If it's fresh corn on the cob and watermelon- It's SUMMER!

Watermelon spitting contests (even adults played) and drippy, salty fingers with matching chins occupy some of my earliest memories!

Picnic- Sun.,, Aug. 17 Noon to 4 at Grist Mill

Middletown Councillor Theresa Santos gave me the handout & so I'll spread the word.

The Middletown Historical Society is sponsoring a picnic- bring-your-own lunch at Paradise Park where the Boyd's Grist Mill is located. Hopefully, it will be a fair day so it will be up & running. It is the oldest running mill in the State.

Sunday, August 17 from Noon to 4 PM. Rain date is August 24.

Paradise Park map

Affordable Housing in Little Compton & Portsmouth

The Church Community Corp. recently rec'd a grant of $3.1 mil from HUD which will go to building 20 affordable units for seniors in the former Country Harvest Restaurant on East Main Rd. The grant will also help lower costs for those living there.
Little Compton now has TWO (!!) affordable units (the State requires 10%).
"It will also help lower the rent so that residents will pay only 30 percent of their adjusted incomes and will support meal programs and social activities." Now the planned project is off to the Planning Board which could take awhile. To qualify seniors must be "very low income" according to established guidelines.

Thanks to reporter Kim Centazzo of the East Bay Newspapers.

Too bad Portsmouth in it's eagerness to please developer J.Brian O'Neill didn't have a requirements for a % of affordable units in his project for the uber-wealthy. When did developers becomes our heroes (see the Sunday Projo)? Portsmouth relies on Newport & Middletown to provide this housing & doesn't come close to the 10% "requirement" mandated by the State. Heaven forbid that any of this new luxury housing should actually have families that live there fulltime with kids utilizing the public schools.

Little Compton Hoping for Elderly Housing

In case you missed Projo's article, I've given you the link. Here is one from the Sakonnet Times also. Church Community Housing out of Newport is trying to get funding to purchase the "Country Harvest" restaurant and turn it into the only subsidized, affordable housing in town. This site sits on the Sakonnet River (West Main Rd.) & would be made into 25 one bedroom units for the elderly.

"Town Council chairman Robert Mushen, noted that of the 1,516 year-round residential units in town, only two are deemed affordable. The town has a long way to go to comply with state requirements that 10 percent of its housing be affordable. No other community in Rhode Island has less affordable housing than Little Compton."

I've blogged on this before. Little C. has no sewer system, so any development there is expensive. Church Community has a signed sales agreement conditional that it gets funding from HUD. There are architectural drawings which show a new two story building replacing the current one story. The housing has the support of the newsly formed Little Compton Housing Trust.

Go Little C! Let's hope that the funding plan works out unlike the Middletown Anchorage Plan which never materialized.

More Luxury Homes Boost Economic Development

So states the Portsmouth Econ. Advisory Committee. "Luxury homes owned by part-year residents could provide a tax boost to Portsmouth, according to projections from the town's Economic Development Committee." (Daily News) Well, duh. Expensive recreational homes bring in lots of money & don't send kids to school. They also tend to use few town services. So build more!

All communities in R.I. are required by state law to provide a minimum of 10% affordable housing for its residents. Guess what the percentage in Portsmouth is - slightly over 2%. Middletown meets its quota, Newport far exceeds it, Tiverton & Little Compton have little. One reason is that these town lack infrastructure - sewers. Portsmouth also has no emergency shelter for those without any kind of housing. Yet last year 25 people required such shelter while claiming Portsmouth as their last residence.

Responsible economic development requires affordable housing for its workers. While Newport shoulders much of this for the State, what about Portsmouth? It's time that other towns & cities stepped up to the plate. I proposed the State providing incentives for communities to do so.

To stray slightly from this topic, my husband spotted rental ads for the Anchorage this weekend. What happened to the proposed sale & affordable condos? GMH is having financial problems, but supposedly the deal was still going to happen. Any deals that the town has made with GMH regarding tax payments could go up in smoke. The rental market here is depressed & so are affordable condos. It's not beyond possibility that the deal with Church Community could still happen. Or that you could see this turn into a public housing. This has the potential to turn into huge economic problems for Middletown. As I've learned after many years in real estate, it ain't over till it's over.