News

Housing, By and For the Public

A photo of a street with triple decker houses on the left side and with cars parked in front of the houses.

A typical housing typology commonly known as the triple-decker is a common sight in Central Falls, RI.

Bounded by the Blackstone River, a vital artery for industry since the late eighteenth century, Central Falls, RI, has a long history as a manufacturing center. The arc of that history—spanning from the city’s role as a catalyst for regional growth to its resident’s pivotal actions in the labor movement to the region’s slow decline as an industrial hub—is reflected in a now-vacant property off Broad Street, near Central Falls’ northern edge. Corning Glass started production on the site in the 1920s. Eventually, Osram-Sylvania took over and manufactured lighting equipment until shuttering the facility in 2014. Today, the property is an expanse of blacktop awaiting a new future.

Aerial image of an empty asphalted lot surrounded by houses
The former Osram-Sylvania site on Hunts Street could be used for affordable housing.

What that future will look like is a pressing question for Mayor Maria Rivera, who took office in 2021. Her administration wants to fill the gaps in the city’s urban fabric left by twentieth-century industries to address a pressing twenty-first-century need: affordable housing. To further this goal, the city aims to purchase a 1.8-acre portion of the Osram-Sylvania site, pending approval of a federal grant. This spring, city officials gathered in City Hall with Rhode Island state administrators and housing activists to hear rapid-fire proposals for the property from students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). The presentations summarized the research students conducted in an option studio led by Susanne Schindler, design critic in urban planning and design at the GSD. “One impetus to do this studio was that there’s urgency now to build and to build affordably,” she said. “Rather than just focus on quantity, which is what policy makers tend to do, I wanted students to develop ways to also focus on the quality and longevity of this public investment.”

A street with row of triple decker houses on one side and two females walking on the other side of the street in Central Falls, RI
Fales Street.

I believe the public should benefit directly and in the longer term because the costs for affordable housing are ultimately paid by the public, the taxpayer,

Susanne Schindler

A city of about 23,000 residents, many packed into the kind of triple-decker residential building found throughout urban New England, Central Falls is experiencing a similar housing crunch as municipalities around the country. Jim Vandermillen, director of planning and economic development in Central Falls, noted that many residents are underhoused; that is, they are members of households too large for the dwellings they inhabit. With the new Pawtucket/Central Falls commuter rail station providing direct access to Boston and Providence, the mismatch between current housing stock, which is still relatively affordable, and potential growth, which would make overall prices rise, could become increasingly severe.

Train platform with an approaching train and people getting ready to board the train
The Pawtucket/Central Falls commuter rail offers convenient access to both Providence and Boston.

In a wood-paneled meeting room adorned with large-scale portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, GSD students from across the school’s departments detailed plans for building dense, affordable housing on the Osram-Sylvania site and elsewhere in Central Falls. The cross-disciplinary makeup of the studio reflected the complex challenges inherent in creating such housing. In addition to envisioning beautiful apartment buildings in a lushly planted, walkable area, the proposals grappled with how such structures could actually be built and maintained. Students advocated tweaks to zoning regulations and building codes while detailing viable financing models that take advantage of state tax incentives and federal grants.

“You’ve got planners who are thinking about design, you’ve got designers who are thinking like planners,” observed Vandermillen. “It’s not hypothetical,” he said of the proposals. “There’s a huge push under the leadership of the current [Rhode Island] house speaker to make changes in legislation that will drive more housing production. We’re very much in a mode where changes are being made.” 

A group of people sitting in a wood paneled room in Central Falls, RI City Hall. African American student presents at the podium. Images of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington adorn the walls
Dora Mugerwa (MLA I ’24) presents her design to city officials at Central Falls City Hall.

The Return of the Public Developer

This promise of change is what attracted Schindler to Rhode Island. The spring 2024 studio was an extension of her ongoing engagement with Central Falls, where she had previously led a similar course focused on city-wide strategies rather than a single site, although several students focused on Conant Thread, a sprawling 50-acre complex of former mill buildings, some dating to the nineteenth century. In 2020, a fire tore through many of these historic structures. Despite its prime location a short walk from the regional rail station, the property remains a forest of ruins as the owner, a private development firm, weighs its options. The dilemma raised a question at the core of Schindler’s research: if commercial developers are not providing high-quality housing at affordable rates, what options might a municipal government have to address the needs of residents?

Aerial photo of old red brick buildings with big parking lot in front and several cars parked.
The Conant Thread-Coats & Clark Mill Complex District dates back to mid-nineteenth century. The site was initially developed by Hezekiah Conant who in 1868 partnered with J. & P. Coats, a Scottish firm, to manufacture six-cord thread in the United States. This partnership led to the establishment of a vast industrial complex, which eventually extended over 55 acres.

Despite its small size, Central Falls has been unusually proactive in the housing field. Through its nuisance laws, it has pressed private landlords to maintain their properties, and has also developed new homes for affordable homeownership. It has successfully pursued various state and federal funding streams to acquire land and buildings for redevelopment or rehabilitation, generally then turning a property over to a nonprofit to develop and manage the property. In turning over properties, however, the city also cedes significant control over what gets built. “To make a public-private partnership work,” says Schindler, “you really need people on the public side who know how to negotiate, who know what to ask for. And you need similar capacity on the private side, and a range of development partners to work with.”

Schindler sees another option becoming viable in this environment. “At least since the mid-1970s, it’s been politically impossible to talk about public housing,” she said, acknowledging an often-repeated narrative of mismanaged, under-funded public developments. “Over the past five years, in a very short time, the conversation has completely changed. The fact that the affordability question is so much on everyone’s mind, it may now be a political moment where there’s a window of opportunity to try direct public action again.” Schindler, who has studied nonprofit housing cooperatives in Switzerland as well as the history of housing in the United States, sees the potential to develop new models for public entities in the US to directly finance, build, and own housing units. “I believe the public should benefit directly and in the longer term because the costs for affordable housing are ultimately paid by the public, the taxpayer,” she said. The Central Falls Housing Authority is, in fact, about to develop its first new building with more than 60 apartments.

Red brick building with a lawn in front of it and a tree to the right.
Blackstone Falls, originally Valley Falls Company Mill, was built in 1849. The structure was renovated into 132 apartments in 1978 and now serves as an affordable senior housing.

On a research trip, the studio studied examples of public development that challenged outdated, skewed notions of housing agencies as moribund bureaucracies. The group travelled to Atlanta to understand one of the nation’s oldest public developers, the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA). The AHA has worked with private developers  over the past thirty years, and it has also partnered with  its new nonprofit subsidiary, the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation, set up in 2023. The latter implements  innovative strategies for investing in mixed-income development on city-owned land,  thereby maintaining long-term control over the housing. As Noah Kahan (MUP ’24) observed, this strategy “allows the city to be more creative in the production of affordable housing.”

Whereas private developers typically seek returns within five years, public developers can manage a site for generations, extended timelines that allow for more flexibility not just in building but in addressing specific needs. Back in Central Falls, one of these specific needs is for housing units of a certain size: especially scarce are studios as well as large, four- and five-bedroom apartments for extended families. “It’s not all about just more, more,” said Vandermillen. “Let’s make sure we’re developing the right types of housing, and we get the mix of bedroom sizes and get the opportunities for home ownership as well as for rental.”

Caucasian looking male speaks gesticulating with his hands wile two students from the GSD are listening
Jim Vandermillen, director of planning and economic development in Central Falls, discusses students’ proposals.

The possibilities opened by public development extend beyond the housing units themselves, allowing for investments in substantial amenities that provide long-term benefits. Students developed nine proposals, working individually or in pairs. Approaches ranged from redesigning the process to redesigning the product.

A render image of a site plan
One Bed – One Tree. Views showing how the six development metrics are experienced in the site plan. By Dora Mugerwa.

Landscape architecture student Dora Mugerwa (MLA ’24) proposed standards that prioritized tree planting and landscape in lieu of standards focused on the building interior only in an effort to make the Osram-Sylvania site a healthier living space overall.

 

 

 

Noah Kahan (MUP ’24) and Naomi Mehta (MAUD ’25), who collaborated on a project, envisioned a network of bike paths helping to weave together adjacent riverfront sites as well as the connecting residents with existing services in the city, including medical centers, community businesses, and recreation facilities.

A rendering of a bike path with water on each side of it.
The view from the Blackstone River Bikeway bridge that extends out onto the Blackstone River. Also views of use of city-owned land (i.e. BBQ area and playground). By Noah Kahan and Naomi Mehta.

Designing the Conditions

Students in the studio created proposals for affordable housing, but the assignment required that they also take a broader view, grappling with city, state, and federal programs that could impact their designs. They also assessed how a new development would fit within Central Falls’ existing infrastructure, planning initiatives, and community priorities.  “I call this studio ‘designing the conditions,’ because design is not just about designing a physical object, in this case a building or a floor plan or facade,” Schindler explained. “There are rules that govern what we can produce as architects or planners. There are formulas, metrics, codes, and conventions that decide what gets funded, in what way, and on what timeline. Those are the conditions that shape what gets built, and architects, planners, and landscape architects should be at the table in designing those conditions.”

Photos of a street scene with a car going through a green light
Existing street conditions near the site.

As a group, the studio met with Mayor Rivera, city solicitor Matt Jerzyk, deputy director of planning Diane Jacques, and Frank Spinella, the city’s housing consultant. Individually, students conducted interviews with developers and organizations as needed for their research. Taking these conversations into consideration, students proposed designs informed by real building codes, legal structures, and data about the urban context. “We were able to work across scales,” said Mehta “looking at a larger, comprehensive plan without compromising on the design.”

For students coming from a planning or urban design background like Mehta and Kahan, some of the details about financing, mortgages, and tax codes may have been relatively familiar territory. For architecture student David Shim (MArch I ’25) digging into state laws was a new and challenging experience. “As an architect, you’re usually given the prompt and you go from there,” said Shim. In the studio, he was given Rhode Island’s Qualified Allocation Plan, a document outlining the state’s criteria according to which affordable housing proposals are evaluated to receive public funding. “To parse this document and find your pain points is quite a daunting task.”

On his first visit to Central Falls, Shim was struck by the contrast between the city’s brand-new rail station and the nearby Conant Thread site. “The sheer scale of it, and the state of disarray that it was in—I just couldn’t keep my mind off it,” he said. Turning his attention away from the Osram-Sylvania parcel, Shim decided that Central Falls could most effectively meet its housing goals by focusing on development at the expansive Conant Thread site.

A photo of a train station with people in front of it.
The new Pawtucket/Central Falls Transit Center opened for service on January 23, 2023
A frontal view of an old red brick building
One of the few remaining Conant Thread Mill buildings.

Since a private developer owned the property without taking steps to build on it, Shim began looking into state eminent domain laws. He found a startling detail: Rhode Island requires that the state pay property owners 150 percent of fair market value in eminent domain cases, a poison pill seemingly designed to dissuade the government from taking over private property. Yet with the state in a mode to make changes, as Vandermillen said, perhaps this eminent domain policy, an outlier among nearby states, could be adjusted as well.

A rendering of a site plan for Conant Thread site in Central Falls, RI showing eight buildings made out of a brick
Overall look and feel of what a new Conant Thread mixed-use community could look like. By David Shim.

Mill buildings similar to those on the Conant Thread site had been renovated elsewhere in the state, most often for luxury housing. Shim’s plan for Conant Thread emphasized affordable housing, pedestrian walkways, and new community recreational facilities. “If a public developer in the state of Rhode Island were to step in and reimagine these mill buildings as something other than high-end residential, I think it’s certainly an exciting route,” said Shim, “a building typology that speaks to the city’s history, adaptively reused to create a redefined way of living.”

In the final review for the studio, Vandermillen observed that Central Falls had a reputation as a city where people establish themselves before moving elsewhere. The proposals put forward by GSD students, however, were meant to establish a lasting community. For now, the plans for building and financing at the Osram-Sylvania and Conant Thread sites will serve as valuable inputs as the city continues its planning and community engagement process.