All in the family? Why these RIers support letting more unrelated people live together

PROVIDENCE ? After a breakup, Kristine Alach moved into a room for $675 a month, excluding utilities, in a six-bedroom apartment near Lippit Park.

She had wanted to buy a house, and was looking to buy in the greater Providence area, but the 50% increase in house prices since the onset of the pandemic made that impossible. Instead, looking to Facebook Marketplace, she found the room listing in a house filled with other women. Her roommates are all in their 30s.

"The convenience and shared resources, are the reason I chose this space, as it's not a space I would invest in extra relationships in my life," she said.

This kind of living situation, six unrelated people living together, is banned in much of the state under a state law that lets municipalities set a ceiling for the number of "unrelated" people who live together.

New legislation introduced this session, H 7382, would raise the cap from three unrelated people to five, or for bigger houses, set the cap at the number of bedrooms.

Rep. Jacquelyn Baginski, D-Cranston, said she introduced the bill last year, which made it to the "one-yard line." As she looked around the state at cities limiting the number of unrelated people who can live together, she realized her own city, Cranston, was one that set the limit at three.

"It occurred to me, we can create more supply, more housing stock, by easing that restriction," she said.

Baginski said she has received a "ton" of emails from people all over the state in support of the legislation.

Narragansett the most recent example

Narragansett has been leading the charge for years to utilize the provision to make it harder for University of Rhode Island students to rent houses in the off season. The most recent move by the town was opposed by its own planning board, which noted that it would only increase housing scarcity as students would need to fill more homes.

Where did they go? Rooming houses were once plentiful and cheap housing. Now, in RI, they're a dying breed.

Who's in the family?

The state's zoning enabling law explicitly allows cities and towns to set a limit on the number of unrelated people who are allowed to live together, at a minimum of three. In all, 17 communities limit the number of people who can live together.

Under state law, households are defined as a "family," which includes servants and employees living with a family, or as a group of unrelated people living together.

Family members, in state law, are defined as those related by "blood, marriage or other legal means." That includes children and parents, spouses, mothers- and fathers-in-law, grandparents, grandchildren, domestic partners, siblings and "care recipients." Foster children are not included in the state's definition.

The family definition in state law is based on institutions such as marriage and adoption that, until very recently, discriminated against members of the LGBTQ+ community.

As part of the queer community, Alach said many of her friends and acquaintances are part of families that don't meet the state's definition, including those who find family outside of romantic relationships.

"I think it's shortsighted to exclude or limit or police those kinds of relationships, and make them illegal," Alach said. "That's essentially what we're talking about, making it illegal to live in that kind of situation."

More: What's the most expensive apartment in Providence? The answer might shock you

Cheap housing a key need

For Alach, finding the cheap space in the city allowed her to transition from being a salaried employee to starting her own company as a pet sitter and dog walker under the brand Community Pet Care.

"If I had purchased a home, I would not have left that job, and I think it was a great transition for me, to start a business," Alach said. "I would say, it has helped me to have more flexibility in making career choices."

She is moving out at the end of the month to an apartment in Pawtucket she'll be sharing with a friend. Living in a room was getting to be a little confining, but it allowed her to switch career paths.

Intentionally living together

Jennifer Dalton Vincent and her husband bought a big Victorian duplex in the Elmwood neighborhood in 2019, right before housing prices skyrocketed. The couple had been renting a house in Elmwood when their landlord gave them a three-months notice that he was not going to renew their lease. When they looked at rents, they were shocked at how much they had gone up.

Instead, they decided to buy, but looked to find something big enough that they could bring their friends with them.

"We wanted to continue living with them, to continue living communally," Vincent said.

Eventually, those roommates moved on, and other people moved in. Now, one of the people in the house is a 65-year-old man, as well as Dalton's 18-year-old son. When their tenant had major surgery, they reconfigured the house and put him on the first floor, helping to take care of him while he recovered.

That room for a time became Dalton's, after she was recovering from giving birth to her newest child, now 6 weeks old.

"We wind up, as roommates, developing bonds, being willing to care for each other," Dalton said.

While they live on the first and second floors, they rent the third floor to a family for below the market rate. Dalton and her husband cover their mortgage and in exchange, get stable tenants.

Dalton said she hopes Rep. David Morales' bill, D-Providence, to create a pilot program to encourage landlords to offer below-market rents to people at or below 80% of the area median income will gain traction this year, as it's something she would sign up for.

Dalton said she hopes more people think about opening their homes to roommates, as it would help the housing crunch by creating some supply.

"It's such an achievable thing," she said.

The problem is changing the way people think about opening their homes, she said.

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Reach reporter Wheeler Cowperthwaite at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @WheelerReporter.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Could more unrelated RIers be allowed to live together? This bill would allow it.