Federal Policy Responses: Providing Housing for Rhode Island’s Senior Population

One of the biggest challenges facing Rhode Island and the rest of the country is the lack of affordable housing. According to recently released States of the Nation’s Housing 2019 by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, in 2017 only 4 million units were affordable and available to the 11 million extremely low income renters across the country. The situation in Rhode Island is similar to the rest of the country as a study done by SouthCoast Fair Housing found that only 34% of listings across the state were within 120% of the Fair Market Rent.

This problem is especially acute for senior citizens, who are the fastest growing age group in Rhode Island. Rhode Island already has a larger than average senior population, with about 16.6% (176,000 people) of the state’s population age 65+, compared with 15.6% nationwide, according to the 2017 American Community Survey 1 year estimates by the U.S Census Bureau. By 2030, the Rhode Island statewide planning office projects that number will increase to over 23% of the state’s population. Of those seniors, almost 30% have some sort of disability and almost 10% have an income below the poverty level.