Years ago, rentals in Newport were plentiful

No room at the inn?

Actually, it’s finding a manger that’s becoming the hard part.

A story in this paper on Wednesday detailed a somewhat underplayed aspect of the pandemic … the increasing lack of rental options on Aquidneck Island, especially Newport.

Those frustrated are not the stereotypical sign-carrying homeless patrolling intersections and seeking loose change.

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These are working people. One featured is Michael Johnson, an actor who moved here from North Providence in 1996 to perform with the long-gone theater ensemble at Beechwood.

He’s logged time at the Newport Playhouse and the old Firehouse Theater, among other venues, and toured in Broadway productions. And he’s worked restaurant jobs to help pay the bills.

Now Johnson fears he and husband, Travis Johnson, will be fenced out of a city he’s come to love as supply defies demand and rents rise.

When I moved here in 1980, rents were higher than most of the state but manageable, and apartments were plentiful. I found a one-bedroom off-Broadway spot for $275 a month plus utilities. The owners lived next door and were great. I stayed eight years.

I found it in an afternoon.

Kate Leonard sells real estate and is longtime member of the City Council. Her take (paraphrased) is that folks who live out of state decided to pull up stakes and live in property they own in Newport rather than live elbow to elbow in a COVID-ravaged metropolis.

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I believe her. And I can’t blame them in a dire pandemic state. Newport’s a good place to wait out a catastrophe, or just settle into. I moved here for a few years with eventual plans to move on.

That was 41 years ago (for the record, my wife and I rent in Newport. It’s a great situation). It’s a shame to think natives and carpetbaggers who love it here and want to stay may have to move on.

But take heart. Someone’s probably dreaming up plans for another luxurious break-the-bank hotel as I write this. Let the good times roll.

ODDZNENDZ: I grew up three blocks from Pawtucket’s McCoy Stadium and went to hundreds of PawSox games.

We could almost smell the peanuts and Cracker Jack from our third-floor tenement. You’d probably have to empty your Roth IRA to get me to enter Polar Park, where the newly christened Worcester Red Sox play.

Why are there no PawSox after 50 years? That’s on Gina Raimondo and Nick Mattiello, mostly Mattiello, who feared losing votes in his conservative slice of Cranston.

Republican Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, who grew up in Middletown, knocked off Mattiello in the election last fall.

Mattiello will forever be known as the House speaker who gave away the PawSox. And no, I’m never getting over this.

• R.I.P.: Terry Toppa, a good guy. Whenever I saw him, we had two topics — the plight of small businesses on the Island and the Red Sox.

• So, Liz Cheney, a lifelong conservative Republican, is banished from her party’s leadership because she told the truth about Donald Trump’s unproven election fraud fantasies?

Is that about it?

I wish I could hear John Chafee, a decent man, discuss the current state of his party.

• Anyone who thinks COVID is merely a common flu should take a trip to India, which is short on ventilators, doctors, nurses and … hope.

• Was it lost on anyone that on Wednesday, the paper featured a story on the rental property crunch and an item that four houses in Newport County valued at $1 million or more recently sold?

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