing is nearing its first anniversary of its establishment and McKee said the state is continuing to make moves to address housing issues throughout the state, pointing to the $100 million state housing bond he and Pryor have proposed that still needs General Assembly approval. If the General Assembly approves that bond, McKee said he is asking that 30% of it be used for homeownership programs.

A part of the tour that was cut short was a trip past a section of vacant land the Newport Housing Authority plans to use for its own lease-to-own homeownership program.

Mitchell said she hoped this would also shed light on the needs of the Florence Gray Center, which is slated for well-needed renovations. Through the state, the City of Newport and the Town of Middletown, Newport Housing Authority recently received a $3 million grant in federal COVID-19 recovery funds to make renovations on the Center in Newport, a community hub operated through Newport Housing Authority which offers a range of services, such as GED and English Language classes, as well as spaces for organizations like Newport’s Boys and Girls Club. As a part of the requirement to use the federal funds, the project will have to be completed by October 2026, Mitchell said.

“We had a resident say this is the dream center,” Mitchell said. “We need the funding to renovate this building so it's worthy of our community, Newporters and Middletowners alike.”