Xay Khamsyvoravong is the former mayor of Newport, Rhode Island, known for his focus on community development and sustainable growth. During his tenure, he prioritized initiatives aimed at preserving Newport’s historic charm while fostering economic vitality and modern infrastructure. Khamsyvoravong’s leadership emphasized collaboration across diverse stakeholders, earning him recognition for his pragmatic and inclusive approach. A dedicated public servant, he remains a prominent advocate for civic engagement and environmental stewardship in Rhode Island. He earned a J.D. from Roger Williams University Law School and a Masters Degree and B.A. in International Relations from Brown University.
Amish Jindal: What was the main catalyst that prompted you to run for mayor of Newport, Rhode Island?
Xay Khamsyvoravong: Communities across this country are going through an incredible amount of change. I see that firsthand as somebody who works with governments for a living, trying to make sure communities have firmer financial standing for the future and are ready for the challenges that they may be approaching. And in Newport, I saw a lot of those same challenges facing our community and wanted to be involved with ensuring that we had the best possible pathway forward to address those challenges to the families that live here. So, for me, I look at the big subject areas that are really driving the quality of life for most people on a day-to-day basis. And those areas are very clear. It’s housing, it’s infrastructure, both resiliency but also infrastructure, like broadband and transportation. And it’s education.
AJ: What is a typical day in the life of a mayor? What motivates you to go to work every day?
XK: The work is incredibly inspiring. It is a ton of fun. There is no such thing as a typical day. Every day comes at you with different velocity, but every day is uniquely different, and rewarding. I’d say a few things to note. First, you have the realm of things that the mayor is expected to do, and Newport’s is a largely ceremonial role. So these are the groundbreakings and the ribbon cuttings which are very rewarding, unique opportunities to both stress government’s presence to the community and support for the things that they do, but also to reaffirm that elected officials see people, that they’re willing to meet them where they are, and that they see the value of the work that they’re doing to help improve our community.
The second realm of things is more policy-based. This is an area that, to varying degrees, prior mayors have engaged. I leaned in hard because of my background in public policy, really focusing on, what are the macro policies that the City Council, as a governing body, can put into place to try and improve the quality of life for people? These are things like policies impacting the use of housing stock zoning or educational programming, or pursuing large infrastructure grants. Those are the areas where policy work is a combination of identifying and implementing good policy, but also serving as an intergovernmental connection for local governments to resources that exist to help them.
The final bucket of things is the bucket that you can never really predict. This is what can make any day go awry, the things that you don’t anticipate. Sometimes that’s rapid, such as turnover in staffing, or needing a new police chief or a new city manager because somebody decided they’re going to retire. Those are the elements that make up a day-to-day schedule for a small town mayor in America.
AJ: Do you think there’s ever any miscommunication about your role as mayor in a City Council-City Manager system and what the public perception is for what a mayor does?
XK: Constant. The mayoral role across the US is very different. Some communities have a very strong mayor. Other communities have a balance where the mayor and council have sort of split power. Other communities have a popular elected mayor, but also have professional city management. In Newport, it’s a city council presidency that brings with it the ceremonial powers of mayor; that’s considered a very powerful bully pulpit for impacting and leading public conversations. Because of that variety, there can be a great deal of confusion as to how much the mayor controls. And so, I know it’s very tempting to be driving down the street, hit a pothole, and you know, to spout off profanity towards the mayor. But other times, it can be really frustrating because you, as a mayor, have very little ability to directly control those decisions. It’s much more similar to being a chair of a board of governors than it is to being a traditional CEO in the sense of the word. Rhode Island has an interesting tradition in this realm, in that our executives, traditionally in Rhode Island, are much weaker than they are in the rest of the country. That traces back to our colonial roots, where we were one of the first colonies to press back against the King. We had such a strong aversion to royalty and the power of the Crown that we really pressed for legislative supremacy in most of our forms of government.
AJ: I want to move onto housing, as it’s a subject with which many are fascinated. Many resort towns in America are facing a workforce housing affordability crisis, where service workers, teachers, and government officials can’t afford to live in the place that they help run. What are you seeing in Newport?
XK: Newport feels this more acutely than almost anywhere else in the state. And that’s driven by two things. The first is that our largest industry is not hospitality. Our largest industry is institutional. It is the US Navy, which maintains Naval Station Newport; that can have up to 20,000 Navy personnel on site on any given day. It’s the institutions like Salve Regina University, or Newport Hospital, or the Preservation Society, that serve as the primary drivers of employment in our community. That being said, it is so expensive to live here that many of our residents actually have two jobs, oftentimes one in that base industry that you talked about, but also a second working in hospitality. So, your favorite bartender when you come down to Newport that you see every summer? They are probably also a school teacher, or a nurse, or a firefighter, or somebody who works to make this community function every single day.
The additional challenge that we have here, though, is that Newport is a very, very popular place for investment. This has become one of the top second-home markets in the country. The 2020 US census found that one in four homes sit vacant for most of the year. It’s not just the Gilded Age mansions that you see splashed all over on TV shows. These are middle class neighborhoods, places where traditionally the working and middle class lived, that have now been converted into largely investment properties. And so, there’s this dark home phenomenon that you see coming to a community like Newport that is really accelerating the nature of the housing crisis.
We have seen north of a 65 percent increase in the value of homes in Newport over the past five years. The average home value in Newport is about $900,000. In order to afford a home at that level, you need to be making about $285,000 per year. The challenge is that our median household income in Newport is about $82,000 a year, so there’s a big differential there. What’s driving the market here are not the people who are here that need homes. It is outside investment activity that is highly problematic to our ability to maintain a community that still has the balance of being able to function and have a sincerity of place that comes with having the people who work here, also live here.
AJ: What are some of the solutions that you’ve discussed with City Council and constituents that could allow us to take steps to solve this problem?
XK: The housing crisis is something that is very easy to diagnose, but very hard to remedy and cure. It takes a variety of different approaches, none of which are a silver bullet. Working together with the council, at the beginning of my term, we started putting in motion a three-pronged strategy that looks at the housing crisis. The first is: Let’s stop the bleeding. Let’s look at the existing use of housing. The most prevalent place that we see this is the conversion of homes into short-term rentals. So, we increased the registration fee on short-term rentals to $1,000 for whole-home short-term rentals. That allowed us the resources we need to invest in both technology and personnel to go out and crack down on illegal conversions of homes into short-term rentals.
The second thing that we did was to stabilize the situation itself. It’s really difficult for the government to entirely balance out the impact of the free market, but what we can do is put enough incentive in there to cause investors and homeowners to reflect and say, “Am I going to sell my home, or am I going to turn it into a short-term rental?” Or instead, “Am I going to try and keep the existing situation I have here in place?” We did two things that helped stabilize the housing issue here in Newport. The first is that we focus the benefit of our two-tiered tax structure on homes that were around the median home value. The second thing we did is ensure that the benefit and relief extended to properties that were rented year-round to residents. Oftentimes, these are the properties that are most at risk of being converted into short-term or seasonal rentals. By affording that benefit to landlords, it gave them the reasoning and the logic they needed to try and keep that tenant there for another year-round rental, rather than converting it. Over half of Newport’s households are renters. This is a very important part of our community that we have to do everything we can to help.
The third piece of all this is production. We are going to require additional housing units. Newport added a typical net one unit of housing per year. We now have over 300 units of housing in the pipeline that we’ve built up over the past 18 months. The way that we did that was by focusing on the zoning rules and regulations that we have as a community, making some short-term fixes and then focusing on the long term on an overhaul of the zoning code itself.
AJ: I wanted to move to tourism, which is the main public-facing industry of Newport. According to many local news outlets, tourism in Newport is up 12 percent year over year and above pre-pandemic levels. What do you think are some of the contributors to this growth?
XK: There are a few different things. One is, coming out of the pandemic, people were uniquely appreciative of the opportunity to take trips, to gather together with friends and family in new and exciting places, or to return to places that they love. The second is that our local tourism marketing organization, Discover Newport, has done really good work figuring out how we fill out the shoulder seasons of Newport, both through events and attracting conferences that help fill our hotels in the off-season and also expand the exposure of the community. The challenge that we’re facing when we talk about tourism is, at what point does that tourism outbalance the ability of residents themselves to continue enjoying a community that they love? Residents are the key part of the tourism industry, because they are the people who make it such a uniquely special experience here in Newport. The difference between a great destination like Newport and a resort community really comes down to the people and the sincerity of the place that you get when you go and you interact with people who live in a community.
The second is, we have to figure out a way to make sure our community is financially in balance. Newport has a jaw-dropping amount of deferred capital maintenance that it needs to make right now: $500 million just to keep this place operating. What is shocking when you think about a place that is just 24,000 residents, that runs on a $115 million a year annual budget, but that attracts 3.5 million people per year, is that when you start to do that math, you say, well, obviously we should be relying on the visitors that come here to help pay the tab on that enormous amount of capital improvement that’s needed. The challenge we have is that as of right now, less than $10 million of Newport’s annual budget is derived from either hotel tax or sales tax that come in from tourists when they visit. That means that our residents are actually picking up the tab for maintaining this place as a tourist destination, and we need to work on rebalancing that to ensure that it’s something that is going to be sustainable for residents.
AJ: Across the world, eco-tourism is growing. How is Newport aiming to engage with visitors in a more environmentally-friendly way?
XK: We think about it constantly through the policies that we have for people to come to visit here, for the types of places and attractions we have that draw people out. The highest form of tourism, in my opinion, is culturally-based tourism. It’s tourism that is drawing people here because of the uniqueness of either the places that we have, the stories that are told here, and eco-tourism is part of that. We saw this over the past couple of years when the Ocean Race came through Newport, and the theme behind the Ocean Race was ocean health. Because this is the sailing capital of the world, a lot of the conversations we are having today are about the health of our oceans, about what it means to live sustainably, and about the lessons that can be learned looking forward, in a community like Newport, to help other places. That really has been a big focus for us in Newport.
The new Save the Bay Center just opened down here. This is a phenomenal aquarium that highlights not only wonderful sea life, but specifically our local marine life, and the impact of the decisions that we make on their climate, and on how communities like Newport are managing things like resiliency. This is an important issue for communities across this country. To be dealing with this in Newport is a great opportunity to showcase that. We lean into that at every opportunity we get.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.