Central Falls to break ground on new affordable housing development

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (WLNE) — A ground breaking ceremony for a new housing development will begin on Monday at 11 a.m.

The city is set to break ground on 62 units across Central Street, with affordable and workforce housing they say will start at $750 a month for low income residents.

The project to bring this housing development to the community began back in 2019, and 5 years later the city is looking to address the housing crisis.

Central Street Development will bring 30 new units, and rehab 32 older housing units. According to staff, the units will be deed-restricted for the next thirty years, meaning these housing units will stay housing for the foreseeable future.

In a statement to ABC6 news, Executive Director with PCF Development, Linda Weisinger said:

“So everything is income based. We are serving families based on HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) median income guidelines. So we have apartments to help families as low as 30 percent AMI (area median income for family of four), and workforce housing is up to 120 percent AMI. So it’s a wide range of income to be able to help so many families live, stay, and reside in Pawtucket and Central Falls.”

The Department for Housing and Urban Development sets the median family income in central falls at $112,000, meaning the low income housing goes down to around $34,000, and workforce would stretch up to $134,000 a year.

Weisinger says the units should be completed in the next two years, using a range of outside funding to help keep the units affordable moving forward.