By Jacquelyn Voghel- Published July 11, 2025
“Rhode Island has added yet another tool in its battle to ease the shortage of housing in the state, creating a “housing land bank” that can accept, hold and repurpose various types of properties for home development.
Affordable housing advocates say the “bank” – created by legislation signed into law by Gov. Daniel J. McKee on June 27 – will have the mission of creating or expanding affordable housing stock by identifying vacant land and easing its transfer to reputable developers.[…]
Nonprofit housing developer ONE Neighborhood Builders is well-acquainted with the burden of acquiring property suitable for development. Just to purchase the privately owned land to build the 144-unit Center City Apartments in East Providence, for instance, cost the organization $4.5 million.
One Neighborhood Builders pulled the funding together with a $1 million grant from RI Housing and a $3.5 million loan from LISC Rhode Island, in addition to a $154,000 East Providence Community Development Block Grant to cover additional expenses.
While not all of One Neighborhood Builders’ active developments came with quite as high of a price for land purchases, all were substantial investments: The developer purchased the Del Toro property in Providence for $1.25 million using a philanthropic donation, for instance, and The Avenue property for $975,000 using an LISC Rhode Island loan and organizational predevelopment capital.
Though the housing land bank legislation won’t directly cover those expenses, the nonprofit is optimistic that it will spur more development opportunities and reduce or eliminate acquisition costs.
“We see this as another tool in the toolbox for affordable housing development,” said Alexandra Steinberg, policy and research manager for ONE Neighborhood Builders. “Land banks can be a great resource to help reduce development costs, especially through acquisition and to incentivize the use of unused, dilapidated or vacant properties for affordable housing.”
Additionally, the land bank “is going to hopefully help developers such as us to be able to consider and approach developing a piece of land in a way that lends itself to the timeline and schedule that nonprofit developers are actually looking at,” said Kyle McKendall, vice president of resource development and communications at ONE Neighborhood Builders.”
