“Not Affordable Housing”: A Town Bought a Carmelite Monastery for $3.2 Million. Its Housing Plan Split Residents

• Barrington, Rhode Island, bought a former Carmelite monastery for $3.2 million
• The plan: demolish the monastery, create six market-rate lots and 12 cottages for over-55s
• Five cottages will be restricted to households earning up to 120% of area median income
• The town has only about 3% affordable housing against a 10% state requirement

After the last six nuns moved out, the town of Barrington, Rhode Island, bought the Carmelite monastery on more than seven acres along Narragansett Bay for $3.2 million. The Boston Globe reported in May 2024 that the town’s plan for the site had been approved at a financial town meeting, but not without argument.

The plan calls for demolishing the 1950s monastery building, which costs more than $300,000 a year to maintain. In its place would come six single-family home lots sold at market rate and 12 cottage-style homes for residents aged 55 and over. Five of the cottages would be restricted to households earning up to 120 per cent of area median income, or $86,040 for a single person. They would be the first newly built affordable senior homes in Barrington since the 1990s.

Town Council President Carl Kustell called the affordable units “critically needed” and said progress was “always going to be incremental.” Others were unhappy. “I felt kind of gaslit by the whole process,” said resident Michelle Turgeon. Neighbour Amy Nunn argued: “That’s not affordable housing…We’re getting mansion lots and housing that will price out middle-class folks.”

The numbers explain the pressure. Barrington’s median household income was $145,000 in 2022 and the average single-family home cost about $680,000, yet only 3 per cent of its housing counted as affordable, far short of the state’s 10 per cent target.

The story shows what can happen when religious property passes to public hands: the land’s future becomes a political question, and every choice between market-rate sales and affordable homes is contested.

In Jamaica too, decisions about former church property can stir strong feelings. For Jamaican communities, and for returnees looking at retirement homes, Barrington is a reminder to ask who a housing scheme is really for, and whether “affordable” is measured against local incomes.

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