Earlier this month, nearly 50 Rhode Island legislators called on Gov. Dan McKee to declare homelessness a statewide public health emergency. In a Jan. 10 letter written by State Sen. Tiara Mack ’16 (D-Providence), legislators urged the governor to allocate more resources to those experiencing homelessness in the Ocean State.
“Your leadership is needed now to protect and save the lives of Rhode Islanders across our state, including our working class neighbors, our children and our veterans,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter to the governor.
The statement came four days after McKee shared a press release detailing the state’s plan to expand resources for people experiencing homelessness this winter. In preparation for the polar vortex during the week of Jan. 6, the state opened temporary “emergency winter hubs” in Westerly and West Warwick along with preexisting overnight shelters.
Still, the legislators expressed concern over the lack of services for unhoused people during the winter as low temperatures and “arctic outbreaks” sweep through Rhode Island.
Mack said she wrote the lawmakers’ letter after numerous housing service providers described their frustrations with the governor’s administration and a need for long-term housing solutions.
Declaring homelessness a public health emergency would allow these providers to access more resources, increase funding and bypass specific housing rules and regulations, according to Mack. The emergency declaration could also allow the state to open more additional affordable housing units.
The Emergency COVID Housing Oppotunities Village, more commonly known as the ECHO Village, is an affordable housing unit in Providence with 45 pallet shelters. It finished construction in March 2024, but its has been postponed due to fire regulation concerns. In a public health emergency, such regulations could be bypassed, Mack said.
The legislators framed housing as a public health issue, with Mack arguing that “housing is health care.” Mack, who studied public health while at Brown, said that “the more support for housing that we provide to all of our residents, the healthier they are.”
Last January, more than 2,000 people in Rhode Island were without a home during the the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness’s yearly night-long count. In 2024, Rhode Island also had the second-highest rate of chronic homelessness in America, and at least 54 Rhode Islanders died while experiencing homelessness.
Rhode Island has “pretty startling statistics” when it comes to housing, said Jennifer Barrera, the coalition’s chief strategy officer. “That is the result of decades of poor planning and lack of investment in affordable housing,” she said. “It will take decades for us to dig out of the housing deficit that we’re in.”
Mack cites the nation’s opioid epidemic, Rhode Island’s increase in rental prices and the state’s lack of tenant-focused legislation as a few contributors to the housing crisis.
Currently, 1,252 state-funded emergency shelter beds are open across the state, Rhode Island Department of Housing Spokesperson Patti Doyle told The Herald. The emergency hubs provided 75 additional spaces for shelter, she added.
But the emergency winter hubs were only open temporarily until the end of the polar vortex.
As temperatures plummeted in early January, outreach members of Rhode Island Housing Advocacy Project helped individuals across Providence in need of shelter get into emergency hubs, Eric Hirsch, the organization’s interim director told The Herald. Hirsch said several unhoused people told him it was difficult to get into the emergency hubs.
Eventually, Hirsch’s team brought “dozens of people” to the Providence City Hall, where City Councilors Justin Roias and Miguel Sanchez opened the City Council chamber for those still in need of shelter — a decision Mayor Brett Smiley said “disrespects the hard work of our community partners who have the expertise to adequately provide support for our community.”
For the last three years, RIHAP has called on the state to declare homelessness a state of emergency or a public health emergency, according to Hirsch. In November, the group organized a rally at the Rhode Island State House demanding McKee declare Rhode Island’s homelessness crisis a state of emergency.
Rhode Island’s housing crisis has worsened since the pandemic, with 1,810 people experiencing homelessness according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2023 homelessness assessment report.
On Tuesday, McKee and Secretary of the Rhode Island Department of Housing Deborah Goddard announced in a press release that an additional $65,000 in funding from the Municipal Homelessness Support Initiative would be used to support housing initiatives, such as the winter emergency hubs.
While Mack supports these efforts, she says Rhode Island is facing “a housing crisis and a homelessness crisis that has a billion-dollar problem,” she said. “This crisis is going to require every agency that deals with housing, health, care and infrastructure at the state level.”
Sanai Rashid lives in Long Island, New York. As an English and Economics concentrator, she is passionate about storytelling and how numbers and data create narratives in ways words alone cannot. When she is not writing, you can find her trying new pizza places in Providence or buying another whale stuffed animal.
