Homeless in RI: Let’s get real about ending homelessness – Bernie Beaudreau

Let’s Get Real About Ending Homelessness – submitted as an op-ed by Bernie Beaudreau

The RI Department of Housing acknowledges that Housing 2030 Building Rhode Island’s Future plan, released on April 23, it is NOT a plan to address the needs of the homeless. It states that the plan for the homeless “will include strategies specific to housing stability and homelessness”.

However, the 2030 Plan’s goal statement indicates that the state will finance a total of 2,250 affordable rental units, of which 375 will be Permanent Supportive Housing Units and 500 will be affordable to households with extremely low income (up to 30 of AMI) by 2030 – over the next 5 years. Is this included to limit what we can expect will come from the plan for homelessness?

Consider the real need. According to HomesRI, the shortage of rental homes available for extremely low-income renters is 24,054. There are a total of 49,468 extremely low-income households in Rhode Island, accounting for 31 percent of the population. The 2025 Rhode Island Housing Profile issued by the National Low Income Housing Coalition state’s “In Rhode Island, only 47 rental homes are available for every 100 extremely low-income households. Rhode Island needs to make 25,000 more home affordable for extremely low-income households by expanding access to rental assistance and building deeply affordable rental homes”.

RI’s Housing 2030 Plan suggests the 500 units for extremely low-income households plus 375 permanent supportive units is enough and better than what has been produced over the past. However, the Plan’s 375 permanently supportive units is far short (less than half) of the number of chronically homeless which numbered 756 in 2024, according to the HUD Point-In-Time count. The Plan’s financing of 500 units of extremely low-income units is only 2.1% of the 24,054 units needed.

The Housing 2030 Plan does very little to address Rhode Island’s low-income housing needs and even less to address the housing needs of our state’s 2,442 homeless individuals.

So here are my questions:
1. When will the Interagency Council on Homelessness embark on a serious planning effort to eliminate or at least dramatically reduce homelessness in RI?
2. Who will be participants from the homeless community in that planning process? What voice will those with lived-experience have in the planning process?
3. How will elected officials be engaged participate early in the process so that they can understand and gear up for facing the real costs of ending homelessness, as well as understanding the real human costs of ignoring homelessness?

Any Plan to End Homelessness in Rhode Island must keep the following official metrics in the forefront (from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress – Point in Time Estimates of Homelessness – December 2024, Appendix A):

All People Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 – 2,442
Percent Change 2023 to 2024 – 34.9%
Percent Change 2007 to 2024 – 78.0%
All People Experiencing Unsheltered Homelessness, 2024 – 534
Percent of People Experiencing Homelessness that are Unsheltered, 2024 – 21.9%
All People Experiencing Sheltered Homelessness, 2024 – 1,908
Percent of People Experiencing Homelessness that are Sheltered, 2024 – 78.1%
Number of People in State Experiencing Homelessness per 10,000 people – 22
Individuals Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 – 1,565
People in Families with Children Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 – 877
Unaccompanied Youth Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 – 73
Veterans Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 – 130
Individuals Experiencing Chronic Homelessness, 2024 – 756

Five years is too long to wait for the thousands of homeless Rhode Islanders, children, adults and seniors who experience unimaginable hardship and suffering. Many Rhode Islanders are dying too young from exposure and preventable disease and poor health every year for this lack of basic human need, a decent, affordable home to live in. How about a real Housing 2026 Plan for Ending Homelessness? It is on all of us to make it happen.

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Governor’s Housing 2030 Plan: https://rinewstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Housing-2030-2-1.pdf

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Bernie Beaudreau volunteers for RI Homeless Advocacy Project, Better Lives RI and the Street Medicine program.  He wrote this, in his words, “as a volunteer for the homeless”.  Beaudream is a resident of Rumford.