David Caldwell is running in the special election for Providence City Council, Ward 2

"Climate needs to center everything we do. It’s our biggest issue, though I know it can be overwhelming and depress people."

David Caldwell described himself as a “Marine, small business owner, environmental advocate, President of the Audubon Society of RI, husband, father, and Providence resident.” We spoke at the Madrid European Bakery in Wayland Square.

Steve Ahlquist: I’ll start with an easy one. What made you want to run? You’ve got a pretty good career doing a lot of things. Why this, why now?

David Caldwell: I’ve enjoyed living in Providence. I’ve been on the City Planning Commission for two years and am very optimistic and excited about where Providence is going. We’ve got many folks moving here, at every income level, and we should welcome them. Providence is a wonderful city with a lot of potential. My two daughters are juniors and seniors in college, and I’m 52 and ready for something different.

Bruce Sundland had a saying - he was a very interesting character, let’s leave it at that - but he said about life, “The first third is for learning, the second third is for earning, and the last third is for service.” I’ve been involved in the orbit of political activity. I find politics endlessly fascinating because if you are somebody who gets the opportunity to be elected, as it did here, the city council is a position I like. I’m a boots-on-the-ground type of guy. The General Assembly wouldn’t be a good fit for me. In the city council, you can fix the sidewalk and feel like you accomplished something. I can do that.

Steve Ahlquist: My favorite thing about this kind of race is that you can talk about climate change in one breath and about curbs and pot holes the next.

David Caldwell: Right. All politics is local. Many folks running for higher office would be better served by serving some time at the local level, working their way up, and giving more diversity to the discourse. I’m a good fit for the role. I still work. My schedule right now is every morning, for a couple of hours, I meet people, have coffee, go down to North Kingstown for a few hours, and return to Providence. I can make that work at this stage of the game.

Steve Ahlquist: It is a part-time job.

David Caldwell: It might not be a part-time job—but I’m under no illusions—it’s a 40-hour-a-week job to do it right. It’s a big commitment, and unfortunately, that’s discouraging some people from public service, which is tough.

Steve Ahlquist: My follow-up to that question is, why are you the best choice?

David Caldwell: At this moment in time, I have heard very clearly from people in the city that housing and affordability are the most urgent needs.

Steve Ahlquist: I agree with that.

David Caldwell: I have a career in real estate construction. I serve on the House Special Commission on Housing Affordability.

Steve Ahlquist: That’s where I see you the most.

David Caldwell: I like to think I have some subject matter expertise in this area that would prove helpful. My top issue is the climate, and I’ve heard that loud and clear throughout the city. Did you see the comprehensive plan outreach process? I think it was very good. It’s not how it’s commonly done, but I’m proud of our work. It’s not perfect, but we heard very clearly in all our outreach that the citizens of Providence are well aware that climate is a major issue. In that process, they identified climate and housing as the top two issues - and those are my top two issues.

Steve Ahlquist: Let’s get into climate. You mentioned the comprehensive plan, which I covered in detail. I was happy to see us take climate seriously, especially concerning the Port, which impacts Ward 2 directly, depending on the wind direction.

David Caldwell: I have a lot to say about the south side. Climate needs to center everything we do. It’s our biggest issue, though I know it can be overwhelming and depress people. “What can Providence do? This is a global thing.” We won’t solve it in our lifetime, but we can get on the solution path in our lifetime. I joke that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. We have to do something. We just have to.

I’m actually a little more optimistic than I was 10 years ago. I was depressed 10 years ago. I feel better now. When we passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, I’ve been on the EC4 advisory board since it was founded. For years, it just waffled around. Even before the pandemic, it was just dying. Now, with the Act on Climate in 2021, we’re moving forward. We should be moving faster, which is a very big point of frustration, but leaving that aside, we are making progress.

The market is making progress. Climate needs to be woven into every decision we make, at least the consideration. If you go to City Plan Commission meetings, I’m the one always asking, “How are we heating this building?” It’s a running joke at the CPC that we put the developers on the spot, but they get out in front of it now. I’m proud of that.

Providence’s new buildings—the schools and the Department of Public Works—are all being built without gas or oil. We are eliminating emissions in new construction, except for generators in cases of life safety issues—at least until the batteries are online. They’re coming in the next 10 to 15 years, for sure.

We have to build all the new stuff with no emissions. Priscilla De La Cruz, Director of Sustainability in Providence, is a very good friend of mine. She is excellent. I look forward to working very closely with her. Providence correctly leaped to make sustainability a policy ahead of the data, but we will have the data for the rest of the state. When we build Mount Hope High School, which broke ground in August, we will use gas to heat it. We should not be doing that. The economics will support my claim, but it is very discouraging to see that.

Steve Ahlquist: Is it too late to change the plan now?

David Caldwell: Yeah, it’s not going to happen now. You’re finding fossil fuel-backed entities - it’s very deep, murky, and dark. The Koch brothers and even, unfortunately, folks like Ted Kennedy back in the day, and the Newport Preservation Society today, don’t want to look at wind turbines. It’s very disappointing to see Trudy Cox do this. We’ve split on this. She was on the council of advisors at Audubon, and we had a real problem: she was worried about the viewshed from the mansions. If you go down there, folks are putting up signs about saving the whales,

Steve Ahlquist: Which is total BS.

David Caldwell: Yeah, BS. I agree. It’s frustrating to see the money, and there’s much of it. Unfortunately, they’ve been able to grab some otherwise credentialed people, pay them a lot of money, and confuse the local populace about whales. They’re confusing people in local communities.

These local communities—the last time they built a high school was never. When a local community comes together, which is all good—public participation—they don’t often have the expertise. They’ve never built a school. They’re hearing all these different things.

We went through this at the Lincoln School in Providence. We built the new building. We added 5,000 square feet to the campus. We talked to the community to educate and explain, and we built a new building that’s beyond net zero. It has a giant solar array that nobody knows is there. When we designed the building, we set out to build it with no emissions and a solar array that will provide more energy than the building needs. Even though the campus is 150 years old, we’ve added to it and decreased its carbon footprint.

Now, there is much more work to be done. The easiest thing to do is build something new. Converting existing stuff is much harder, which will be the big challenge moving forward. At Audubon, we put the plan together to do that over 15 years. Providence is grappling with that right now. The easy stuff is the new stuff, the hard stuff is the old stuff, but when you’re working in communities where the politics get involved - I’m not trying to say these are bad people, but they’re doing bad things because they’re getting misinformation. It’s very frustrating.

I’m talking to Representative Jennifer Boylan. I was on the phone with her last night. We’re trying to put together a piece of legislation that we call it, give me just a second to remember, the “Emissions Elimination and New Construction and Major Renovation Act for All State Municipal Buildings.” In other words, if you’re building a new building owned by the state or the town, you can’t use gas or oil, unless it requires an emergency for fire and life safety.

That’s taken from Brown University’s policy because one of the people helping us is Stephen Porder. [Porder is the Acacia Professor of Ecology, Evolutionary and Organismal Biology and Environment and Society at Brown University.] He’s the smartest guy around on this stuff.

Steve Ahlquist: He was speaking in Newport shortly after Revolution Wind was canceled.

David Caldwell: He’s a great guy to talk to. He’s the source for the science. Sue Anderbois is my other source for policy and advocacy. Stephen’s the science. I’m the guy who hits people with shovels.

When I moved back to Rhode Island in 2008, my first bill was the Green Buildings Act of 2009, which failed. We were well-intended, and it sounded good, but the state ignored it. It all comes down to emissions. That’s the ballgame. How do you reduce and eliminate emissions and have a plan to move forward? How do we make sure that we’re buying electric cars?

Steve Ahlquist: I’d love to buy an electric car, but I haven’t had the money.

David Caldwell: When you start to go to all electric, a lot of the houses where you grew up had 100 amp service, you’ve got to go to 200. The cost to go from 100 to 200 amps, at the time you do it, is like nothing. That’s what we’re trying to tell everybody - when it comes time to do maintenance, plan for the future.

Look at Audubon’s portfolio of properties. We will take the entire portfolio of properties and be net zero by 2030. We’re going to beat that date. We have a thing called “True Zero at 2040” that relies on battery technology that doesn’t quite exist yet. True Zero is being disconnected from the grid entirely. In Net Zero, you’re sending your photovoltaic power back to the grid during the day, but what you’re drawing at night could be from the plant over here burning gas. Net Zero is good. True Zero is the best. That’s where we need battery technology.

We assessed all of Audubon’s buildings. It took about a year and a half to develop this plan. The biggest building we have is the Aquarium and Nature Center in Bristol. We spend $50,000 a year in utility costs. We spend about a hundred thousand dollars a year on utilities for our entire portfolio of properties. Get gas out of everything we own, but that’s half of it. So you go after the big one first. It’s a 25-year-old building. The HVAC system was about 25 years old and failing. It was due to be replaced, so we said, “The first thing we’ve got to do is convert that to heat pumps.” So we fundraised and we got that done. The whole building’s off gas except for the backup generator, because we have animals in tanks. Then, we signed the contract to put in all the photovoltaic carports that will power that facility, with some extras. The two carports will produce enough energy to power everything Audubon owns electrically. We’re also doing battery-powered lawn equipment. We’re trying to get electric cars, adding charging ports to the solar in Bristol, and we’ll do it in Smithfield too.

You have to plan. Identify every facility you own and everything that emits, and figure out how to eliminate it. Then, if you can afford it, add solar if you put solar canopies on all the parking lots in Rhode Island.

I’ve lived in New York, San Diego, and DC. Providence is really nice. The quality of life here is hard to beat. That’s why people are moving into the city. It’s a wonderful city. You can get anything you want here, and for a city this size, it has tremendous diversity.

Steve Ahlquist: And you’re an hour from Boston and three hours from New York.

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Steve Ahlquist: Though housing values are out of control, I also feel priced out of moving anywhere else.

David Caldwell: If you go to Europe, but they don’t treat housing like your 401(k). It’s treated more as a place to live. Right? Housing is treated differently; not in all of Europe, but in Germany, the home ownership rate is 40% and rent is 60%. People look at it as more like a commodity and not as an investment, but they have better social services.

Steve Ahlquist: I want to move on. Recently, Mayor Smiley signed an executive order reaffirming that local law enforcement will not work with federal immigration authorities. David Morales, who is challenging Smiley in the next election, immediately hit the mayor,¹ pointing out that soon after the order was signed, more Providence residents were snatched by ICE. What are your thoughts on immigration and policing?

David Caldwell: I watched the video on your website.

I spent 10 years in San Diego, and before 9/11, you were allowed to join the uniformed service of the United States of America, and not be a legal citizen. For 225 years, that was a pathway to citizenship. I had a lot of Marines serving with me from Mexico. They were fantastic. However, after 9/11, they had a hard time getting their citizenship. These are veterans. I went to war with them, literally, so I’m very sensitive about that. I remember the names of those who wore the uniform and went overseas. I believe they should be given their citizenship the day they get off the plane.

Steve Ahlquist: We agree on that.

David Caldwell: But that changed because of what happened with Homeland Security in 2003. This is personal to me. I would support using city funds to help defend the folks who’ve been here a long time. By the way, about a third of the folks in the construction industry in this country are foreign-born. We have a school in Central Falls, and one of the things that’s not allowing us to train many of these students is that they have to have legal immigration status because we have federal funding tied to it. We’re trying to find funding that would allow us to train people whose immigration status isn’t so clear. You can get a contractor’s license in Rhode Island without being a U.S. citizen. They come in with a passport because we’re all looking for an ID. Now, that might be changing with the current regime in Washington, but I’ve got a lot of friends on the south side because I’m in the construction industry. That’s where the industry labor is coming from.

So we should definitely support the folks who are here. If you’ve been here, doing your thing, going to work, raising your family, and paying your taxes, they’ll take your taxes. These folks are paying taxes, so we take their money and then persecute them. That’s not right. That needs to be fixed at the federal level. But nothing’s going to get fixed at the federal level right now.

Steve Ahlquist: Trump’s attacks on clean energy have put Providence in a bind. It feels like the presidential interference in Revolution Wind cut the legs out from under us and put us back five years.

David Caldwell: I don’t know what to say. It’s a disaster. Hopefully, as a practical matter, we can get these things built. The judge said that Trump can’t just cancel contracts. I mean, I don’t even know what to say. We’ve just got to survive, and we’ve got to hope that we can get at least one house of Congress turned. In the meantime, we will do the best we can to ensure Providence is a well-run city. People are moving here, and that’s the best we can do now. Eventually, we’ll be through the period of the great sickness and recover. The republic will survive.

Steve Ahlquist: I have grandkids, and I worry about the future, being honest. I think all the time about what the future will be for them.

David Caldwell: If things get bad enough, they’ll get better. I think we’re bottoming out right now.

Steve Ahlquist: I’ve been thinking that for five years.

David Caldwell: Fair enough.

Steve Ahlquist: I keep thinking we hit bottom right and they’re like, “There’s no bottom.” I hope you’re right.

David Caldwell: I am optimistic that this will die with Trump. He’s a singular phenomenon in the true, historical, demagogue fashion. He’s going to burn it all down. There’s nothing behind him...

Steve Ahlquist: I don’t see the vice president being able to fill his shoes.

David Caldwell: There is no Republican Party. It’s just Trump, and when Trump’s gone, he’ll leave a massive vacuum.

Steve Ahlquist: Moving on: Did you read the Providence City Council housing report?

David Caldwell: I agree that it’s a top problem. My chief concern is that the top priority is to bring down rent as fast as possible for those who can least afford it. I’ve asked, “How does this bring down rents? What is your policy for bringing down rents?” That’s the most urgent thing. I give you that now. I’m on the state’s Housing Affordability Commission, and we had a really good rent relief proposal from Representative Morales. That needs to come back. That’s a great program, and I’ll tell you why.

Rent relief during the pandemic really worked. It required landlords and tenants to work together. For a lot of people, that worked really well. The system was put in place quickly, and it worked. For a lot of folks out there today, 200 bucks a month makes all the difference. That’s all it would cost us to keep people in their homes, in many cases. That’s not a lot of money. If you can put $10 million into that, do the math. We’ve got money in the housing bond we haven’t spent yet. Maybe we should be looking at that. I would immediately say, “How can we get more money to the people who need it?” You have to get rents down now.

What we’re also seeing in the country is that rents are declining. We are finding a lot of markets where rents are declining. In Providence, we’re adding housing. The Town of Johnston just opened up a new Amazon distribution facility. There are 1500 jobs, starting at about $20 an hour, 40 grand a year. How many apartments or houses is the Town of Johnston adding?

Steve Ahlquist: I think it’s about zero.

David Caldwell: Right, and they’re not even subtle about it. They’re proud of it. They brag about that fact.

Steve Ahlquist: In sometimes racist terms.

David Caldwell: I will tell you, jokingly, that under the reign of Polesena the First, it was decreed that, in the kingdom, there should be no housing. But we want commercial development. The state puts money into the Citizens Bank campus. They’re building million-dollar colonials in Johnston right now, with a view of the landfill. That’s fine, but where is your affordable housing? And if somebody wants to build affordable housing, they take the land by eminent domain. We’re all in this together. You can’t just say “They can’t afford to live here. It’s not my problem.” What has to happen is that the money has to flow to where the housing will be. There used to be 250,000 people living in Providence in 1950.

Steve Ahlquist: Now it’s around 200,000?

David Caldwell: About 195,000 and growing. We’re among the states leading in inflow. That’s causing the problem of housing, relatively speaking. That’s a good problem to have, rather than everybody leaving. So we’ve got to build housing, and you’re starting to see, on the east side where I live, rents plateau and trending down a little bit. That’s a factor of how much funding was pulled out of Brown’s medical funding.

The first plateau is in the expensive property. We’re adding a lot of units right now and have a lot more in the pipeline. We’re starting to see the rents plateau.

If you look at Minneapolis and St. Paul, the twin cities, St. Paul went the rent control route, and Minneapolis limited single-family zoning. We studied that. A lot of construction happened in Minneapolis, and nothing happened in St. Paul. The rents are down double-digit percentage-wise in Minneapolis. Across the country, you’re seeing rents decline. The market’s starting to come to a new normal, and we’re on the path to that here.

So the first thing we need to do is get rents down for those who need it. A lot of people didn’t like the project on Wickendon Street. That was controversial. The CDC approved that in February. My speech was, “Okay, this is a hard building to love and a developer no one loves. However, the homeless population is still growing. It is. And we are all in this room tonight, going home to a warm house. There are a lot of people who are not, and those numbers are growing. So the developer has to add units.” We have to be a little more flexible until the homeless population goes down, but we’ve got to get units.

If the city’s going to grow and people want to be here, you’ve got to add units and get the rents down for the people that need it. A couple of hundred bucks a month is all the difference for people living on that edge. So I liked the proposed legislation a lot. The housing commission liked that a lot. It needs to come back. It’s got to go through the process, but it never got any air in 2024. It was an excellent proposal. These are the solutions we need to go after. So I would have liked to see that in the city council housing report. I would’ve liked to see a little more analysis.

Steve Ahlquist: So, to be clear, in a side-by-side comparison, St. Paul’s rent control failed, and Minneapolis succeeded with zoning reform.

David Caldwell: I’d like to see that in the report. I’d like to broaden the discussion to include other things that can be done. Where is the market right now in Providence? I think we’ve plateaued. I really do. Inflation’s down. We’re under control. We’re seeing some softening of the economy. Trump’s driving us off the cliff, but he got his tax cuts. He’s got his meme coins and he’s making billions. He’s good. He doesn’t care about anything else.

Steve Ahlquist: I hope he’s good because I don’t know what else it can take.

David Caldwell: He’s doing what he does. He’s got Saudis giving him money. He’s making billions. He’s making more money than he’s ever made before.

Steve Ahlquist: He’s probably an actual billionaire now.

David Caldwell: We’ve got to work our way through this, and the best thing to do is to inject money into the people who need it. You cannot solve this problem unless landlords and tenants work together. Most of the landlords and tenants are pretty good people.

I would not like to see these Wall Street private equity firms moving in here and buying stuff. That’s the worst thing that could happen to this market in Providence: that it gets the attention of private equity and the finance mafia because they don’t care. They will use the algorithms, whether illegal or not, because they don’t care. They’re not going to fix stuff, and they don’t care. For the bad guys, we need better code enforcement.

Steve Ahlquist: We’re not putting money into code enforcement. I mean, look at Cranston. It’s like the mayor doesn’t want code enforcement to work.

David Caldwell: We should be able to use the viewpoint open gov system, like you, for a building permit. You should be able to go there and say, “Hey, I got a problem,” and they track it. There’s no excuse for that. I don’t know what the hell is going on in Cranston. That seems absurd, but the State Building Commissioner has jurisdictional authority over the Cranston building official. So you might want to ask about that, because the State Building Commissioner didn’t do anything two years ago. The city building official was it. So there’s no excuse, in my mind: Fix your building. If you can’t afford it, sell it. You’re going to get a fine. We’ll waive the fine or suspend it if you sell and give the new guy a chance to fix it. We’re not out to be punitive. We’re not out to make money. We just want to ensure your building is up to minimum code.

Steve Ahlquist: We want to improve the quality of life.

David Caldwell: Ensure the heat works and the roof doesn’t leak. It doesn’t have to be all brand new kitchens and luxury, marble bathrooms, but you should meet minimum standards. I fear that the outcome could be very undesirable if we don’t have landlords and tenants working together. I want landlords and tenants working together. And I think you can solve that. And I think Rent Relief proved that, at a time when we all were shocked, and people lost their jobs.

Steve Ahlquist: What do you think about the performance of the mayor and the city council?

David Caldwell: I was a Brett supporter. I have not spoken to him since I announced this candidacy, and that’s by design. He’s removed from it. He’s a very good friend of one of the other candidates.

Steve Ahlquist: Matt.

David Caldwell: I guess that’s not a secret. They’re personal friends. I’m not a personal friend of the mayor. I know him. I think he’s doing pretty well. He’s doing what he said. He’s fixing a lot of the nuts and bolts. Nobody’s perfect, but I generally like how the city is potentially trending. We’re building, we’re growing. We’ve got a lot to fix. He’s doing a pretty good job.

Steve Ahlquist: What do you think about the city council? I know you don’t want to talk badly about people you might be working with.

David Caldwell: I’d like to see more focus on the city’s problems, first and foremost. We should work together to identify problems, like housing. Every voice should be heard. I’m big on that. I told everybody that on the City Plan Commission, everybody’s voice should be heard on the City Plan Commission. That doesn’t mean you’ve got to agree with everybody. That’s different, and a lot of people get confused about that. Everybody’s voice should be heard, but we’re here to represent the 195,000 people in Providence, which should be the focus. Focus on the job you’re here to do, get it done. Many people are happy to not even know the names of the city council members if things are running well. That’s the nature of the city council. I’m not running for governor here. I’m like, fix the sidewalks. Make sure the drainage isn’t flooding out. Make sure houses and sewers work. When the sewers back up, that gets everybody’s attention.

Steve Ahlquist: People care about the government when it doesn’t work. When it works, they’re “That’s the way it should be.”

David Caldwell: I played rugby or football. My analogy is, if you’re playing offensive line in football and nobody knows your name, you did a good job. I can play left guard. I’m not looking to get famous here. The city has potential. If Providence is strong and growing, it’s the heart of Rhode Island. I tell my friends from Little Compton who have multimillion-dollar houses with a $4,000 tax bill. No schools, no services, no nothing, and they’re like, “We’re good here,” until they get hit by some guy who had a few drinks. That helicopter will bring you to the Rhode Island Hospital trauma, and you want that. You don’t want to go to the clinic in Little Compton.

Providence does a lot for the state. Thirty years ago, the state was picking up 75% of the education budget for municipalities—something along those lines. Then they figured they could cut that back, and the towns and cities had to make it up in property taxes. Consequently, many towns and suburbs said, “We don’t want anything to grow. We don’t want any kids. They’re not good for us.”

Steve Ahlquist: Interesting.

David Caldwell: That’s where it comes from. There’s a racial element to it, too, but I’ll put it to you the easiest way I can. Ten years ago, I built a house in Barrington for two doctors. At the time, the taxes on the house were $26,000 a year. There are a couple of old Barrington types working in the city hall. The clerk asked, ‘They got any kids?” and I said, “Yeah. They’ve got two young kids,” and she says, “Well, that’s a bad deal for the town. Educating those two kids will cost $28,000, and they’re only paying $26,000 in taxes.” Through that lens, if we can’t have two physicians, who make far above median wages, and that’s not good enough, we’ve got a real problem here.

The point is that if you add population in Rhode Island, the municipality bears the cost of that population, but the gain accrues to the state.

Steve Ahlquist: Because the state collects income tax, municipalities collect property tax.

David Caldwell: In Johnston, we grow with commercial property but have no effen kids. If Providence will have the families, we should be able to build so that everybody can live here, up and down.

Steve Ahlquist: I like that.

David Caldwell: If we’re going to have great universities, theaters, medical facilities, churches, and support systems for the most vulnerable, we’ve got to look at this. We can’t build commercial property and say, “I don’t care where people live.” They used to say, “Those people don’t belong here.” I’ve been an applicant for building affordable housing in North Kingstown, and in the last 10 years, I have heard that said publicly. They say, “If they can’t afford it here, that’s not my problem. If you can’t afford the Mercedes, you can’t buy a Mercedes. That’s just life.” But that’s not reality. Providence and the urban core must work together and say, “Look, the state has a role in this. We’re all in this together.”

Boy, I talked a lot today.

Steve Ahlquist: That’s fine. Thank you!

1. Statement from David Morales on continued ICE activity in Providence

On September 22, Mayor Smiley signed a performative Executive Order, which repeats our city’s existing ‘sanctuary policy’ that he has failed to enforce.

The very next day, masked ICE agents detained a neighbor outside the RI Superior Court in front of his son. It took less than 24 hours for the mayor to fall flat on his promise to protect our immigrant neighbors in Providence as he stayed silent.

That same week, a second masked ICE incident occurred on Cranston Street.

While the mayor remains silent as ICE continues to terrorize our communities, I encourage all our neighbors to stay vigilant and call the Deportation Defense Network regarding any suspected ICE activity in Providence.

Every Providence neighbor deserves to feel safe in our city.