Special Legislative Commission on Housing takes up ECHO Village

The meeting marks the first public appearance of Governor Daniel McKee's newly appointed Acting Housing Secretary Deborah Goddard.

Deborah Goddard and Lauren Barnes

The Special Legislative Commission To Study Housing Affordability met last Thursday for an update on the State’s effort to open ECHO Village, the State’s first Pallet shelter community, near Route 146 in Providence. Representative June Speakman (Democrat, District 68, Bristol, Warren), Chair of the Commission, noted that the attendance at the meeting was “by far the largest audience we’ve had for one of our hearings.”

The first person to speak was recently the appointed Acting Secretary of Housing Deborah Goddard.

The transcript below was edited for clarity and length.

Acting Secretary Goddard: I’m excited about leading the Department, and I look forward to working with this commission and its members to increase our [housing] production, preserve our historic housing, and reduce homelessness. Lauren Barnes, the Department’s Program Manager for Design and Construction Services, has been heavily involved with the project.

In times of crisis, we must consider all possible solutions. The Department of Housing became aware of other communities successfully implementing the model of Pallet Shelter villages to address homelessness. This model can close a service gap by providing an option for populations experiencing homelessness that are often difficult to place in traditional temporary emergency shelters. This model was included in House of Hope’s application for the 2024 consolidated homelessness funding round to the Department to establish a village of 30 Pallet units. Their proposal was scored and approved to move forward as we believed it offered an essential alternative to hotel rooms and congregate shelters to better address the homelessness crisis. Previous leadership asked for the project to be expanded from 30 to 45 beds to accommodate more individuals. From the start of this project, we communicated back and forth with relevant agencies and collaborated with those agencies on the project’s planning.

This was a group effort. This project version began in September 2023, when House of Hope’s proposal was selected, and discussions among House of Hope, the Pallet company, and internal staff commenced. Early conversations also involved collaboration with the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Environmental Management (DEM), and the Department of Business Regulation (DBR) regarding the project’s implementation. The timeline was initially quite aggressive, with an anticipated opening in March 2024. However, as the project evolved, we realized it was more complex than initially understood since structures like Pallet units were not contemplated within the existing building and life safety code - something obvious and critically important. The Pallet Shelter units were classified under the hotel-motel occupancy category, requiring extensive design and engineering to comply with building and life safety codes. This led to a shift in the timeline as we developed and presented designs to the Building Code Commission. After securing permits in June, we have been working onsite to implement the approved solutions since early summer.

There has been continuous construction on site to complete the necessary work and ensure that the site runs safely and effectively. This week, we anticipate completing the paving of walkways, additional weatherization of Pallet structures, and the final applications of fire retardant paint. On Tuesday, the Department of Housing received approval for an easement agreement with RI Energy to install and service electrical distribution equipment. Additionally, the Department of Housing received final approval from the State Properties Committee for a conditional lease agreement with House of Hope, the ECHO Village service provider. This lease is for the period of now until September 30, 2025. The lease is contingent on passing final inspections and receiving a certificate of occupancy from the State Fire Marshal’s office and the State Building Code Commission. The remaining work includes completing electrification and the implementation of life safety and building code requirements for this project, including the delivery and installation of fire suppression systems.

The fire suppression systems were shipped this week, and we anticipate delivery and installation in the coming weeks. Once this work is complete, we’ll request final inspections for certification of occupancy from both the office of the State Fire Marshal and the office of the Building Code Commissioner. Given these circumstances, we cannot open ECHO Village this month as planned.

However, I remain confident that the shelters will be operational this winter. I understand the frustration surrounding the delay in their opening, but when it comes to ensuring Rhode Islanders are safe, that must be our utmost consideration. We’re grateful to our partners in this endeavor for finding a way forward. We are almost there, and I appreciate the support we’ve been given and the patience everyone has shown to make this project a reality.

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Laura Jaworski [House of Hope CDC]: I’ve had the pleasure and honor of serving as the executive director at House of Hope for eight out of the 10 years that I’ve been at the organization. We are a homeless provider and affordable housing developer. We are based in Warwick. We’ve been there for just over 30 years. I thought it necessary to familiarize this body with the work that we’re doing. Not everyone is familiar with our service array. First and foremost, the mission of House of Hope clearly states that housing is a basic human right. Everything we do at House of Hope rolls up into that mission. It doesn’t always look like housing. Most often, it doesn’t look like four walls and a roof, but everything is in service to that.

Our programs include innovative models like Shower to Empower, which has just had its 10,000th shower in under seven years, which we’re very proud of. It is one of the largest ways folks engage with the House of Hope team. We serve close to a thousand folks, give or take, every year, with about 75% of those folks engaging with us through our street-based initiatives. I have a team of street-based outreach workers who go out early in the morning, late in the evening, and during the day to do that work. They’ve engaged face-to-face with people experiencing homelessness.

We also have transitional shelter programs, an employment training program, and permanent supportive housing. We offer a wide continuum of care, but as I mentioned, most folks are engaging with our organization on those front lines and in the streets, which is a really important point, and you’ll see that theme throughout. Our demographic is folks who are unhoused, housing insecure, and either under- or unemployed. Most or all of those folks are also experiencing chronic homelessness.

Teleport yourself back to 2019. We here in Rhode Island were already experiencing a housing crisis, an unsheltered crisis, and an opioid epidemic, and then the pandemic hit.

Just before that happened, though, at House of Hope, we were blessed to explore an opportunity through Social Enterprise Greenhouse and the United Way of Rhode Island to be in the inaugural cohort of the Nonprofit Innovation Lab. That opportunity gave us time to think creatively about solutions for the folks we served. We were thinking about permanent supportive housing through the use of tiny homes for folks who are chronically homeless. There are a lot of advantages. Folks that we’re serving don’t succeed in housing settings where there’s someone on the other side of that wall, somebody living upstairs, or in a really large apartment.

When the pandemic hit, we knew we needed to pivot all of the work that we were doing - everything. So [the tiny house] initiative took a semi-backseat. We were intentionally listening to and watching what was happening here in Rhode Island on our streets, in our emergency shelters, and across the nation. I was intentional about hearing how other communities were addressing the problem. We had an advantage here in Rhode Island because folks were being hit in other places much sooner than we were here.

They had a headstart so we could watch what they were doing and try to pivot accordingly. It was a chaotic time. Many of us doing homeless service provision were taking on additional models. We were operating emergency shelters out of hotels. We at House of Hope operated the quarantine and isolation facility based out of a hotel in Warwick. We knew from what we were hearing, face-to-face with folks on the street, that they were even more afraid to enter our emergency shelter system. That was a system where folks already did not feel like they had a space or were responsive to the needs that they had. On top of that, we now had this unknown virus.

There’s lots of comorbidity in folks who are experiencing chronic homelessness and lots of medical needs. Going into a shelter was even more dangerous. It was fatal for many of the folks that we were seeing. There’s a narrative about folks staying outside. Many of us feel that it’s a dangerous situation for them, and it is, but when we look at the alternatives in our system, [staying outside is] safer than going into many of our emergency shelter systems.

As we watched this COVID explosion, we heard feedback on the streets about why folks were even more terrified. Our street-based outreach team pivoted to become ad hoc public health workers, and we started collecting all of this information from our team and constituents—listening to what they were facing.

At the same time, we were working on this [tiny house] model and thinking about how we could pivot. What is amazing about the nonprofit sector [is our ability] to put these things together. That’s how ECHO Village, as a concept, was born. ECHO is an acronym that stands for Emergency Covid Housing Opportunities. It was [developed as a] response to the dangerousness of the virus, but it also ticked off a lot of other boxes in the feedback we heard from folks about why entering a shelter was a challenging scenario for them.

As an organization, we adopted our model, and our board and the staff said, “We’re all in, we’re doing this, and we’re going to push forward.” Again, context matters—Rhode Island had no Department of Housing then.

In our sector, we had a cobbled-together but hardworking crisis response team, but we had no clear leadership. In the absence of that, we felt it was important to forge ahead and present a model that was responsive to the needs of our constituents, which is what many of our funders and policymakers asked of us.

As you move through each of the years in the rainbow [above], you see that folks experiencing homelessness increased dramatically every year. This is not unusual. Lots of places saw that explosion. Places like Vermont saw one of our nation’s greatest explosions of unsheltered homelessness. As you look towards the bottom, there’s important context about the multiple attempts that this project has made. Attempts is a very broad word. Those attempts may be intensive conversations with leaders in a community up to being very close to executing, as the Prairie Ave location was in 2021.

Moving through that first covid year and trying to hone our model, we were also paying attention to what was happening nationwide as communities started to embrace rapidly deployable units as a crisis intervention. These units were constructed as a disaster response tool, the way that FEMA will show up and rapidly put together a structure for someone to stay in. That’s really what these were designed for—Pallet never intended to be a homeless response company but evolved due to the pandemic.

We started to see these villages come up more and more. You also saw a federal policy shift in response to these unconventional or nontraditional models. That’s when we started to see policy guidance come down about ways to use funding sources for something like a rapidly deployable unit as an eligible expense. You started to see all of this guidance, and we had an opportunity to be responsive to the emerging needs on the front lines. That was an important shift in our system. As Acting Secretary Goddard mentioned, we’ve been through a long process of responding to RFPs (request for proposals) over these years. We responded through a competitive process, culminating in the signing of our contract in September of 2023.

We worked hard to hone this model, but we also had some factors to consider. Rhode Island is a housing State. Those of us doing this work have all embraced the philosophy and mentality that the only thing we would be moving forward on here is housing. Before the pandemic, we were all committed. No more shelters. We’re not building any more shelter beds. But the pandemic shifted all of that. It completely imploded that mentality. While we must be pushing forward, creating and preserving housing, we didn’t feel it was in the best interest of those we serve to say, “No, we cannot push forward this intervention.”

We were seeing people, face-to-face, who had nowhere to go, and for us, dignity matters. Dignity is essential, and Pallet Shelters were a tool that we felt could create dignity in the absence of anything else and until we can create more affordable housing. ECHO Village is only going to be as successful as the work that’s being done on the housing side. We have to have two things be true at the same time for ECHO to be successful. I do not want my kids to know that ECHO Village is around 20 years from now. This is a temporary emergency response until we can get together and start rapidly developing and preserving housing for everyone. This is why ECHO, as a concept, mattered to us.

The last piece I’ll mention is that if we were going to commit to pushing this forward, swimming against the tide if you will, it had to reflect our values. But we also needed to design a program based on what I’ve been calling the “No Pile.” Our street-based outreach workers are constanthearing, day in and day out, “No, they cannot come into a shelter. A shelter won’t accept them. There’s no space. They can’t do this, that, or the other thing.” It was really important for us to design a program that addressed why our shelter system could not meet the needs [of our clients.]

These are things like, “I have a pet, and I can’t bring my pet into an emergency shelter. I have to decide between surrender or survival.” Why not create a program that allows someone to be supported as a responsible pet owner? Every single person we’ve met on the streets with an animal - those pets are well taken care of. Why not continue to help support that instead of ripping away one of their only support systems? Couples are separated in our system. You can’t stay with your partner. That’s a problem. There’s a need to be able to move through something as traumatizing as a homelessness experience with the person that you have chosen in life. Why not design a program that supports your support system and be intentional about the program model we are using?

In closing, I want to remind folks that we are all committed to life safety for all Rhode Islanders. I’ve been saying recently that no matter what your job is or who you are in this State, we are all responsible for life safety: elected officials, professionals, the nonprofit sector, and Rhode Island citizens. We all commit to upholding life safety and want everyone to be safe.

Just because something is hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. In the early months of this project, I was told flat out that it was too hard, wouldn’t work, and that we would not do it. That, to me, was a challenge-accepted moment. The people we’re serving on a day-in and day-out basis are our moral compass. They deserve us to put forward innovations and interventions responsive to their needs. That’s my job, so I will be doing everything I can, using my power and privilege in this position, to move this concept forward because we still have people in need.

Earlier this week, I attended the ribbon-cutting for the Overdose Prevention Center. Many of you were there and are responsible for enacting the legislation that made that possible. It’s a momentous moment in Rhode Island’s history. Deputy Director Ana Novais commented. She reflected on a Maya Angelou quote, “When you know better, you do better.”

When I found out about this as a model, I thought, “We can do better.” The people we’re serving, the people who have put us in these seats, deserve a better system to meet their needs and move them into housing. That is our motivator, and that is our central focus every day.

Commission Questions:

Brenda Clement [HousingWorks RI]: I completely understand the need for a pathway to approve projects moving forward. Fire safety is critical. But why did you choose the hotel dorm path? Where do the emergency shelters and other temporary housing fall now? Do they have to go through that same pathway now?

David Pastore [Fire Commissioner]: No. To comply with the fire code, you must first come up with an occupancy on the type of building they’re going to build and its use. There are 26 occupancies within the fire code. The use that the Pallet Shelters are going to be using is going to be under hotel dorm because that’s the only category it would fit in. A hotel dorm is “a building or group of buildings under the same management, in which there are sleeping accommodations for more than 16 persons primarily used for transient or lodging with or without meals.” It’s not considered an emergency shelter because it has to be under 16 occupants. There’s 45 units, so it’s over 16 people.

Brenda Clement: So it’s merely because of the capacity that we chose that track. Would looking at tiers within the emergency shelter [category] make more sense? The layers of requirements that were put onto this project - to the standards of a more permanent structure like a dorm or a hotel space - caused some of the delays without necessarily getting a lot of extra safety. Am I right on that? Is there some legislative fix that we may need to look at to address some of these issues moving forward?

David Pastore: It might clarify [things] a little bit if I read you the definition of emergency shelters because it seems we’re comparing emergency shelters and hotels/dorms. All these definitions come from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards. We’re an NFPA State, so that’s what we follow.

Emergency shelter occupancy: “an occupancy apportioned thereof used temporarily to provide sleeping accommodations for transient or displaced individuals who have no other shelter arrangements during unexpected occupancies occurrences that require imminent action to protect the public such as periods of severe weather or during the aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster.”

Winter comes every year, so it’s not an emergency. It’s a homeless situation. The hotel was the only area that we could inspect legally under the fire code.

Brenda Clement: As we think about lessons learned, is this one of the things that we need to look at more clearly regarding occupancy, type of housing, and housing condition?

Laura Jaworski: You hit the nail on the head. We never walked into this wanting special permission or dispensation. As I said before, life safety is really important to us. We’re in that line of business, too. It looks a lot different, but it matters.

However, in the four and a half years that we’ve been moving forward on ECHO Village, a lot of the pushback was around the suitability of the structures in the weather environment that we have here in Rhode Island. Part of the narrative of them not working here is that they work well in warm weather climates - out west or in the south. In that time we’ve had communities as close as Boston and then subsequently Burlington, Vermont that have established these villages.

Even Canada has established a handful, all with Pallet. Pallets are now working in a hundred communities. This is a huge opportunity to be creative - not by asking for a special pathway - we want to make sure that this is safe for everyone in it. Still, there’s an opportunity to look and see where we can get creative, do conditional approvals, issue variances, or come up with some other methods. The fire marshal had already referenced some things with different products and whatnot, but there is a huge opportunity to do things differently.

Margaux Morisseau [Coalition to End Homelessness]: You said, Chief, that it didn’t fit into any category. During that time, the legislature was in session. Was there any thought of going to lawmakers and saying that we need to create a new code that meets the needs of the people or better describes this new style of housing? Was there a look at other states to see how they define these in other states and what kind of codes they use? Because they’re free-standing buildings, the rooms are not connected. It’s almost like asking me to put fire retardant paint inside and outside my home and sprinkler systems in my single-person home. What was the thought process there? Can you describe that for me?

David Pastore: We were presented ECHO Village. When we received that, it had to fall into the categories we currently have as a fire code adopted by the legislature. We have to review that within the parameters of the fire code and at the time it didn’t fit into any other category but the hotel/dorm. We would have to go [develop] legislation to be voted on and passed to change the code. It’s a lengthy process. You need to have public hearings and see what type of financial burden it will be on the communities and businesses. So, if anybody wants to come up with a different category, it’s possible, but there wasn’t time to do that, and no one had the appetite or the interest to do something like that. We had a code at the time and it hasn’t changed.

Deborah Goddard: This is a complex issue. It’s going to be complex drafting. You’re not going to draft and change your fire safety code quickly, and we didn’t know what was coming. If we had known it would take two years to get it going, legislation probably would’ve been appropriate. I like what Brenda mentioned: There are probably tiers of how you define shelter. We’re going to be working on it collaboratively, and we will make the effort to amend what needs to be amended with life safety and efficiency in mind.

David Pastore: Not all states are NFPA states, their fire codes are different. If they are doing different things in other states, they have different codes, or they could have passed general legislation to look at Pallet Shelters differently. That wasn’t an avenue that was done here in Rhode Island. They chose to go with the current fire code.

Representative Joshua Giraldo (Democrat, District 56, Central Falls): There’s a disconnect, at least for me. Can you help me understand why ECHO Village, an acronym for Emergency Covid Housing Opportunities, doesn’t fit into the category of emergency shelter? To me, it just sounds like that would be the category it would fit into. I feel like I’m not grasping that.

David Pastore: We never considered it an emergency shelter because, in the amendments under the Rhode Island fire code, the only occupancy that was appropriate and addressed in the fire code was hotel/dorm because the emergency shelter is 16 people or under. You are over 16 with 45 people. That’s the reason we went with that.

For example, [two years ago], we had the Armory in Providence used for people experiencing homelessness, and they had to go to the appeals board and get inspected by our office and be reviewed as a hotel/dorm. Up to 300 people were allowed in there. What happened with this one here is once you went over 16, it had to go into a hotel/dorm.

Representative Giraldo: The timeline that everyone presented was very informative. One of the things that I haven’t heard, though, is when it is going to open. Is there a specific target date? A few weeks ago, I heard this winter, but is there a date that everyone is coalescing around and saying, “We are going to get this place opened by [a certain date].”

Deborah Goddard: I’m not going to give a definitive date because we have blown through a number of definitive dates. It will be this winter. We had a good walkthrough yesterday. I’m confident we’re going to button this up, but I don’t have a precise date.

David Cicilline [Rhode Island Foundation]: In the comments that were just made concerning category, it’s hard to imagine that separate dwelling sites were somehow viewed as dormitories or hotels. The difference between a dormitory, a hotel, and individual housing sites is that they’re all in one building. I’m struggling to understand since this didn’t fit neatly into anything. Were there other categories - for example, a single dwelling unit - that were more descriptive of what was there that would have allowed the approval process to proceed more quickly? I think any common sense person would look at this and say this is not a dormitory or hotel. It’s confusing.

David Pastore: The fire code is very confusing, and we struggle with it too. To answer your question, to be a single-family dwelling under the fire code, you have to have individual sleeping accommodations, you have to have a cooking area, and you have to have a bathroom. That’s not the case with this here. They’re separate buildings. And also, because it’s under the same management, it’s under hotel/dorm. Any group of buildings on a piece of property under the same management falls into the hotel/dorm.

David Cicilline: Concerning the 16 occupants that disqualified it, in your analysis, from being an emergency shelter, if you viewed each separately as an emergency shelter...

David Pastore: That makes sense. However, the fire code doesn’t give us the latitude or the opportunity to review it under that.

David Cicilline: I’d like to ask the Secretary of Housing - When all these issues arose, did anyone in the Department of Housing say, “We should come up with a proposal to facilitate this sort of approval process and bring something to the General Assembly.” The idea that this is not happening yet and we still don’t have a proposal from anybody in State government charged with facilitating this kind of project is alarming. We’ve had a year now. Other states have these - look at what they do and propose this as a legislative change if you think it is appropriate. Everyone’s acknowledging that it doesn’t fit neatly [yet] we are still not asking the General Assembly to approve something so we can do this with ease going forward, consistent with the provision of the code.

Deborah Goddard: I can’t speak for my predecessor[s]. I started last Tuesday or Monday, but as I just said, that is where I want to go. We want to get an answer to this. That’s common sense.

David Cicilline: Thank you and the House of Hope, Laura, for your incredible persistence and passion. No one wants to say when it will open, but the approval was given in April; why isn’t it open? What are the problems? What caused this delay? Because the idea that I can’t give you an answer, frankly, to the people watching this - that’s not an acceptable answer. What are the impediments? What can we do collectively to help advance this? What’s the problem? Why isn’t it open?

Laura Jaworski: I’ll defer to my partners at the Department of Business Regulation and Housing.

Lauren Barnes [Department of Housing]: There was an additional path to this process: Our communication and approvals process with the Building Code Commission. Although we received approval from the Fire Appeals Board in April, we did not receive our building permits until June. So construction began on onsite in June.

Brenda Clement: What caused that delay?

Lauren Barnes: Just the normal process of applying for variances through the Building Code Commission, being set up for the hearing, and then the approval process of those final drawings and engineer drawings.

Representative Speakman: Who was doing the application? Was it you, the Department of Housing?

Lauren Barnes: Yes, as the landowner.

David Caldwell [Rhode Island Builders Association]: Who applied for the permit? I assume you applied through the State and not the City. For the benefit of everyone here, building permits in Rhode Island are almost always applied for through a City or municipality governed by the local official and the local fire marshal. It’s not common for it to go straight to the State Fire Marshal’s office. When you applied, what building category did you put on the application?

Lauren Barnes: I believe the occupancy was for R2. I’d have to have my notes out.

David Caldwell: As a campground, mobile park, or mobile home?

Lauren Barnes: No, sir. This fits under the hotel’s regular building code.

David Caldwell: So you applied for it under a hotel?

Lauren Barnes: Yes.

David Caldwell: Who advised you to do that?

Lauren Barnes: There had been multiple conversations with the Department and our engineering and construction team that advised that and agreed that this was the process forward and then to apply for variances from that code.

David Caldwell: Who were those people? What departments of the State? I’m not trying to be critical, we’re just trying to figure this out so we can fix it. It seems to me that perhaps we should not have made an application under the hotel code for this. It could have been a campground; it could have been a mobile home park. If you had built 45 mobile homes there, it would not have been a hotel. I know the code.

We’re just trying to go back to the beginning here to discover the obstacles and how we can solve them. This commission has spent a lot of time attempting to solve things. We’re not here to cast blame. I don’t think anybody here doesn’t want this done.

When I’m an applicant, my team of architects and engineers submits the building application for this type of building under this section of the code. Were you advised to submit this as a hotel?

Lauren Barnes: Yes.

David Caldwell: And did the State Building Commissioner advise you to do that? Who advised you on the process? When you submit the permit on the online OpenGov portal, before they receive the permit and accept it, they’re supposed to tell you exactly what you’re supposed to do to get the approval. Did that happen here?

Lauren Barnes: I can answer the first part of the question. Our engineering team was Gill Engineering.

David Caldwell: That’s a private firm?

Lauren Barnes: Yes. I correct myself, they were technically the applicant. We were invited to participate in the permit.

David Caldwell: So they were the applicant. There’s a reason I’m asking that. When the fire marshal gets something from an engineer, that will be a different discussion; they’re expected to know the code and act as professionals, whereas the rest of us don’t know the building code or the fire code, which admittedly is complex, and our fire marshals are as good as they are and only have a certain latitude within the code. Much of this relies upon who applies. Were you told when you made the application, here’s what you must do in writing?

Lauren Barnes: There were multiple conversations, Zoom and in person. I believe there was some written communication between Gill Engineering, the Office of the State Fire Marshal, and the Office of the Building Code Commissioner. I don’t have it right before me, so I can get back to you about what was advised.

David Caldwell: From what I understand, there was no single point of contact in the State of Rhode Island for this building permit application that you can point to and say, “Advise me on this.”

Laura Jaworski: A preliminary review of the specs by Pallet was conducted by the State Architect and the Building Commissioner in November 2021 to identify potential gaps in the product and how it may or may not fit within existing code. It identified the various components that must be addressed through variance or conditional approvals. I \offer the caveat that that was on the first-generation model that Pallet produces, but the second-generation model is not significantly different.

David Caldwell: So, 37 months ago, we had the first iteration of the Pallet and got some advice about that. Nothing formal. It was just discussed, and it seems that between House of Hope and the State, you hired some professionals to bring you through the permitting process to show regulatory and fire life safety compliance. When we applied, we called it a hotel dorm instead of some other options that we could have called it, like a campground, a mobile home park, or something like that. Does anybody know why we did that?

Lauren Barnes: It was advised that this would not be applicable under any other code.

David Caldwell: I would assume, if somebody would’ve told you three years ago that you’re going to need to go to a Fire Board review for this because it doesn’t fit, we could have tuned that up well in advance.

Have you found the Fire Safety Board willing to work with you to get things through?

Laura Jaworski: I believe the Fire Safety Board is under incredible pressure and responsibility, as we all are, to ensure safety. Interacting with the board has not been my primary function, and I’m not trying to thread a needle here. It’s just not been my function. It’s been the Department of Housing or DBR.

David Caldwell: But the question is, has the Appellate Board been a barrier, or have they been willing to work with you to get things through? That’s my question.

Laura Jaworski: I think the fact that we’re here staring down weeks and not years of a project opening indicates their willingness to work. However, to Monday morning quarterback this, I can guarantee you there are likely faster ways and creative opportunities that could have been taken advantage of if our system was not as siloed as it is if it didn’t have as many barriers in place as it does, and if it wasn’t as incentivized to be self-sustaining as it is.

This landscape is not an abnormal scenario that we, as housing developers, face. I am not the strongest housing developer in this room by far. There are strong partners here. We’ve been intensively leaning into the homeless service space because of the increased demand. But I can tell you there is a long and arduous process, and incredible barriers have been created.

David Caldwell: Something that came out of this commission last year was how the State Fire Marshal has jurisdictional authority over all the local municipal fire marshals in the State, whereas the State Building Commissioner does not. As a result of this commission, that piece of legislation passed, and the Office of the State Building Commissioner, for lack of a better term, goes live on January 11. Do you have any thoughts about what you would do to improve this process if you could inform this commission?

Laura Jaworski: I have lots of thoughts. I want an opportunity to debrief collectively. There’s so much of this project that’s been happening lately that should have happened in a very different pattern. It’s hard to even isolate it specifically to those bodies because the entire system is so dysfunctional. The fact that I was told "no" on this project in November of 2020 and that it was a better idea to continue to spend a million dollars on hotels every month and not purchase a product that we could own and operate and have site control of - to me is an abomination. We should be doing better for unhoused Rhode Islanders.

David Caldwell: At that time, we did not have a Department of Housing, correct?

Laura Jaworski: Correct.

David Caldwell: If you had a single point of contact in a Department of Housing, do you think that would have made this easier for you? One person and one Department that we could all look to for accountability and transparency? Would that have been helpful?

Laura Jaworski: Unequivocally, if we have one point person who is responsible and going to be the adult in the room and giving directives, We haven’t had any clear guidance in doing this work regarding our collective housing goal. We’ve all been working towards that, but we don’t have that in place yet. I know there are efforts underway right now. That’s why it’s impossible to compare. Of course, if we had one central place where all of this could live, that would be great, but we’re comparing it to a different time.

Emily Freedman [City of Providence]: Typically, when something is permitted at the local level, and we know it’s going to be a complex or major development, we offer pre-application meetings with the project proponent. There is also a coordinated plan review. Chiefs, can you tell us what pre-application meetings you might offer and how you coordinate plan review?

Tim McLaughlin [State Fire Marshall]: As Chief Pastore said, they apply through OpenGov, which starts the process. Now, once the plans come in, we look at the plans, we mark them if they need to be marked, we determine if there are deficiencies or not, then we’ll have a meeting. We sit down to see where we can work things out, where we can’t. As we just talked about, the fire code is very complex. It’s not easy. It’s hard for us too, and we’re the subject matter experts, supposedly, right? We try to work collaboratively with everybody.

And again, I can’t emphasize this enough: we only care about life safety. That’s for every citizen in the State of Rhode Island, regardless of your stature. We live by that creed in our office. I have to give Lauren a lot of credit because when this project started she was thrown into the fire, and she’s done a great job. She’s been a great partner in resolving this complex issue. And are there lessons to be learned? I’m not going to say there’s not. We learn lessons every day, right? That’s what life’s about. But I can tell you our office will work collaboratively with anybody who enters the door.

Unfortunately, this pathway went through hotel/dorm. That’s the only path. I don’t know if the temporary shelter would’ve made it through the Board of Appeal and Review. I don’t know. I can’t speak for them. But based on the wording of it, I’m going to say it probably wouldn’t have. We worked through the code to find a path to get this project up and running. To answer your question, anytime we can sit down with somebody beforehand, we’ll sit down with them, plan, and try to guide them in the direction we think they need to go to make the project successful.

We all want to see ECHO Village succeed, but we also want to ensure it’s safe. And I’m not going to belabor 20 years ago, but we went into a place that didn’t have sprinklers, and a hundred people died. Personally, it touched me, I’m not going to have that happen under my watch. The people that are going into those shelters, they’re going to be safe and I’m going to make sure of it. I think we’ve done that. I believe we are at the end of this project, and now that we’ve learned, we can sit down and improve it.

I know it came up early to go to legislation. That’s not for me to go to legislation with the Fire Code. That’s for somebody else to do. Whether I can support it or not, we’ll look at it. However, the codes, the NFPA and Rhode Island Fire Safety Code are our Bible. That’s what we use for every single project that comes through our door. I’m sure we’ll have a working relationship with the new housing secretary as we’ve had with the last three. That’s an issue, too, right? It’s a new department. They’re trying to get this new Department up and running, and they’ve had their kinks in that, and hopefully, that will move forward, too. They have good people working in that Department.

Laura Jaworski: Besides the measures the State Fire Marshal’s office has recommended, these units already have smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, and fire extinguishers. In our program staffing model, the location will be staffed 24/7 with awake, onsite staff with a minimum of at least two. Additional fire suppression systems are not just in the sleeping units but also all offices, the community space, and the bathroom spaces.

I shopped this project around the state, not just for location purposes but to identify an individual who could take this up because I realized that I have no power as a nonprofit. When I was researching what people were doing nationwide, these projects were only successful in communities where somebody in an elected body—a board of supervisors, a selectman, a Mayor, a State rep, or a governor—was in the lead position. They were dictating people to go into the room and figure it out.

I saw this play out in Los Angeles where you had a selectman who said, “I’ll beg forgiveness;” or a Mayor in Minneapolis who declared a State of emergency; or EOHHS Secretary Sudders in Massachusetts being given a directive by their Governor and Mayor Wu to take up this initiative and make it happen. These projects were successful only when that happened, so I tried to take a page out of those playbooks. I was cold messaging Secretary Sudders on LinkedIn to ask, “Can you please tell me how you did this in Massachusetts because I need to bring it here? We need to make this happen.”

I tried to shop this project to every single Department, but no one could step forward for any number of reasons. They didn’t feel it was going to be political suicide—they didn’t have the time. We were in a pandemic. They didn’t have the motivation to do it. Whatever the reason, everyone was backing me up, but I was still the quarterback. And that has not been the pattern of success for these projects nationwide and in Canada.

The biggest area of opportunity is a collective body, whether that’s the Interagency Council on Homelessness or any one of these other bodies, is developing a multidisciplinary approach to designing and executing [these projects] - either taking State properties, State land, unused property, or whatever it may be and having an all-in comprehensive process.

Margaux Morisseau: I respect how hard it is to ensure everybody is safe and life safety comes first. I have friends affected by the Station nightclub fire, and I understand why our laws have changed. But I also think about the life safety of the people living outside. When they’re living outside, they are much more likely to die on our watch than in a unit that is designed to the same specifics as my home.

Also, Acting Secretary Goddard said something about the lease for the land is only until September, 2025. That’s right around the corner. What are we going to do so Laura doesn’t have to work through more red tape in September of 2025?

Deborah Goddard: I’m going to have to take a leap of faith on this one. I believe it’s connected to funding. We do an annual round of consolidated housing funding, which would be the route to go. We expect to see an application to continue it. I certainly want this investment to have a much longer lifespan for all of us.

Scott Wolfe [GrowSmart RI]: I want to echo what Margeaux said. We need a broader definition of life safety than just what the codes of NFPA say. You’re doing what you need to do, you’re going by the rule book, but in the name of life safety, we’ve probably jeopardized people’s safety more by not getting this project done than by having it done with what might not be state of the art fire suppression. That’s very frustrating.

Life safety is great, but if in the name of life safety we’re actually endangering life safety, that’s not acceptable.

Representative Joshua Giraldo: Everyone on this committee has discussed being committed to a debrief to understand what we could do better and how we could do that. Is there a commitment, Acting Secretatry Goddard, to conduct a debrief and make the results and recommendations of that debrief public?

Deborah Goddard: Absolutely. We are reconvening the Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness, and we are meeting for the first time later this month. That speaks to the need and ability to have a unified voice.

Katie West [Housing Network of Rhode Island]: Has there been a fiscal impact on House of Hope as a result of these delays to the extent that you’re able to speak to that?

Laura Jaworski: One of the challenges of operating a nonprofit is that you are also supposed to be the visionary leader of your organization. You’re charged with carrying out the strategic mission and vision of the work ahead. That was a challenge during the pandemic. There has been an enormous sacrifice of time and energy in the name of this project. We have put in significant resources as an organization to try to realize this project. The bulk of those four years has been somewhat unfunded, if you will.

We have invested tremendous time and energy in something that hasn’t come to fruition yet. Is this where we want to direct that energy? My staff is exhausted - witnessing the moral injury of an inadequate system that does not meet their needs or doesn’t even appear to sometimes want to hear or acknowledge them. It’s been difficult to walk both of those pathways simultaneously - to put forward a concept that some people have gone so far as to have said some pretty nasty things about - and missing the humanity part.

But that’s what the nonprofit sector is. It’s a dream space. We are entrepreneurs and innovators. That’s where this thrives.

I thanked SEG and United Way because we don’t get to take an idea off the shelf on a regular basis and ask what could be if we could. We are not afforded that often. That is a huge lesson learned in terms of what we will be looking forward to to sustain our nonprofit community. We must build guardrails for them to continue to dream, be present, and operate, particularly in light of what we’re heading toward in the next four years.