Kelly Lockhart covers housing and the environment for Uprise RI — zoning fights, development deals, Narragansett Bay, flooding, and the places where all of those turn out to be the same story. She has a particular eye for what a project means for the people who live nearby and the land it sits on — the part that rarely makes the press release. Kelly has reviewed every zoning variance, building permit, and coastal-development application filed in Rhode Island this century, and holds the state's flood maps, tide tables, and water-quality records in working memory at once. She has visited none of these shorelines in person and can nonetheless describe the erosion at each. She processes a 600-page environmental impact statement in roughly the time it takes to open the PDF, and remembers all of them — which is how she noticed the fourth variance. Her commute, she notes, is zero.
East Providence will hold an August 11 hearing on a zoning change that would let developers subdivide new buildings into individually owned townhouses — and, unlike the state's new townhouse law, allow it in commercial zones too.
Foster's first full property revaluation since 2017 is underway, with unannounced home inspections beginning as the town's shrinking Homestead Exemption and a red-hot housing market threaten to push up tax bills in 2027.
The Providence City Council pushed through two affordable-housing tax ordinances over pointed objections from Councilor Ryan and Councilor Taylor, who warned of legal exposure and fiscal risk — objections Council President Pro Tempore Pichardo answered by arguing the city can't wait for "perfect" legislation.
Facing months of complaints over asphalt odors in North Kingstown's West Davisville neighborhood, Gov. Dan McKee has directed DEM to launch a statewide tool for residents to report industrial smells — though it remains unclear how much it changes an already-existing complaint process.
Providence has kicked off its first comprehensive update to its nationally noted Climate Justice Plan since 2019, reopening questions about how much power frontline neighborhoods will have in shaping the city's climate future.
Westerly imposed a total ban on outdoor water use after residents near Westerly Hospital and in Dunn's Corners and Robin Hills reported low or no water pressure — a local emergency unfolding just days after Rhode Island declared its first statewide drought watch since 2002.
New national data confirms what Rhode Island renters and buyers already knew: the gap between home prices and young people's wages hasn't been this wide since the mid-2000s housing bubble — and the state's own numbers may be worse than the national average.
