6 Reasons People Leave Rhode Island, According to Those Who Moved Out-of-State
A University of New Hampshire poll released this summer found that half of middle-aged Rhode Islanders would move out of state if they could swing it.
These are the reasons people leave Rhode Island, according to those who did so.
Note: This is general information, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Tax rates and housing programs are subject to change.
1. Bad Housing Numbers
Rhode Island voters approved a $120 million housing bond in 2024.
The state had spent $52.2 million of it by April 2026, according to a 2026 report from the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC).
That money has financed 200 new rental units so far, at an average cost of $512,377 apiece.
At that pace, RIPEC estimates Rhode Island’s total investment will eventually produce about 642 new housing units statewide.
That’s just 28.5% of the goal set in the Executive Office of Housing’s 2030 plan.
One Rhode Islander who left for Philadelphia, writing in the Boston Globe, bought a home there for a fraction of what the same size place would run back home.
He pointed to decades of underbuilt housing and large-lot zoning rules as the reason why.
Many Rhode Islanders are doing that same math.
2. Shrinking Public Bus Schedule
The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) cut frequency and weekend service on 45 of its 67 routes starting Sept. 27, 2025.
The agency avoided eliminating any routes or laying off drivers, closing much of its budget gap with added state funding instead.
Riders on routes that lost weekend service, or saw their buses come around less often, still felt it.
Getting to work without a car got harder either way.
The same Rhode Islander who left for Philadelphia says he can leave his car parked for days at a time now, something Rhode Island’s thin bus schedule never let him do.
A state built around driving keeps losing the people who’d rather not.
3. Hasbro’s Job-Market Hit
Rhode Island lost one of its biggest private employers this year.
The company didn’t even leave the region.
Hasbro is moving to Boston, shifting its headquarters out of Pawtucket to the Seaport, with the move set to wrap by the end of 2026.
Gone.
Workers who want to keep their jobs get a choice between a longer commute and an actual move, and plenty pick the move.
They don’t have to go far to find a new job, either.
Of the roughly 32,000 people who left Rhode Island for another state in 2024, 47% landed in Massachusetts.
4. Slipping Affordability Rankings
Rhode Island keeps landing near the bottom of the country’s affordability rankings, and residents feel it.
A February 2026 survey found only 17% of Rhode Islanders call their own state affordable, tying it for the fifth-least-affordable state in the country.
Not even one in five.
That’s the same stretch of years when Rhode Island kept losing more people to other states than it gained from them, the outbound numbers landing right alongside the affordability complaints.
A place doesn’t have to be the priciest state in the country to feel like the priciest state to the person paying the bill.
5. High Tax Bills
Rhode Island ranks 40th nationally on the Tax Foundation’s 2026 tax index, closer to the bottom than the middle.
The state’s income tax tops out at 5.99%, and its effective property tax rate runs above the national average too.
None of that is a secret to the people paying it.
The Tax Foundation’s own migration research keeps finding the same pattern nationwide.
Americans tend to settle where the tax bill runs lower.
Rhode Island isn’t on that side of the ledger.
6. High Power Bills
Rhode Island’s electricity costs run about 34% higher than the national average, based on customer bills gathered over the past year.
The average Rhode Island household pays close to 28 cents per kilowatt-hour.
The national average sits closer to 21 cents.
That gap adds up fast over a Rhode Island winter, when the heat runs for months at a stretch.
Moving somewhere with a lower bill can feel like a raise, even without a new job attached.
Psst! How much do you know about Rhode Island’s history? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Rhode Island History IQ
Answer these questions on Rhode Island firsts, records, and hometown quirks. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Despite being the smallest state by land area, Rhode Island’s shoreline stretches how far once you count every cove and inlet?
Wanting to Leave vs. Going
Rhode Island has many people who talk about leaving without ever loading a truck.
A University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll released July 7, 2026 found about half of middle-aged Rhode Islanders, ages 35 to 64, said they'd like to move out of state.
Wanting isn't going, though.
The Census Bureau's latest estimates show Rhode Island's population still grew overall.
More residents moved to other states than moved in from them, though.
Arrivals from other countries covered that loss.
Rhode Island's population count keeps climbing on paper even as more residents pack up for other states than arrive from them.
Both of those things are true at the same time.
The Math Behind Rhode Island's Growth Number
Rhode Island's net domestic migration ran negative, at about 1,551 more people leaving for other states than arriving from them, in the most recent 12 months the Census Bureau tracked.
International arrivals added roughly 5,923 people over that same period.
That's more than enough to cover the domestic loss, which is how Rhode Island's overall population still grew by about 4,106 for the year.
Still Pulling People In
Rhode Island isn't only losing residents.
The state's ratio of people moving in versus moving out improved by more than 15% year-over-year in 2025, the second-largest jump of any state in the country, according to moving-industry data.
Rhode Island still ranked 47th out of 50 states on that same ratio, so the gain started from a deep hole.
The report grouped Rhode Island with California and Illinois in a comeback cohort: States with a long run of heavy out-migration now seeing a modest reversal.
A state that small can turn a modest gain into a visible shift fast, since it doesn't take many trucks pointed toward Providence to move the count.
California and Illinois logged the same kind of turnaround this year, proof that even the states with the longest losing streaks can point a few more trucks in the other direction.
10 U.S. Towns Where Residents Still Get Their Mail in an Unusual Way, including 2 in Alaska
For more than a hundred years, mail carriers on a Wisconsin lake have leapt off a moving boat to deliver the mail, and nobody there thinks that's strange.
Across the country, a handful of towns still get their mail in ways the rest of America gave up on generations ago, including two spots in Alaska where a mail truck was never an option.
10 U.S. Towns Where Residents Still Get Their Mail in an Unusual Way, including 2 in Alaska
