To the editor:

Mr. Mensinger describes the RI Low-Moderate Income Housing Act as a law incentivizing private development, by restricting how many and what sort of regulations municipalities may have on development.

He further states that Warren applicants would not be able to avail themselves of the above state-mandated streamlined and consolidated procedures, if only Warren had simply structured all development in town over the past three decades so as to yield a housing stock with at least 10% of homes legally restricted to buyers with incomes at 80% or lower than the Area Median.

I fail to see how multiple State mandates dictating how, and under what circumstances, Warren might evaluate planning proposals for projects (in Warren), amounts to the town "governing itself".

Mensinger also says that "Warren...has a severe housing crisis", and as a response, we must shift policy to promote more housing options. Warren's zoning ordinance, with mandatory single-family zones and minimum lot sizes, is an obstacle.

He points to his own house on Water Street as "legally non-conforming", like the most of the rest of Water Street, and correctly states that it's one of the most desirable neighborhoods in town, and that there is a “lesson there”.

His house, like most everything else downtown from that era, was the residence of a well-to-do merchant or seafarer. I suppose the lesson is that the best way to get desirable affordable housing in the future is to build nice homes for the well-off now, then wait a few centuries.

The zoning ordinance is popular. Many of us grew up in Warren when Touisset was farms from the corner on Long Lane all the way to Shell Drive. We remember the waterfront south of Locust Terrace before Oyster Point or Hanley Farm or Bagy Wrinkle Cove, and we really think that everything outside of downtown should've been made R-160 zoning sometime during the early 1980s.

Warren's population has remained flat for 20 years. If we hew to the laws of supply and demand, then the current stupefying valuations must have some cause exogenous to what goes on at the Warren Planning Board.

Much of the town doesn't want any development at the expense of a dwindling amount of open space. Had the Penny Lane development team asked around the neighborhood of Child Street and Asylum Road before announcing their plans, they may have discovered that.

Or, perhaps they didn't; because they don't care what the neighbors think. Thanks to laws written by activists in the State House, with support from contractor money, they don't have to care.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Mensinger rejects his community's self-determination in how it chooses to grow, at the behest of Smith Hill functionaries with unfalsifiable plans for providing affordability.

Jeff Avila
Tiverton