Rhode Island Specially Adapted Housing Property Tax Exemption

Rhode Island has two specially adapted housing exemptions in the same section and they are worth several hundred thousand dollars apart. A veteran who claims the wrong one loses the difference. Subsection (b) is the smaller and more widely known one. There is a ten thousand dollar exemption from local taxation on real property for any veteran, and for the unmarried widow or widower of a deceased veteran, who VA determines to be totally disabled through a service-connected disability and who by reason of that disability has received assistance in acquiring specially adapted housing. The real estate must be occupied as the person's domicile, and in a multi-family property only the value of the part the person occupies is exempt. The (b) amount also varies by town, with Cranston as a tax credit of up to $4,725 a year (an exemption of up to $30,000 until Public Laws 2026, chapters 270 and 271), Cumberland up to $7,500, Newport at $10,000 or ten percent of assessed valuation whichever is greater, New Shoreham up to $36,450, North Providence up to $12,500, Westerly up to $40,500, Lincoln up to $15,000, Narragansett up to $50,000, Tiverton and Jamestown as tax credits, and North Smithfield as a $350 credit or greater. Subsection (i) is the one to read twice. A veteran discharged under conditions other than dishonorable, or an officer honorably separated, who VA determines to be totally and permanently disabled through a service-connected disability, and who owns a specially adapted homestead acquired or modified with the assistance of a VA special adaptive housing grant meeting VA and Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines, "is exempt from all taxation on the homestead". Not ten thousand dollars of it. All of it. The exemption runs to the person or the person's surviving spouse. The only difference in the gate between the $10,000 and the whole bill is the word permanently. Both require total disability and a specially adapted housing grant; (i) also requires that the total disability be permanent. A veteran whose rating is total and permanent and who is being given the (b) figure should point the assessor at subsection (i). Subsection (i) also carries a clause that keeps the exemption alive through a move: the homestead qualifies if it was acquired or modified using the proceeds from the sale of a previous homestead that was acquired with the assistance of a special adaptive housing grant. A veteran who sells the adapted house and buys another with the proceeds does not lose the exemption. Unlike subsection (c), neither (b) nor (i) is written as permissive. Both say there is an exemption rather than that a town may provide one. One town appears to cut subsection (i) down. The provision closes "Provided, that in the town of Westerly where the amount of the above referenced exemption shall be forty-six thousand five hundred dollars ($46,500)", which reads as capping at $46,500 what is otherwise a complete exemption. The entry records it as printed rather than guessing at the intent, and a Westerly veteran in this position should get the assessor's reading in writing. The gate here is a VA grant and a VA determination rather than a combined percentage, so the rating filter does not hide this entry.