A ribbon-cutting was held on Monday for new affordable housing in Providence. The nonprofit group ONE Neighborhood Builders was responsible for a new building on Bowdoin Street and a rehabbed property on Delaine Street in the city's Olneyville section. The Bowdoin Street apartment is at the site of a deadly house fire in 2018.
Senator Jack Reed was among the attendees at the ribbon cutting.
“ONE Neighborhood Builders has done it again,” said said U.S. Senator Jack Reed. “They have brought us an opportunity to showcase where Rhode Island’s cutting-edge approach to affordable housing, the types of projects and the potential they’ve demonstrated, will enhance both the neighborhoods and the lives of those who live here.”
Lack of affordable housing is “a national problem of extraordinary importance,” Reed said. “One of the biggest factors in inflation, in terms of what families are paying, is increased rents. And we have to deal with that. And we have to deal with that with more houses.”
“ONE Neighborhood Builders firmly believes that ‘housing is health’— in other words, housing that is safe, healthy, and affordable is the most essential social determinant of health,” said Jennifer Hawkins, President and Executive Director of ONE Neighborhood Builders. “Without safe, stable housing, individuals’ health suffers. These beautiful new apartments will not only bring stability to the residents, but they also enhance the overall neighborhood where they are located.”
The apartments combined include seventeen units.
The project benefited from about four-million dollars in federal funding.
(Photo provided by and thanks to One Neighborhood Builders)