Tax Revenue per Capita
The Tax per Acre page asks how much property tax each piece of land produces. This page asks how much each resident produces. It takes the estimated FY2026 levy on every residential lot in East Providence, totals it by census tract, and divides by the people who live there, using the Census Bureau's 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey. Because the tracts also report how many school age children live in each one and what kinds of homes they live in, the same numbers test a claim that comes up every time an apartment building is proposed: that apartments fill the schools without paying their way.
Hover a tract for its figure, click it for the full card. Residential levy means single family, two to five family, condominium and apartment parcels only (estimated tax before exemptions); commercial, industrial, mixed use and exempt land are left out of every number on this page.
Residential property tax by neighborhood, divided by residents and by public school children. Higher means more tax per person the city serves. Tax per school child runs high where the tax base is strong or children are few, so read it alongside children per 100 residents.
Neighborhoods with more apartments do not show more school children per resident. Apartments hold fewer people per door, so the tax behind each schoolchild is likely higher than in single family areas, not lower.
When a housing proposal comes up, ask for numbers rather than assumptions: expected residents, students and tax. The school department's enrollment by address would settle the question for East Providence.
Across the ten tracts, more apartments does not mean more school children. The two tracts with the most public school children per resident after Kent Heights are the two most single family tracts in the city. The correlation between a tract's share of homes in buildings of five or more units and its public school children per resident is slightly negative (minus 0.33).
Apartments hold fewer people per door. Citywide, an occupied single family home holds 2.51 people, a two to four unit building 1.78 per unit, and a building of five or more units 1.43 per unit. A hundred new apartments add about 143 residents; a hundred new houses add about 251.
Per resident, apartments pay about 15 percent less than houses. Per school child, they likely pay more. Single family homes produce about $2,075 of levy per resident, two to five family homes $1,809, and apartment buildings and condo complexes $1,771. Fitted to the tract data, a hundred apartments carry on the order of six public school children versus about 26 for a hundred houses, which puts the levy behind each child at roughly $43,000 in apartments against $20,000 in single family homes. Even on the most conservative assumption, that every resident is equally likely to be a schoolchild, apartments trail houses by the same 15 percent per child as per resident while producing about half as many children per unit, because fewer people live in each one.
By census tract
Public school children are residents aged 5 to 17 enrolled in public school (ACS table B14003); the ± figures are the survey's 90 percent margins of error, which are wide at tract scale. Sorted by homes in buildings of five or more units.
By type of home
Assessor classes matched to the Census Bureau's units in structure categories: single family (class S) to one unit homes, two to five family (T) to two to four unit buildings, apartments and condominium complexes (A and K) to buildings of five or more units. Children per 100 residents by type are fitted across the ten tracts (least squares of each tract's public school children on its residents by building type) and are approximate; the city average is 8.6 per 100 residents. Residents per home from ACS tables B25024 and B25033.
Methods and sources
Levy: estimated FY2026 property tax (assessment times the FY2026 rate, $13.35 per $1,000 residential or $21.06 commercial for apartment buildings, before exemptions) on the 13,850 residential lots mapped on the Tax per Acre page, from the city assessor extract of 2026-11-06. Each lot is placed in a 2020 census tract by its centroid, using the RIGIS/RIDEM parcel outlines. Condominium complexes count once, at the shared lot, with the complex's combined tax. 57 recently split lots without an outline, and all mixed use buildings, are excluded. Citywide residential levy in the analysis: $91.4 million.
Population and housing: American Community Survey 2020 to 2024 five year estimates (released December 2025) for tracts 101.01, 101.02, 102, 103, 104, 105.01, 105.02, 106, 107.01 and 107.02: total population (B01003), population under 18 (B09001), school enrollment by age and type of school (B14003), units in structure (B25024), population in occupied units by units in structure (B25033), households with children (B11005), median household income (B19013) and tenure (B25003). Tract boundaries from the Census Bureau's TIGERweb service. ACS figures are estimates from a sample; tract level counts of children carry margins of error of roughly 25 to 70 percent.
Per pupil comparison: East Providence spent $22,673 per pupil in FY2025 from all sources (RIDE, FY2025 Per Pupil Expenditure Chart, average daily membership 5,020). The ACS count of 4,047 public school children aged 5 to 17 is lower than enrollment because it excludes pre kindergarten and students over 17 and is itself an estimate.
What this does and does not show: the tract comparison describes neighborhoods, not individual buildings, and ten tracts cannot establish statistical significance. The ACS category of five or more units mixes new market rate apartments with older condominiums and senior housing, which pull the children figure down. The definitive local test would use the school department's count of enrolled students by residential address, aggregated by building type, joined to the parcel file.