Most recently, Talbot has a subcommittee of Little Compton’s Agricultural Conservancy Trust focused on strategy and planning. “I have been encouraging these different boards and committees, including our Town Council, that we all need to talk about it because it’s complicated,” she said. “We want teachers to be able to live here, and farmers and fishermen.”įor the past year, Talbot has advocated for affordable housing, facilitating conversations between different citizens’ groups and making information more accessible. “We want to have a real community with people of all ages and all different kinds of backgrounds and socio-economic backgrounds,” Talbot said. Victoria Talbot, business manager at Jacob Talbot Fine Homebuilding and a Little Compton community member, stands outside her office. “I can’t imagine living in a community like that.” “The scariest thing for me, if we don’t address affordable housing, is that we will be a community without children,” said O'Toole. “But, unless young people inherit land or a home from their family, it’s very hard for them to get started here.” “The town has a history of generations staying in town which is a wonderful thing,” she said. Victoria Talbot, business manager at Jacob Talbot Fine Homebuilding, explained how she has watched the school population shrink while raising her children in Little Compton. As a consequence, Little Compton has an increasingly aging population, Bourne said. “We actually have an exhibit called “Everyone was a farmer” because, in the 17th century, everyone in Little Compton was a farmer, both the Sakonnet People and the English settlers,” explained Marjory O'Toole ’89, executive director of the Little Compton Historical Society.įarming naturally declined through the 19th and 20th centuries.“From that point on, we’ve really just had specialty farms: Christmas tree farms, vineyards, wheat, beef farms, apple orchards and vegetable stands,” O'Toole said.īut now, most workers - agricultural and otherwise - can’t afford to live in town, with low to moderate-income families and younger workers forced to reside elsewhere. Because of COVID-19, the survey was delayed and came out “on the tail end of the pandemic,” Bowen explained.įor Bowen, the survey was “energizing” - it sparked interest among residents while allowing for a deeper investigation into the factors contributing to the jump in housing prices.Īlongside the economic impacts of the pandemic and the region’s “agricultural characteristics and coastal constraint,” the report also identified growth in short-term rentals - such as Airbnb and Vrbo - as an extenuating circumstance to Little Compton’s housing situation.īourne explained that while Little Compton has always “been at the upper end of pricing in the state,” remote work also made the Little Compton market “much more attractive to people with significant means,” Bourne said.īut while the housing market caters to wealthier demographics, Little Compton has always been defined as a farming community. Little Compton residents have taken initiative to expand affordable housing: In 2019, the Housing Trust began working with HousingWorks RI on a survey to determine the need for affordable housing in town. The town’s commercial character has changed partially as a result of inaccessible housing, Bowen said - noting that the town’s multiple gas stations and bars that were present in his childhood have largely shuttered. But the three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated that reality, shifting the fabric and character of the town. Little Compton has always struggled with housing affordability, multiple residents told The Herald. To meet the state mandate, the town needs to build, convert or adapt more than 150 units, according to the HousingWorks RI 2022 Housing Fact Book. The Rhode Island Housing Fact Book, created by HousingWorks RI, shows a trend of increasing prices in Little Compton: In 2019, the median single-family home price stood at $530,000 by 2021, it jumped to $797,000.Īnd while state law requires 10% of the housing stock of most Rhode Island municipalities to be affordable, Little Compton falls under the 1% mark with just nine long-term affordable housing units. According to data from the Rhode Island State-Wide Multiple Listing Service, the median single-family home in Little Compton sold during April had a price of $1,155,000 - only behind Block Island and Jamestown.
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