It should be abundantly clear to anybody who has read my work over the last years of published pieces here at Motif: I love the city of Providence. Everything about it to me exudes quiet charm, limitless narratives, and alluring architecture, all set to the soundtrack of an artsy yet brutalistic urban landscape. This admiration for my birthplace spirals beyond adoration: it spills over into obsession. It’s overt in every piece I’ve penned, whether fiction or nonfiction. So I was dismayed to read that PVD was recently ranked the second least affordable city in the country for housing. This according to a study from Sam Bourgi, a finance analyst and researcher at InvestorsObserver.
In order to determine this, Bourgi broke cities down by percentage of neighborhoods deemed unaffordable, or where the median income levels could not keep up with the cost of housing. This led Bourgi to conclude that “the top three least affordable cities for married-couple households in 2025 are Los Angeles (97.2% unaffordable neighborhoods), Providence (89.8%), and Riverside-San Bernardino (89.2%).” Bourgi goes on to explain that “Providence exhibits extreme housing unaffordability in 2025, with 89.8% of neighborhoods unaffordable to married couples, up substantially from just 15.4% in 2024.” The jump suggests a rapid surge in housing costs overwhelming income growth, pushing the city into a serious affordability crisis.
“For nonfamily households, the situation is more accurate at 99.3% unaffordability, highlighting significant income disparities and a constrained market for singles. Median married-couple incomes rose to about $89,665 in 2025 but could not keep up with the spike in housing costs. This dramatic shift makes Providence one of the fastest deteriorating housing markets on affordability metrics nationally, with implications for family stability and single household access to housing.”
The preceding is a lot to digest, and dire in its discoveries. So, more than just merely parroting Bourgi’s findings for this piece, I wanted to delve into the why behind all of this, as a longtime observer from within. I can’t relate to living in Los Angeles, and know even less about Riverside-San Bernardino, but I do know PVD. With that, I’d like to offer some context for the provided photo before moving forward. I snapped this pic a few months back while walking to dinner at a downtown fixture. Something about the placement and angle immediately jumped out at me. It wasn’t until I sat down to write this piece that I realized why. There’s something slightly ominous about the short stack of newly-built, high-end condos, threatening to choke off the Superman Building near its peak.
Herein may lie at least part of the problem. It’s no secret to anybody that our capital city has suffered from a housing crisis for some time now. Real estate developers versus longtime residents have conflicting opinions of what constitutes “affordable.” This was no more evident than during the Fane Tower fiasco a few years back. You may remember developer Jason Fane’s proposed behemoth that was destined to dominate the parcels of prime space where the old Route 195 onramps used to run. This 46-story, 550-foot high structure was set to become the state’s tallest building. Its luxury interior would have hosted mixed-use residential space as well as some retail.
Immediately, opposition arose to this plan. Neighborhood groups and some city officials were quick to point out that its height alone violated existing zoning laws. In addition, they argued, its overall design, scale, and predicted parking nightmare had no place in the aesthetic envisioned for PVD. I remember attending contentious City Council meetings at the time; lines had been drawn in the sand on either side. The zoning laws would have to be manipulated to even allow construction to begin. I vividly recall then-Councilor Nirva LaFortune arguing that Providence has never been New York, or even Boston, nor has it ever purported to be. Our charm has always been in our humility, our humanity, and our quirky eccentricities.
But, perhaps, here lies the conundrum. The Creative Capital has been undergoing a constant facelift for over thirty years now. In the struggle to redefine ourselves from a working-class mill-town to a mecca for the arts, we may have mistakenly created a unique piece of art in the process: the city of Providence itself. The costs of consistent upgrades and upmarket reimaginings of existing space are bound to trickle down to residents; that’s a fact of consumerism. The old adages of supply and demand, and “you get what you pay for,” come to mind here. If somebody is willing to pay X amount of dollars to live downtown, then certainly there’s an entrepreneurial developer willing to invest in property deemed worthy.
But where does this leave large swaths of the working-class, left to fend for themselves in a perpetually shrinking housing market that is shutting them out? The fact is, they’re being priced out on purpose, as is evident in Bourgi’s report. This is not a novel occurrence unique to Providence. We’ve seen countless cities across America renovated and gentrified, pushing a poorer populace to seek alternatives. Bourgi’s report provides no hard solutions, and neither does this article. My only intention was to view this issue through a local lens, as I am sure that every city on this list has unique circumstances that set it apart.
We take great pride in our capital city, I love that about the people of Providence. But maybe it’s time to acknowledge that there is a cost associated with the presence of high-end restaurants, a vibrant nightlife, and exquisite condominiums slicing across our once-serene skyline. They say that nothing worthwhile comes cheap. Allow me to conclude this piece with an extremely personal anecdote, for context. I only decided to leave Providence, and move to Warwick, back in 2021 after losing both of my parents within a year of each other. I needed to start a new chapter in my life and sought it on the beaches of Buttonwoods. “The city was haunted for me,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote.
Part of this painful separation entailed me selling my childhood home, where both of my parents passed. At the time, I sold for $250,000. Just recently, I saw the eerily familiar home on the South Side, updated, and on the market for $650,000. Some would call this the epitome of gentrification in a nutshell, others would call it the price of admission. Perhaps Providence is destined to become a mini-Manhattan where only the upper echelon reside, while the masses travel back and forth to work. Or perhaps we’ll retain our scrappy spirit and remain a haven for the urban artist we’ve come to emulate in our effort to attract a bourgeoisie, while not alienating our working-class devotees. Time will tell.