Rhode Island Housing Secretary Deborah Goddard sits before the 17-members of the Special Legislative Commission to Study Housing Affordability on Dec. 12, 2024. Th hearing was her first public appearance since starting the job 10 days earlier (Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
She took over as housing secretary on Dec. 2, but Deborah Goddard must still be confirmed by the Rhode Island Senate, which won’t reconvene until Jan. 7, 2025. The veteran housing administrator is spending her first month on the job examining the housing landscape in the smallest state and assessing the many challenges of responding to its lack of affordable homes and rising number of unhoused people. Goddard previously oversaw public housing projects in Massachusetts and New York City. She also has previous experience in Rhode Island, serving as a consultant to the Department of Housing under the state’s first housing secretary, Joshua Saal, who resigned in January 2023 after about a year on the job. Goddard is now the fourth leader in three years to take the reins of the department created in June 2022, succeeding interim director Daniel Connors who replaced Stefan Pryor in July. Goddard oversees a $36 million state budget and a team that will number 38 people once fully staffed.
How have you been adjusting in the short time since you started?
Well, I love it — it feels good. I feel good leading the department. I feel good supporting the department. I think I can move things forward. That tends to be my MO. I’m also transparent. So if there’s an issue, I’m going to be straightforward about it.
With your background in Massachusetts and New York, what appealed to you about taking the job in Rhode Island?
I originally came under Josh Saal. He wanted someone that had deeper housing experience. I enjoyed working with him. I was winding down. Frankly, the department was hiring up, and when this opportunity came, why would I say no? I want the department to succeed. I know there are people there that are working hard, and I have a sort of clarity and insight because I had been working there for a little while. Honestly, it’s my passion.
Your tenure from 2016 to 2019 at the New York City Housing Authority saw controversy over elevated levels of mold and lead found inside homes. Care to address that?
All housing authorities have issues, yeah. I do want to be straightforward: The investigations, the mold, the lead paint, were not in my division — they were in operations. I actually worked very closely with the special master on the mold litigation. I was his eyes and ears — trusted eyes and ears inside the department. That’s not to say that the capital division didn’t face issues. I reorganized, I dealt with some personnel, and put some stuff on the fast track.
How will you move forward with the $10 million carveout from the housing bond voters approved in November that could seed a public developer of housing?
Yeah, that’s the phrase where I keep saying, “What do we mean by it?” We could mean public housing development. We could mean the Maryland, Montgomery County version. So we all need to come and take a look at that. Montgomery County development economics are not the same as Rhode Island. The Montgomery County model — they’re very straightforward. They cannot serve very low-income households in the model that they have. So I want to move strategically and thoughtfully to make sure that we don’t have unintended consequences, that we’re clear about who we’re serving, what we can serve. So again, open to all thoughts.
So what does being a public developer look like to you?
I am not clear on the value of the public entity taking on development risk, construction risk in the housing field. If I can be convinced that the public developer model, whatever that is, adds value, is able to expedite things, I absolutely want to pursue it. I want to support public housing authorities. I’ve said that this is one of my cautions — the federal government abandoned public housing authorities virtually decades ago. I don’t want to replicate that situation. But we have public developers. So is that a platform that we should think about using rather than creating something brand new?
Another important issue in Rhode Island has been construction of affordable homes. And some towns don’t want to get on board with the state’s plan. As housing secretary, how would you try to get these towns to actually address this crisis?
So first of all, it’s not new, right? This is actually how I got into this. I was in high school in my local small town in Massachusetts when my parents started working to support mixed-income housing. The first development, and the antipathy, was a huge lesson, and that’s what set me on the path. That was the ‘70s.
So, if we say affordable, what do we mean by that? If we say AMI (area median income), what do we mean by that? Can we give examples? Some of the fastest growing professions are licensed practical nurses, day care providers — let’s talk about what they make. And if you put it in that sort of affordability language – they’re very low down on the scale – but they’re not what people think about. So we have to help provide basic English examples that help get people over their assumptions about who needs affordable housing.
There are also the concerns that affordable multi-family housing developments may not fit the character of a community, right?
I think design can be an extremely effective facilitating option. In Massachusetts, we created a design manual that municipalities can use and think about. So, for instance, a lot of people think of the massing of a rental development as being sort of a box, a big box. You go to some neighborhoods, that big box, as long as it looks nice from the outside, is no bigger than the single family next to it.
Or what if you’ve got topography? So on the front, you’re two or three stories from the street, and in the back, taking advantage of the topography, you’re six stories you don’t see from the street.
I know there are some folks who object to housing for reasons that are not at all acceptable, I probably can’t change that. I can address the folks who really are concerned about traffic or don’t know what the design is going to look like. So you kind of inch your way forward.
You certainly have a lot on your plate, the most visible project being ECHO Village, the pallet shelter community on Victor Street in Providence. You recently testified before a legislative commission that heard about delays with the installation of fire suppression equipment because of gaps in how to classify pallet shelters in the state fire code. If you had been housing secretary when this was getting proposed, would you have supported this initiative?
I can’t put myself back there. I think I would have asked questions. I think the fire marshal was in a difficult place. I really do. I don’t think there was a simple answer on this one. Some of the other states — Vermont — it was a quirk of circumstance. They were considered ADUs to a community center that was on the site already. I think it was Wisconsin that declared them a campground. I’m not sure that would have been the life safety provisions that would have been OK, but it’s brand new to everyone.
Many of the nonprofits in the state have complained about the way contracts are doled out. Is that something you’d be looking through?
There have been other factors outside our control that have delayed things in the past. That’s not how I operate, and we will have a calendar, and to the best of my ability, things will run on that calendar.
Our finance staff are half staff. Our homeless staff are missing about a third of the positions. But also, you know, we don’t always know how much money we have to give out if we can’t close a year out. And when providers don’t get their invoices into us on time.
So it goes both ways. Absolutely, some fault on the part of the department, not because of the people who work there. They are working really hard and care. But yeah, it’s certainly not easy when you’re understaffed still.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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