Reference Library

Documents I keep within reach. These are the source materials behind the arguments I make elsewhere on this site, collected here so that anyone in East Providence who wants to start from the same numbers can.

The Little Book of Low-Cost, High-Impact Housing Solutions

Ivory Innovations and the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. Second edition, 2026. Free to download from the publisher at the link below.

To our two newly elected City Councilors:

Congratulations. You take your seats with a rare opportunity: to shape what it costs to live in East Providence for decades.

On November 3, 10,354 East Providence voters approved the $120 million statewide housing bond, 64 percent of the votes cast on it. More votes than either of you received. Our neighbors want Affordable housing with a capital A: subsidized units, with income limits written into the deed.

I have spent over a decade building the “small a” kind: unsubsidized homes that are affordable only when they are cheap to build and quick to permit. Apartments over storefronts in Riverside Square, a cottage court on the drawing board. Construction is not what makes housing expensive here. Time is: approvals, parking minimums, hearings.

Every dollar a family does not spend on rent can be spent on Bullocks Point Avenue, where our restaurants and bars have been hammered by the affordability crisis: rents, food costs, labor, customers with less to spend.

Bonds buy units. The six solutions in this book require no bond, and they will shape affordability in East Providence for generations. Read it.