All News & Events

According to the American Lung Association, a new smokefree housing rule from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will protect as many as 15,000 RI families who are currently living in public housing communities from secondhand smoke.

The General Assembly today approved legislation sponsored by Sen. Harold M. Metts and Rep. Mary Duffy Messier to add five years to the life of an expiring law that keeps families in their homes and avoids foreclosure.

Rhode Island again scored well in a recent report on the strength and enforcement of its homebuilding codes. However, with the 2018 hurricane season underway, several factors could put the state’s housing stock at risk in the event of a major storm.

Although the number of sales slowed, the state’s median house price for the second quarter of 2018, $280,000, was the highest quarterly price in 11 years. The median price was also up nearly 9 percent compared with the second quarter of 2017, the Rhode Island Association of Realtors and the Statewide Multiple Listing Service reported Wednesday.

5 reasons to check out the RI Livable Homes grant.

The median price of houses sold in Rhode Island in June hit $290,000, the highest monthly median price since July 2006, the Rhode Island Association of Realtors reported Friday. A continuing issue with low inventory led to a nearly 4-percent decrease in the number of houses sold in June, compared with June 2017, the association also reported.

Following a national search, the Board of Directors for United Way of Rhode Island has selected Cortney Nicolato to lead the organization as its next President and CEO. She joins the organization on September 24, 2018, succeeding Anthony Maione, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

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.

Rhode Island had the highest eviction rate among New England states in 2016, and Providence's rate nearly tripled Boston's. The Providence Journal reports new data from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University shows elevated eviction rates in the Ocean State. There were 5,069 evictions in Rhode Island in 2016 and 1,580 in its capital city.

The 2018 RI Kids Count Factbook, released on Monday, is fascinating. It provides a window into the lives of Rhode Island’s children, and it also offers some peripheral data that contextualizes how the state’s youngest residents are raised.