Last month, Rhode Island legislators urged Gov. Dan McKee to declare homelessness a statewide public health emergency. As the new semester begins, leaders from student group Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere are expanding their efforts to address housing justice in Providence.
The Herald spoke to leaders from HOPE’s advocacy, finance and outreach branches to better understand the organization’s upcoming plans.
One HOPE leader said this semester, the student group plans to support local organizations’ campaigns to ensure rent stabilization in Providence — especially as rent in Providence continues to rise.
One such piece of legislation is an ordinance introduced by Direct Action for Rights and Equality and the Rhode Island Center for Justice, which proposes to cap rent increases at 4%, among other rent stabilization measures. The ordinance was sent to the Providence City Council in April and will be brought to a vote later this year.
The HOPE leader emphasized the urgency of this bill, as uncapped rents can rapidly worsen the ongoing housing crisis.
In 2024, over 2,400 unhoused people in Rhode Island were counted in the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness’s annual count. Data from the coalition’s 2025 count, conducted last month, is set to be released in June.
HOPE also hopes to put pressure on local city councillors — including City Council Member John Goncalves ’13 MA’15 — to support housing justice, the HOPE leader said.
“HOPE and DARE met with Goncalves last semester, and Goncalves was never really clear about his position,” the leader said, adding that to him, the housing crisis is “not a complicated issue.”
Last December, demonstrators from both HOPE and DARE left a bag of coal at Goncalves’s doorstep and sang a carol outside his residence with revised lyrics about rent stabilization.
Goncalves did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment.
HOPE has also organized a summit in collaboration with housing justice groups at around seven other universities, Calvin Kirk ’25, another HOPE leader, told The Herald. The summit will take place virtually this weekend, according to Kirk.
Kirk hopes the summit will be a space to exchange ideas and “share tactics to navigate administration relationships and relationships with the community,” he said.
In addition to advocating for housing justice, HOPE also conducts weekly community outreach in the form of weekly walks and meal services.
The outreach branch is split up into smaller teams that walk predefined routes around Providence, giving out snacks and supplies to community members, according to HOPE leader Mira Mehta ’25. These walks will begin for the semester next week.
When supporting homeless people, Kirk emphasized that outreach groups must “not over-promise and under-deliver” to ensure that they receive consistent and reliable assistance.
HOPE also aims to change how homeless individuals are viewed by sharing their stories online, Mehta said. The student group partnered with the Rhode Island Housing Advocacy Project and other housing justice groups to create the Rhode Island Real People Project, in which local homeless individuals share their stories online.
“A lot of times, there’s this perception of who you are or what you must have done to deserve or end up in that situation,” Mehta said, adding that the Real People Project is intended to help combat this perception.
“They’re part of our community, and it’s important that we see them that way,” she added.
Annika Singh is a senior staff writer from Singapore who enjoys rewatching Succession and cheating on the NYT crossword.
