Rhode Island Feasibility Studies

On the housing report's 2024 chart, 5.78% of Warwick's housing counted as low- and moderate-income housing, 1,607 units short of the standard, and 6.23% of Cranston's, 1,283 units short ¹. Both cities met the 2024 test only through the alternative formula, which was repealed with effect from January 1, 2026, which leaves both exposed to comprehensive permits ¹. For a multifamily or mixed-use project in either city the change works on supply from two sides: it may open a comprehensive permit route to the sponsor, and it may open the same route to the next project that would compete with the subject.

The permit and completion counts point the same way for Warwick's larger buildings. Of the 416 units Warwick permitted in 2025, 297 units were in buildings of five or more; the city's certificates of occupancy that year covered 119 units, and not one was in a building that large ¹. Cranston permitted 158 units and issued certificates for 48 units ¹. No unit in a large Warwick building was finished in 2025, so the 297 were all still to be delivered at the year's end, and a lease-up schedule for a new apartment building there sets them against its own opening date rather than counting them as stock already absorbed.

Very little housing sat vacant and on the market in either city over the 2020 to 2024 survey: 383 for-sale and for-rent vacant units among Warwick's 37,516 housing units, a rate of 1.02%, and 169 among Cranston's 33,834, or 0.50% ¹. The survey's median gross rents were $1,363 in Warwick and $1,375 in Cranston ¹. Those medians describe the whole renter stock, older units included. No asking rent series for either city was found, so a new building's rent is set from its own competitive set and read against these medians, not taken from them.

Both cities have grown since 2020. The Vintage 2025 town release puts Warwick at 84,187 and Cranston at 84,647 for July 2025, up from 82,831 and 82,939 in April 2020 ².

Neither city has a register geography of its own, because the register keys Rhode Island by county and the two cities sit in different counties ². The table gives Kent County's median household income, which covers Warwick and the rest of Kent County but not Cranston. Providence County's register figures take in Cranston, Providence and the Blackstone Valley towns together, and they are printed once, in the Providence section.

Providence permitted 778 units in 2025: 90 in single-unit buildings, 248 in two-unit buildings, 38 in buildings of three or four units and 402 in buildings of five units or more ¹. Certificates of occupancy that year covered 727 units, 470 of them in the largest building class ¹. Both counts are the city's own, and that matters, because the larger pipeline count on this page, CoStar's, is drawn for a region.

CoStar reported on March 12, 2026 that more than 1,800 multifamily units were under construction in what it calls the Providence region in the first quarter of 2026, its highest quarterly total since mid-2022, and that 92% of them were suburban ⁹. The same article said apartment vacancy in the region had climbed while leasing slowed over the prior year ⁹. For a new building in the city, the regional count and the city's permits answer different questions: the first is the competition CoStar sees across its region, most of it in the suburbs, and the second is what the city itself approved in 2025.

Inside the city, the 2020 to 2024 survey counts 3,072 vacant units for sale or for rent among 79,423 housing units, 3.87% ¹. The median Providence renter household paid $1,408 in gross rent in the 2024 five-year release, a rise of 38.7% since 2020 by the housing report's reckoning ¹. That rise is the more useful of the two figures for a new building, because it shows how far rents paid across the city's existing stock moved over the survey years, the base against which a new building's asking rent is read.

At 16.59% of its homes on the 2024 chart, Providence is above the affordable housing standard, so the city keeps its comprehensive-permit autonomy ¹. Comprehensive permits are therefore not the supply route to watch in Providence that they are in Warwick or Cranston.

The July 2025 estimate gives the city 195,310 people, against 190,922 in April 2020; for Providence County the two counts are 678,179 and 660,744 ². The county total takes in Cranston and the seven Blackstone Valley towns as well as the city, which is why the county's register figures, in the table, describe a wider area than the city.

Hotel demand rose in the city in 2025: the Rhode Island Hospitality Association's president and chief executive reported Providence hotel occupancy up 6% on the year, without giving a level ¹⁰. The CoStar outlook for Providence and Warwick hotels is in the lodging section.

On April 27, 2026 North Kingstown neighbors sued state agencies over the $150 million pyrolysis project ¹¹. The General Assembly has since passed a moratorium on new sewage sludge processing facilities, with a commission to study the problem, Waste Dive reported ¹².

For most projects this is a cost question before it is a capacity one. A project with a heavy wastewater load, a laundromat, a food plant, a brewery or a large hotel among them, asks its sewer authority in writing for the current charges and any change it plans, and the operating budget carries the answer.

Electric Boat's yard at Quonset Point had more than 8,000 workers on site when a company spokesperson told WJAR on April 21, 2026 that it planned to add 3,000 to 3,500 jobs there, part of 8,000 hires company-wide in 2026, after the Navy awarded a $15.38 billion contract running to 2035 ¹³. The Groton side of the same plan is read in the New London section of the Connecticut page; this section reads the Rhode Island yard only, and the hires planned for it are not a Connecticut figure.

Washington County held 129,795 residents in the July 2025 estimate and 129,846 at the 2020 base ², and that estimate was made before the April 2026 hiring plan. South Kingstown had 32,009 residents against 31,937, North Kingstown 27,885 against 27,737 and Narragansett 14,291 against 14,535 ².

In 2025 North Kingstown permitted 178 units, 77 of them in large apartment buildings, and the county's other towns followed with 72 in South Kingstown, 45 in Charlestown, 40 in Westerly, 32 in Exeter, 15 in Narragansett, 12 each in Hopkinton and New Shoreham, and 11 in Richmond ¹. In the 2020 to 2024 survey 1.53% of North Kingstown's housing units were vacant and on the market, 1.62% of South Kingstown's and 1.71% of Narragansett's ¹. Median gross rent was $1,268 in North Kingstown, $1,368 in South Kingstown and $1,712 in Narragansett ¹.

None of those three towns is at the affordable housing standard. North Kingstown stood at 9.01% on the 2024 chart, 117 units short, South Kingstown at 5.72%, 497 units short, and Narragansett at 4.60%, 392 units short ¹.

For a workforce rental project near Quonset, that is the case a lender will test: a yard planning thousands of hires, a county estimated at 129,795 residents in July 2025 against 129,846 in 2020, little housing vacant and on the market in the three towns above, and each of them below the standard. Every one of those facts carries a date on this page. How many of the new workers will live in the county does not, and the study establishes it from the employer, from commuting data or from both. On July 22, 2026 the Quonset Development Corporation approved 140 units of workforce housing at Quonset on a 60-year ground lease, with construction expected in late 2027 ¹⁴; a project nearby sets that date against its own.

The yard is not the only new payroll at Quonset. REGENT broke ground there on January 27, 2025 on a 255,000 sq ft seaglider plant expected to employ 300 people, and up to 750 over 10 years, with up to $13 million of state Qualified Jobs credits and $3 million of Rebuild RI credits committed ¹⁵. Offshore, Revolution Wind, a $6.2 billion, 704 MW project in federal waters off Washington County, had all 65 of its turbines installed by September 18, 2026, CT Mirror reported, with partial output since March 2026 ¹⁶; its federal stop-work order of August 2025 is in the events table.

Since January 1, 2026 a room stay of 30 days or less in Rhode Island carries 14% in tax: the 7% sales tax, the 5% state hotel tax and a local hotel tax of 2%, up from 1% ²¹. The local rate is set statewide, so it does not vary from town to town ²¹. Whole-home short-term rentals pay the sales tax and the local tax plus a 5% whole-home rental tax, and their operators register with the Division of Taxation ²². Campground rentals are taxed as tourist camps where the campground supplies the structure, tents included, which reaches an RV park or campground budget that rents out its own structures or tents ²⁴.

Demand had a record year. Rhode Island Commerce's 2025 annual report counts 29.4 million visitors in fiscal 2025 ²⁵. At the Rhode Island Hospitality Association's breakfast, as What's Up Newp reported on September 23, 2026, CoStar's Jason Weinstein put coastal Rhode Island RevPAR on pace for a 12.9% gain in 2026 and forecast 3.2% for 2027, while Providence and Warwick were expected to slip slightly in 2026 and gain 2.5% in 2027 ²⁶. Statewide he expected RevPAR to grow 5.9% in 2026, mostly on room rates: average daily rate up 5.2% against occupancy up 0.7% ²⁶.

The coastal figure is not a Newport, South County or Westerly figure, because CoStar's coastal boundary is not stated, and no occupancy, rate or RevPAR level was found for any of the six markets. A hotel study in one of them builds its own competitive set and reports its own levels, and it takes the regional forecast as a direction, not as the subject's rate.

Rhode Island's FY2027 budget, signed on June 12, 2026, narrowed Certificate of Need review ²⁹. A new hospital (unless it treats behavioral health only), nursing facility, hospice, inpatient rehabilitation facility or free-standing emergency care facility still needs a certificate; home nursing care, home care, surgical centers, multi-practice physician and podiatry ambulatory surgery centers and changes in bed capacity no longer do ²⁹. Review of services now covers neonatal intensive care, organ transplantation, cardiac catheterization, open-heart surgery and particle-accelerator radiation therapy, and capital expenditure is reviewed only above $50 million ³⁰. Before the change the equipment threshold stood at $3,247,713 and the construction threshold at $7,577,998, each adjusted annually ³¹.

For a surgery center or a home care agency, a Rhode Island file written after June 12, 2026 no longer budgets the time or cost of a certificate; a nursing facility or a hospice still does, and its schedule starts from the application.

The Department of Health licenses assisted living in two layers. The fire safety class is F1 where residents cannot evacuate themselves and F2 where they can; the medication class is M1 where the residence gives medications and M2 where it assists residents who take their own ³². A residence that advertises dementia care or separates residents with dementia needs a dementia care license and must be F1-M1, and a Limited Health Services endorsement requires F1 ³².

The state's wage floor is $16.00 per hour for 2026, up from $15, and becomes $17.00 on January 1, 2027 ³³. A project that opens in 2027 carries the second step in its first operating year, and a staffing budget built on 2026 rates is a year out of date by then.

SBA serves all five counties from its Rhode Island District Office ³⁶. Its own loan files, as the site's register reads them for fiscal years 2016 to 2025, are summarized in the table. The rule on studies is 13 CFR 120.160(b): SBA may require professional appraisals, a survey, or a feasibility study ³⁷. How SBA tests a 7(a) or 504 file is set out on our SBA program page, and this note deals with what the clause leaves to the lender.

SBA Loan Index, an independent tabulation, has a list titled SBA lenders in Providence that gives running totals for fiscal 2010 to 2026 with data as of March 31, 2026: Ocean State Business Development Authority with 383 loans and $217.1 million, Bay Colony Development Corp. with 264 loans and $170.8 million, and Eastern Bank with 1,009 loans and $160.1 million ³⁸. They are cumulative lender totals on a list titled for one city, not a count of the state's loans in any year, and the register's figures above remain the state's.

The state's own credit sits beside SBA. Rhode Island Commerce's SSBCI page names two active programs, a Venture Capital Program and a Loan Participation Program, with RI Capital Corporation handling the participations ³⁹. The Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank reported $202 million of financing for fiscal 2025, $34.6 million of it in grants, and $3.1 billion since 1989, Providence Business News reported on October 20, 2025 ⁴⁰. Bank, insurance company and bond financing is the subject of the conventional lending page.

USDA Rural Development handles Rhode Island out of Amherst, Massachusetts, where its Southern New England office covers Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island ⁴¹. No Rhode Island figure turned up for USDA's business guarantees, community facility lending or REAP, and how those programs work is on the USDA page.

DR-4765 covers the severe storm and flooding of December 17 to 19, 2023, with Individual Assistance in Kent, Providence and Washington counties and hazard mitigation statewide ⁴². DR-4766 covers the storms and flooding of January 9 to 13, 2024 ⁴³. Both were declared on March 20, 2024 ⁴²⁴³. USAFacts, tabulating FEMA data as of September 3, 2026, records no federal disaster declaration for the state in 2025 or in 2026 to that date ⁴⁴.

A site in Kent, Providence or Washington County may have an aid or insurance claim from either storm on file, and a lender can ask for it.