For New Hampshire to curb its current housing crisis it needs 23,500 units right now, 60,000 units by 2030, and 90,000 units by 2040. But despite these seemingly impossible targets, towns across the Granite State have found pockets of success.

Judi Currie discusses New Hampshire’s housing landscape with Nick Taylor, executive director of the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast, Rob Taylor, land use and community development administrator for the town of Enfield, and Donna Benton, director of planning and community development in Dover.

This article has been edited lightly for length and clarity by Rosemary Ford and Caitlin Agnew

Judi Currie: 

How did we get here?

Nick Taylor:

We really got here because of a shortage of supply. There’s just not enough housing units in New Hampshire right now, and that doesn’t make a difference whether you’re a senior, a young person, a family, a member of our workforce — certainly it hurts those at the bottom level of our income scale the hardest. We have not been building enough homes in New Hampshire. Why is that? There’s a few different factors, one of them certainly, restrictive land use zoning ordinances that have prohibited and made illegal many of the opportunities to build more affordable housing options. There’s also a long-term underinvestment in the financing programs that make below-market-rate housing effective and financially feasible. And there’s been a lack of investment in the trades so we don’t have the folks who can really go in and build the types of housing. But it really does come back to that lack of supply. There just aren’t enough homes in our state right now.

Judi Currie:

What has worked in your communities? 

Donna Benton:

I think it starts with a supportive city council and supportive planning board that have that trust in their staff to get creative with their regulations and to not be afraid to change zoning regulations or subdivision regulations to try to help with that. Then certainly, it comes from the master plan and kind of the community vision as well.

Rob Taylor:

It’s gonna take a lot of different things. We’ve actually got a New Hampshire Housing Opportunities Planning Grant to redo our zoning ordinance. Simultaneously, we’re working on a master plan, sort of a phase two of our master plan, that we adopted in 2022. We started with big chapters — the housing chapter, transportation, economic development, and land use and so forth. Now we’re working on more chapters that sort of go hand in glove with those first chapters. We’re also working collaboratively with area businesses. Obviously, municipalities have a big role to play, but so do the state and the federal government and businesses, so we’re working sort of holistically in that regard.

Judi Currie:

What are some examples of successful projects you’ve seen recently in the greater Seacoast? 

Nick Taylor:

The numbers can be so daunting about our housing gaps and vacancy rates and how much rents have gone up but there are some really great projects. We’re celebrating what is going on right now. Donna touched on one in Dover — the cottages at Back River Road, a small sort of tiny home cottage cluster development that is all workforce housing. The Portsmouth Housing Authority over the last year or two opened up Ruth Lewin Griffin Place, which is right downtown — again all workforce and affordable housing, walkable to jobs. Really great location there.

Our organization has also done a number of trips to these types of housing units so that folks can see with their own eyes what are some of these other options. We visited a resident-owned manufactured housing community in Newmarket, and we did a walking tour of downtown Exeter because some of the projects that are really successful you may not even know exist — duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units, — things that just fit right in, but unless you’re really looking for them, you don’t know they’re there. So there’s a lot of great stuff going on. We have a long way to go, but we certainly have a lot of great folks making progress.

Judi Currie:

Now, we’ve got House Bill 1291, which increases the number of accessory dwelling units allowed by right; House Bill 1399, allowing the expansion of a single-family residence to two units, and House Bill 1400, which limits the requirements for parking spaces to one per unit. These measures have passed the House. Does that mean they’re a done deal?

Nick Taylor:

Nothing’s ever a done deal until the ink is dry in the legislature. So there’s a long way to go; it still has to get through the Senate, and then the governor would have to sign it. But when these bills passed, it was a really exciting time, because you had a lot of folks from all over these different coalitions come together and say it’s important that we have some basic standards in our state that all of our communities should abide by, that allow us to have more options.

This included the business community that is struggling with their workforce. This included AARP, whose members want to stay in their community but can’t find a place to downsize. This included the disability rights community. This included folks who think that there’s been some government overreach as well as folks who really want to move forward with a more equitable lens about how folks can attain housing. So it was a really exciting day for a broad coalition, but there’s still a long way to go before these are statewide laws.

Judi Currie:

Any other measures making their way through the legislature that you’d want to mention that you think could help?

Nick Taylor:

There are a few other initiatives that are mostly designed as sort of financing incentives.

There was legislation that is still being discussed around the real estate transfer tax that would not raise the tax but set aside the first $10 million that’s collected to the Affordable Housing Fund. So that’s an ongoing financing tool. There’s also discussion with the enabling legislation around the tax relief program that communities can implement called 79E that would help for office-to-residential conversion. So there’s a lot of things going on. But, you have folks here like Rob and Donna and their communities that have really taken the lead on this. It’s really time for some other communities to watch the successes that they’ve had, and sort of be part of the solution too.

Judie Currie:

Are there any community-specific differences between your town or your city and the rest of the state that you feel have made you guys leaders in housing? 

Donna Benton:

I think it goes back to the community vision and the city officials. Dover’s lucky that we have a development-friendly community. We see that with our leadership. Then, we’re also lucky because we have a lot of public water and sewer and the utilities needed to create this extra density, whereas other communities might not. I think that’s one of the biggest differences.

Rob Taylor:

Here in the Upper Valley, we’re sort of the bedroom community for the core towns of the Upper Valley, which are Lebanon and Hanover and even across the river into Vermont, with White River Junction. We’re benefiting from investments that were made 50 years ago. Some significant clean water-type investment with our sewer collection system. We actually have capacity that not a lot of other communities can say they have. We actually pump our sewage to Lebanon for treatment. It’s a really great working relationship. 

I think that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of is the sort of Upper Valley mindset up here, we’re sort of a region within two states, New Hampshire and Vermont, and there’s a lot of sort of collectivism here that we do work really well as multiple communities. We share resources and energy and so forth. But it does frustrate me because there are still communities in our area and elsewhere in the state that are sort of putting their head in the sand a little bit and not really sort of stepping up. I think that’s the important thing. We all need to be proactive. We can’t just sit back and wait for things to come to us. It’s gonna be all of these communities and nonprofits and different organizations working together and really going at this with concerted effort. I think that’s where I would sort of end my little diatribe here is that we’ve got to all work together on all different levels.

Judie Currie:

How do you balance local control versus loosening up the regulations to find those widespread housing solutions?

Rob Taylor:

Again, New Hampshire is very unique in that every town has its own little set of regs. That’s difficult for developers and that’s kind of what we have to break out a little bit. We talked about how what’s going on on the Seacoast in New Hampshire has been tremendous. You’ve got some great developers, you’ve got bandwidth down there. They’re doing some great things down there. I’ve been just blown away with what I see in places like Dover, Rochester and Portsmouth.

Up here, we’re a little bit disadvantaged in terms of we don’t have this sort of built-in developer core, so to speak, with regard to people that are ready to go. So we have to do a lot to try to attract people up here and get creative, but it’s starting to happen.

The big organizations up here, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, the largest employer in the state of New Hampshire is right in Lebanon. They got 10,000 employees right here. Last night, they told us that they have openings for like 3,000 positions. The big part of it is, where are they going to put ‘em? So, to their credit, they’re not standing back and being an observer of this problem. They’re being proactive. They’re putting their land into it. They’re putting master leases on development so that developers can rely that they’re going to have rentals, that once they build a place, it’s going to be rented. Actually, Hitchcock will guarantee that. Dartmouth College is the same kind of thing in the nearby town of Hanover. Huge footprint, very wealthy institution, but they’re suffering because they’re trying to hire staff and professors, and they have to find places for them. They literally will make offers to potential employees, and the people will accept the offer. Then, when they look around for housing, there’s nothing. There’s the problem in a nutshell, right there, if you ask me. So there’s a lot of work to do and we’re ready to get at it.

Judie Currie:

Well, it’s great to hear how communities are finding their own solutions, and we look forward to exploring more stories of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Nick Taylor, executive director of the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast, Rob Taylor, land use and community development administrator for the town of Enfield, and Donna Benton, director of planning and community development for the city of Dover — thank you all for joining us.

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The State We’re in a weekly digital public affairs show is produced by NH PBS and The Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communications. It is shared with partners in the Granite State News Collaborative, of which both organizations are members.