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NeighborWorks to sell off Front Street home in renovation lottery

Buildings and homes in need of repairs in Woonsocket and Newport have access to funds for rehabilitation under an affordable housing initiative announced Monday.

The R.I. Housing and Mortgage Finance Corp. board awarded $200,000 in grants in November to several city-based programs that support homeownership, financial counseling and environmentally “green” infrastructure.

Rhode Island Foundation announces $3.6 million in new grants to support the ongoing work of six Health Equity Zones in the state, marking a sea change in investments in communities

Rhode Island was ranked as one of the country’s least affordable housing markets in March, while in the first quarter of 2018, the state’s median house price jumped by 10 percent, rising to $252,250. “Though Rhode Island’s housing market has not yet hit the peak reached before the housing downturn, strong price gains are affecting affordability, particularly among first-time home buyers,” the Rhode Island Association of Realtors said in its first-quarter market report, released Wednesday.

From the Office of U.S. Congressmen David N. Cicilline: U.S. Congressmen David N. Cicilline (D-RI) and Jim Langevin (D-RI) announced that Rhode Island community organizations are receiving nearly $450,000 through NeighborWorks America to support affordable housing and revitalizing local communities. NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley is receiving a grant of $258,000, while the West Elmwood Housing Development Corp. is receiving $188,000 in new funds.

Rhode Island’s Democratic elected leaders, many of whom opposed the $1.5-trillion tax-cut bill passed by congressional Republicans earlier this year, are hoping a program within it will help jump-start the Blackstone Valley economy. With no discussion, the state House of Representatives on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution designating “the Blackstone River Corridor Municipalities of Providence, Woonsocket, East Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls as Qualified Opportunity Zones” under the new tax law.

Since the General Assembly passed the state’s affordable housing law in 1991, only five communities have met the law’s basic requirement: a housing stock that is at least 10-percent affordable.

House sales increased in Rhode Island for the fifth consecutive year in 2017, creating a “hot” market despite falling inventory, according to the Rhode Island Association of Realtors.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?” The Woonsocket Martin Luther King Community Committee and NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley were doing their part to answer that question Saturday at St. James Baptist Church on South Main Street, where more than 30 volunteers young and old kicked off a year-long service project repurposing old newspaper boxes into mini-food pantries called Blessing Boxes.