Rhode Island family challenges eminent domain and the right to build
Johnston is a small Rhode Island town where Ralph Santoro’s family has long worked. Ralph was not one of the lucky few who inherited generational wealth, but he did inherit his father’s priceless, working-class wisdom. His father had immigrated from Italy after marrying his mother—a true first-generation American. Ralph’s mother had been brought to Italy by her parents, who had arranged a marriage for her in their home country. But when she met Ralph’s father, the wedding plans changed. They fell in love and were married in an old church in his father’s hometown.
The newlyweds lived in Italy until Ralph’s father’s military service was over and then moved to America to start a family. Ralph and his five sisters didn’t have much in the way of material things in those earlier years, but their parents gave them the formula for a successful life: hard work. Something anyone could apply to unlock a future with limitless potential.
“My father would come home from work, my mother would go work a foot press in a factory, then he’d pile us all into the car to go pick her up at 11:00 when her shift ended. We were taught all the time, hard work pays off. You be honest, you keep on doing what you’re supposed to do,” Ralph remembers.
While their father’s native language was Italian, he refused to speak it in the home. In those days, he feared that speaking two languages would confuse his children in school and stifle their learning. He also feared that they might be ostracized if they developed accents. He didn’t want anything to hold them back. Ralph jokes that while they may not have Italian accents, they did end up with thick Rhode Island accents.
Ralph now speaks perfect Italian, but he had to wait until he was an adult to learn the language.
“I spoke more with my father in Italian afterwards,” he says. “When I was studying in Italy, I would write letters to him in Italian. He loved receiving those letters.” He went on to sum up his upbringing: “It was the American dream. It really was.”
Eventually, Ralph’s father was able to slowly build his own construction business with his contractor friend. The pair began buying property and developing apartment buildings as an investment. The friend and business partner also had a family, including a son Ralph’s age, Salvatore “Sal” Compagnone. The two sons became best friends and grew up together helping their fathers at work. Their families were extremely close, always coming together for Sunday dinners—some of Sal’s most cherished memories. Sal and Ralph continued this tradition with their kids once they had families of their own.
Decades later, Ralph and Sal now own and operate a real estate business together with Ralph’s wife Suzanne and his sister Lucille. The family became even more intertwined when Sal’s dad played matchmaker and got Lucille and Sal together after Sal’s wife passed a few years ago.
The couples also manage their own independent rental properties. While Ralph has built an entirely separate career as an internal medicine physician, at a practice where Suzanne also works, they love their role as landlords. The pair is loved by their tenants, many of whom have been with them for over a decade. The Santoros have always aimed to keep their rental rates far below market level to give individuals and families who may not have a lot, or are just starting out, the opportunity to have a nice home.
They know all their tenants by name, and Suzanne prides herself in knowing that they all feel comfortable calling her and Ralph any time a problem might arise, whether it’s 8:00 PM on a Friday night or 6:00 AM on a Sunday morning. “We always answer our phone for our tenants,” she says.
Around 1985, the Santoros and Sal bought property in town and, over time, slowly started buying the surrounding property with the hopes of turning it into safe and affordable rental property. But for nearly 40 years, the Town of Johnston has fought every one of their plans to build.
Rhode Island housing
Like the rest of the country, Rhode Island is in the thick of an affordable housing crisis. With such a desperate need for new housing, you would think that Johnston would eagerly welcome new opportunities. But that doesn’t appear to be the case for the Santoros and Sal.
In 2024, the State of Rhode Island announced that it would streamline the approval process for the development of new affordable housing statewide. Sal and the Santoros saw this as a great opportunity to start building a 252-unit complex on their property that would help Johnston mitigate its housing shortage by providing more low-to-mid housing options. They began the process right away.
Given the dire need and the fact that as far back as 2004, the Town’s Comprehensive Community Plan had identified the property as a prime spot to add new affordable housing, the couples were surprised when the Town’s mayor, Joseph Polisena Jr., declared war on their plans. Mayor Polisena publicly vowed to “use all the power of the government that I have to stop it.” He added that if the family instead agreed to build less-affordable, suburban-style residences, then “the Town w[ould] roll out the red carpet to glide you through the planning process and see the project to completion.”
Shocked though they were, the Santoros and Sal were not going to back down or make any changes to their building plans. Mayor Polisena stayed true to his word and launched a governmental attack on their plans in the form of eminent domain.
The mayor claimed that the property was needed for a new municipal center that would house municipal buildings, like a new police and fire station, even though all evidence points to the real reason for the land grab: to stop the Santoros’ housing project. The claim to use the Santoro property for a new municipal building campus was a cover story to hide the Town’s real motive, a tactic that the U.S. Supreme Court’s eminent domain decisions such as Kelo v. New London have permitted.
Moreover, there are specific steps a government must take before exercising the drastic and one-sided power of eminent domain, none of which were honored. For starters, the Town had never expressed a need for a new municipal building complex. The Town also has no development plans for a new municipal campus, nor has it considered other locations or evaluated whether the current location of the Town’s municipal complex is suitable for redevelopment. Moreover, Rhode Island law requires the Johnston to form a municipal public buildings authority as a prerequisite for using eminent domain to acquire property for municipal public buildings, which hasn’t been done. It also has not set aside money or budgeted for a new municipal campus. Instead, the Town proposes to raid the money from an already approved project to build a new high school.
But none of these unsatisfied requirements have stopped Johnston. In a series of perfunctory town meetings, the Town Council voted to proceed with the eminent domain without any meaningful public input or discussion taking place.
It’s interesting that a Town, with an expressed need for more affordable housing, would be simultaneously fighting against the creation of quality affordable housing. Why are the mayor and the council fighting against the Town’s own interests?
Stifled opportunities
The area has a history of public backlash against the creation of new affordable housing because of local homeowners’ beliefs about a certain “element” these units might attract. There have been public statements by officials warning that this type of housing would be a repeat of “Chad Brown,” the nickname given to the affordable housing complex in nearby Providence that has been associated with criminal activities.
To this, Lucille Santoro says, “It’s not an element, it’s just somebody who might be a starting schoolteacher who’s making $45,000, $46,000 a year. It’s the police officer that is maybe starting at $52,000 or $54,000.”
The Santoros have always felt it a privilege to give people the opportunity to make their lives better by offering safe and affordable housing they can take pride in. They have seen firsthand how providing this need can better a person’s life, not just with their own tenants, but in their own upbringing as well.
Part of the reason Sal’s and Ralph’s fathers wanted to own rental properties was to give others this opportunity. In fact, when one of the nuns who taught at Lucille and Ralph’s Catholic school, Sister Arlene, wanted to live off-site from the campus, the fathers rented her one of their units. She went on to do extraordinary things.
As Lucille remembers, “Years later she did go to law school and she became an attorney and she did eventually leave the convent. She became the first female Attorney General in the state of Rhode Island.” She’s also a renowned author. These are the people the family hopes to rent homes to.
The government cannot take property through eminent domain simply because it doesn’t like an owner’s lawful use. The Constitution specifically protects against this. Pacific Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit to help Ralph, Suzanne, Sal, and Lucille fight for their right to build on their property. There is currently a preliminary injunction in place that protects their property while the federal case proceeds.
“We’re going to offer people the ability to have a nice home .. we’re going to be able to give some people a beautiful home to live at, and a safe home,” says Ralph. “My father used to tell me all the time, ‘Just keep working. Don’t worry about the money. If you’re working right and doing right, the money’s going to come.’ And they’re trying to deny that for these people. That’s not right.”
The Town of Johnston has an obligation to comply with the Constitution’s property rights protections. Anything less is illegal. Likewise, Sal and the Santoros have the right to follow the example their fathers set for them, by creating life-changing opportunities for their community.
