09/07/2026
Who Does Reside & Thrive Want Representing District 36?
A new political mailer arriving in District 36 offers voters a useful clue about who Rhode Island’s building industry wants representing Charlestown, South Kingstown, New Shoreham and Westerly. The piece urges voters to “Re-Elect Tina Spears for State Representative,” prominently features Spears’ photograph and identifies Reside & Thrive RI as the organization paying for it.
Reside & Thrive is not a housing charity, tenant organization or homelessness nonprofit. Federal filings identify the Rhode Island Builders Association as a related organization, and RIBA supplied $50,000 of the $50,025 in contributions Reside & Thrive has reported since its creation in 2024. On paper, the group describes its purpose as independently advocating for candidates whose policies support housing and Rhode Island’s economy. In reality, appears to be a group founded to push RIBA’s business desires. That makes the choice of Spears worth examining.
RIBA openly describes political advocacy as part of its mission. Its website asks members to donate to its BUILD PAC to support “pro housing” candidates and says those donations provide the resources the industry needs to advocate on its behalf. The association also closely tracks the state’s new housing and land use laws, including changes involving permitting, zoning standards and substandard lots.
Spears is already positioned squarely inside that policymaking structure. She is a Deputy Majority Leader and a member of the House Municipal Government and Housing Committee, one of the committees handling the state’s contentious housing legislation.
She has also participated directly in Speaker Joe Shekarchi’s housing agenda. In 2025, Spears sponsored H5795, part of Shekarchi’s 12-bill housing package, changing state law so property buyers could rely on municipal zoning opinions rather than treating those opinions as merely advisory. Spears described the change as removing ambiguity from development plans, while Sen. Victoria Gu described the same legislation as removing a “roadblock to development.”
Increasing housing supply may be a worthwhile goal. But Rhode Island’s communities are not interchangeable. A development policy designed for Providence or Pawtucket may have very different consequences in Charlestown, South Kingstown or New Shoreham, where residents may be dealing with wells and septic systems, limited infrastructure, sensitive groundwater, narrow roads, open space and communities built at a much lower density.
That becomes especially important when proposals involve developments with hundreds of housing units rather than a handful of new homes. The question is not whether more housing should exist. It becomes how much housing fits a particular site, whether utilities and roads can support it, what additional demands it places on municipal services and whether local officials retain meaningful authority to say a project is simply too large for the area.
Spears’ challenger, Leah Boisclair, is not campaigning against housing. Her platform supports Housing 2030, smart growth initiatives, incentives for developers building affordable units and cooperation between state and local government to reduce unnecessary red tape. But she couples those positions with an explicit commitment to preserve the character and natural beauty of South County communities.
That creates a meaningful distinction in this primary. Both candidates support increasing housing. One has an established record within the State House housing agenda that emphasizes removing barriers for developers. The other says additional housing should be balanced against local character, environmental constraints and the particular needs of the community where it is being built.
Against that backdrop, the Reside & Thrive mailer deserves more scrutiny. An organization financed almost entirely by Rhode Island’s builders association has decided it wants Tina Spears returned to office.
For District 36 residents, the question may not be whether they support more housing. It may be who they trust to decide how much, how large and where that housing belongs — the State House, or the communities that will have to live with the results.
