ONE|NB Executive Director Jennifer Hawkins and ONE|NB Chief of Staff Grace Evans, display plans for the Taunton Avenue development. David DelPoio/The Providence Journal

ONE|NB Executive Director Jennifer Hawkins and ONE|NB Chief of Staff Grace Evans,
display plans for the Taunton Avenue development.
David DelPoio/The Providence Journal

By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
The Providence Journal

PROVIDENCE — A former nursing home-turned-Johnson and Wales University dormitory-turned-empty building with water damage and mold could become part of a three-building, 160-unit affordable housing complex, and move people from the state’s long list of those seeking shelter into permanent housing.

Four nonprofits together, with One Neighborhood Builders taking the lead, purchased the property for $4.5 million. Foster Forward, Crossroads Rhode Island and Family Services of Rhode Island are all cooperating to forward the project.

There’s just one catch − the project needs funding and the nonprofit leaders said they are hopful the state will pay for the project using federal stimulus funds, as the state continues to be gripped by both a housing crises and an affordable housing crises.

One Neighborhood Builders Executive Director Jennifer Hawkins said turning the three-acre site at 345 Taunton Avenue into two new housing buildings and one rehabilitated building will cost $60 million, or $373,000 per unit. They are asking the state for $28 million.

Currently the site is two parking lots flanking a former nursing home.

Affordable housing projects, which cap rents and rely on federal housing vouchers provided by many of their occupants, cannot carry large debt loads because the revenue generated is much less than a market-rate building, Hawkins said.

Rhode Island is last in the new of new homes being built, while homelessness in the state continues to be an issue. At the same time, rents have dramatically increased and housing prices are up 40% since before the pandemic started.

Why are these nonprofits asking for funding?

Hawkins said they are asking for the project to be funded by the legislature this session because there is a finite pool of money for affordable housing projects and the competition for that money is fierce.

The project is not guaranteed enough, or any funding, when it goes through the competitive process. That means the developers have assumed some risk on their $4.5 million purchase, including a loan from the Rhode Island Local Initiatives Support Corporation, taxes, insurance and upkeep on the already water damaged building.

If the project is funded this session, apartments could open by the summer of 2025, Hawkins said.

The project has already received a $2-million congressional earmark for development, plus a $1 million grant from Rhode Island Housing, $154,000 from East Providence and $135,000 from the Rhode Island Foundation to buy the land and begin predevelopment work.

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