The Parcel 6 project in Providence, Rhode Island, will have 62 residential units, half of which will be workforce housing with the help of a new RIHousing program. D+P Real Estate and Truth Box are developing the mixed-use project.
Courtesy D+P Real Estate and Truth Box, Inc.

Rhode Island Housing (RIHousing) is working to solve the state’s “missing middle” puzzle.

In an effort to expand housing opportunities for middle-income workers, the agency is piloting a loan program to help finance developments with units for households earning between 80% and 120% of the area median income (AMI), a group often referred to as the missing middle. These are families caught in the gap between paying expensive market rents they cannot support and being ineligible for traditional affordable housing opportunities.

“The goal was to try to identify a source of financing and see if we could leverage resources to create deed-restricted housing for that band between 80% and 120% of the AMI, with an emphasis on the 80% to 100%,” says Anne Berman, RIHousing’s director of real estate development. “These are folks who are entry-level municipal workers, entry-level teachers.”

The National Council of State Housing Agencies recently recognized RIHousing’s Workforce Housing Innovation Challenge (WHIC) with an award for program excellence in the encouraging new rental housing construction category.

So far, the agency has rolled out two funding cycles, with strong interest from developers. Between the two rounds, RIHousing received 19 proposals requesting $25 million. It was able to provide a little more than $9 million to six projects, helping create 394 total units, of which 112 will be deed restricted as workforce homes.

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