New Hampshire’s housing shortage dominated candidate platforms this election season, from the battle for governor to the races for the state House. And it has been top of mind for many voters, polls indicate. 

“The reality is the public opinion is changing on this, and it is changing in the way of looking for more housing options,” said Nick Taylor, the newly chosen director of Housing Action New Hampshire, a coalition of advocacy groups. 

A December UNH Survey Center Poll shows that 77 percent of Manchester residents support zoning code changes to increase housing, Taylor noted. And he pointed to an additional, statewide survey by Saint Anselm College in June that showed that 75 percent of respondents believe more housing needs to be built in their own communities.

“This is really important, as we look at the legislative session, to remember that the loudest voice is not the majority,” Taylor said. “The majority of New Hampshire residents want action on this and they need action on this.” 

Now, with Republican Gov.-elect Kelly Ayotte set to take office in January and expanded Republican majorities in the House and Senate, the challenge is on to meet those expectations. 

Here’s what housing advocates are watching for in 2025. 

Ayotte reiterates promises to reduce state approval processes

Ayotte said the voters she heard from during her campaign convinced her that the housing shortage is constraining the state’s growth. 

“This is really about our future,” Ayotte said. “It’s about our now and it’s about our future.”

Speaking to Elissa Margolin, the incoming director of housing programs at Saint Anselm College, Ayotte called for an “all of the above” housing approach, and repeated her promises to work to streamline the approvals process for housing developers from state agencies such as the Department of Environmental Services and the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

“You can get stuck in one place or the other, and you can languish there for a while,” she said. “And we all know that if that happens, money dries up, opportunity dries up.” 

Ayotte also expressed support for public-private partnerships, such as one that led to a $20 million affordable housing development in Rochester. She cited similar developments in Berlin and Swanzey that she visited as a candidate.

During her campaign, Ayotte also said she doesn’t want the state to interfere with local zoning policy, a position that could put her at odds with some of the bills this year. 

“I believe that local voice is important in New Hampshire, so I would not want to interfere with local decision-making,” Ayotte said in an Oct. 15 debate. 

But Ayotte also said she is a supporter of legislation that encourages accessory dwelling units. 

Lawmakers to push for assistance for affordable housing 

As lawmakers enter the 2025 budget year, Taylor highlighted legislation to boost the budget of the state’s affordable housing fund. That fund is run by New Hampshire Housing, a public agency, and helps to provide financial backing for new developments that include rents with specific affordability criteria.

Housing advocates will push to double the amount that goes into the affordable housing fund by increasing the contribution, Taylor said. Currently, the first $5 million collected by the state’s real estate transfer tax goes into the affordable housing fund; Housing Action New Hampshire will push for that to change to the first $10 million.

Advocates will also push to double the budget of the Community Development Finance Authority, which helps to fund infrastructure projects that include housing developments. That agency has a program that allows businesses to donate to designated development projects run by nonprofit organizations and receive 75 percent of that donation as a credit against their business taxes. That includes the creation of historic housing preservation tax credit.

Currently, the authority can offer businesses up to $5 million in tax credits per year; one bill next year would increase that limit to $10 million.

“This would continue that and help really amp it up,” Taylor said. “There’s always more requests than there are resources for it, and so let’s unlock that as a continued potential.” 

Renewed efforts for ADUs

Ever since Gov. Maggie Hassan signed a law in 2016 that allows New Hampshire residents to create one accessory dwelling unit by right, housing advocates have said more needs to be done.

The 2016 law was intended to encourage the creation of ADUs, which often utilize existing structures on a person’s property. But the law allowed cities and towns to impose a number of conditions onto the creation of ADUs, such as a high number of parking spaces, that advocates argue helps prevent homeowners from using them. 

A series of attempts to expand the ADU law in the state have fallen flat in the State House. Most recently, in May, the state Senate killed a House bill that would have expanded the number of allowable ADUs to two per property, and removed many of the restrictions that towns and cities often apply to the first ADU. Senate Republicans argued it could erode property values by preventing neighbors from objecting to over-development. 

But in 2025, Taylor and other housing advocates are hoping to pass a specific type of ADU legislation: a bill allowing for detached ADUs by right. 

Sponsored by Sen. Dan Innis and Rep. Joe Alexander, the bill would modify the existing accessory dwelling unit statute – which requires that towns and cities must allow for attached accessory dwelling units either by right or by special variance – to also include detached ADUs. 

“Communities will still have the ability to regulate certain elements of it, but let’s make this process really work and start to flush out some of the pieces where we’re seeing roadblocks across the board,” Taylor said.

Soil-based lot sizing

Many New Hampshire towns employ minimum size lots requirements, and tie those minimums to concerns about water and sewer access. 

But housing advocates  say the minimum acreage can be arbitrary, and not rooted in what the property could actually support. By setting a minimum lot size for all single-family homes that is unnecessarily large, towns can discourage development of small parcel homes, ideal for starter homes, say advocates. 

Enter soil-based lot sizing. Proposed legislation for next year would require towns and cities to use assessments by the Department of Environmental Services to determine the minimum sizes for properties based on water and sewer needs. If the department deems that the property needs only a half an acre of space to sustain a single-family home, the city or town could not require a larger minimum lot size, the legislation states. The bill would not apply to all single-family homes, but it would require towns to apply DES standards to at least half of the single-family homes in its borders, allowing towns to designate denser areas closer to town and less dense areas further away.

“(The legislation is) to say that if you’re going to create lot size minimums, let’s have it be based in science and what the soil can affect, as opposed to arbitrary measures around certain acreage,” Taylor said.

Nearly four decades later, a new documentary focuses on how she still inspires others and less on her fate aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

“Christa: From Ordinary to Extraordinary” from New Hampshire PBS explores her close relationship with the state and its capital, Concord, where she was picked from more than 11,000 applicants to be the nation’s first teacher in space.

“You say ‘Christa’ in New Hampshire, everyone knows exactly who you’re talking about,” Gov. Chris Sununu says in the film. Its release on Thursday comes three months after a bronze statue of McAuliffe was unveiled at the Statehouse, on what would have been her 76th birthday.

The documentary features interviews with community members, footage of scenes such as a Main Street parade for McAuliffe, and some of her comments — including her parting speech to Concord High School seniors in 1985. It reflects the pride and joy felt by residents then and now for an enthusiastic teacher who loved learning and telling stories.

McAuliffe was 37 when she was killed, one of the seven crew members aboard the Challenger when the space shuttle broke apart on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986. The documentary briefly touches on the tragedy.

“We all want to be remembered for who we were, what we cared about, what we loved, what we did, and not how we died,” Jeanne Gerulskis, the recently retired executive director of the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, says in the film. History through the eyes of ordinary people

McAuliffe taught social studies at Concord High School beginning in 1983. She created a course devoted to the history of American women that’s still taught there today. People in the documentary said she wanted students to see the role that ordinary people, particularly women, can play in history.

McAuliffe saw herself as one of them. A lover of field trips, she looked forward to bringing back her thoughts and journal from the shuttle mission “like a woman on the Conestoga wagon pioneering the West,” she had said in an interview.

Holly Merrow, a former student of McAuliffe’s in the women’s history class, feels the documentary embodies her spirit of wanting to inspire children.

“We felt like we were going to space, as well,” Merrow, now a teacher in Maine, recalled about McAuliffe at a recent screening of the film. Educating future generations

The documentary also talks about the importance of telling children who McAuliffe was.

In New Hampshire, many children learn about government beginning in fourth grade. They visit the Statehouse. McAuliffe’s statue stands near the entrance, a good starting point for a discussion. It’s the first statue added to the grounds in over a century, and the first woman.

At Concord High School, Kimberly Bleier teaches social studies in a room where McAuliffe once taught. In the film, she says she often reminds herself that “there’s a lot of responsibility there” to ensure that what McAuliffe brought to the school, such as her love of hands-on learning, is still remembered and talked about.

Bleier currently teaches “Street Law,” a general introduction to the legal system that emphasizes criminal and juvenile law. McAuliffe had taught that class, too.

Bleier was a sixth-grader when she watched the space shuttle launch on television. She recalled how devastating it was.

“I don’t want to watch the shuttle blow up again,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “I want to watch her. I want to hear her.” Where can I see it?

The 30-minute documentary can be viewed online on the New Hampshire PBS website. Viewers also can stream it on the PBS App.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.

“Unlike private attorneys, government attorneys are presumptively entrusted to be impartial unless a defendant can demonstrate actual bias,” Honigberg wrote.

Hantz Marconi, 68, is accused of trying to interfere with a criminal investigation into her husband, Geno J. Marconi, 73, the long-serving director of the New Hampshire Port Authority. She faces felony and misdemeanor charges for a conversation she had with Governor Christopher T. Sununu on June 6, when she allegedly said the investigation into her husband was meritless and needed to wrap up quickly.

Although she argues the meeting was entirely above-board, Hantz Marconi was indicted on felony charges of attempting to commit improper influence and criminal solicitation of improper influence. She was also charged with making an inappropriate request in April of the chairperson for the Pease Development Authority, which oversees the port authority.

Her husband has been indicted on charges of felony witness tampering and obstructing government administration. He’s accused of providing confidential motor vehicle records about one person to another in early April. He’s also facing misdemeanor charges that he falsified physical evidence and obstructed government administration in late April by deleting one or more voicemails.

After her indictment, Hantz Marconi’s attorneys argued that Formella could not be an impartial prosecutor, given his closeness to Sununu, a “very powerful and important witness” in this case. They argued Formella has conflicts stemming from his current official duties and from his prior roles representing Sununu in his personal capacity. They asked the court to either dismiss all the charges or have a special prosecutor appointed.

Honigberg, however, rejected their argument with a 15-page order highlighting material differences between past cases and the one at hand.

“Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, a defendant must do more than speculate about a potential conflict but rather demonstrate that one is likely to occur,” he wrote, noting that Hantz Marconi will be able to present evidence in the future if she discovers “that she has suffered harm from an actual, not speculative conflict.”

Honigberg wrote that Hantz Marconi’s attorneys had advanced a legal theory that would effectively have courts disqualify the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office from prosecuting any criminal case in which a member of the state’s executive branch would need to serve as a witness. That theory “runs counter to the statutory duties imposed on the Attorney General and is not supported by the Supreme Court’s precedents,” he wrote.

In a statement, Hantz Marconi’s defense attorneys — Richard Guerriero, Jonathan Kotlier, and Oliver Bloom — said they disagree with Honigberg’s decision and could appeal it at some point in the future.

“However, this was a preliminary issue arising in the earliest stages of the case,” they said. “Rest assured, we will continue to fight the Attorney General’s accusations on every lawful basis until Justice Hantz Marconi is vindicated.”

In fact, the defense team has already queued up Hantz Marconi’s next gambit to have her indictment dismissed in its entirety. In a filing on Nov. 8, her attorneys introduced an alternative argument that her alleged conduct was protected by the First Amendment, the constitutional right of redress, and judicial immunity.

Honigberg wrote in his order on Tuesday that he anticipates the prosecutors will file a response to the Nov. 8 motion within the next 15 days.

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment on Honigberg’s order.

Hantz Marconi, who was appointed by Sununu to the state’s highest court in 2017, faces up to three and a half years to seven years in state prison for each of the two felony charges. She also faces up to 12 months in jail for each of five misdemeanors.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Sununu pushed back on recent news coverage and said Formella has handled these cases independently.

“John Formella goes to the nth degree to ensure firewalls are in place, what is transmitted between the Justice Department and either my office or legislators, elected officials, or the public is always above board,” he said. “That’s the best part of John Formella.”

Sununu said he thinks a recent report by New Hampshire Public Radio was “complete garbage.” The report, which noted that Sununu met with Formella and members of the Pease Development Authority board on April 16, said the closed-door gathering “raises new questions about the role Sununu played in Marconi’s removal from office and the ensuing criminal charges.”

Sununu countered that the April 16 meeting was when Formella “let us know” that an investigation into Marconi was underway. He said he has respected Formella’s independence throughout the process.

“I keep myself very apart from things, especially in the attorney general’s office. I respect the attorney general’s role,” Sununu said.

“To this day, you know what I know about those indictments? Exactly what you have read in the indictments,” he added. “I read them on the same day you read them with the public. I didn’t get a heads up on any of this because it doesn’t concern me.”

The potential witnesses in Marconi’s case include members of the Pease Development Authority board, staffers with the New Hampshire Division of Ports and Harbors, and Bradley J. Cook of Hampton, who was also indicted on felony perjury and misdemeanor false swearing charges, according to court records.

Cook, 73, allegedly testified before a grand jury in September that he hadn’t communicated with Marconi or received any materials from Marconi related to a pier use permit for “N.L.,” when in fact he had, according to the indictments.

One of the potential witnesses is Neil Levesque, vice-chairman of the Pease Development Authority board and executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

Details are sparse in the charging documents, so it’s still unclear what exactly sparked Marconi’s alleged misconduct and the subsequent investigation. He has been on administrative leave since April, and Justice Hantz Marconi has been on administrative leave since July. Their attorneys contend they are innocent.

Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter. Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.