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New Hampshire
The nation’s last refuge for affordable homes is in Northeast Ohio • New Hampshire Bulletin
At 43, Sharon Reese is a housing market refugee – forced to return to her Ohio hometown after 18 years in Las Vegas, despite a successful career training dancers for nightclub acts.
“If you don’t have between $600,000 and $800,000, you’re not buying a house out there,” Reese said. “Las Vegas has a lot of opportunity, and it was affordable in 2006, but it’s become unaffordable. We quit our jobs and moved across the country. We’re hoping this is the right decision for us.”
Reese and her family are unpacking at her parents’ Youngstown home, a temporary stop until she and her husband, who was a casino worker in Las Vegas, can find jobs and a house of their own with their young daughter. Youngstown is one of the last two metro areas in the country where a household with nearly any income should be able to find a single-family home they can afford to buy, according to an analysis of April data by the National Association of Realtors.
Before the pandemic, there were 20 states that were considered affordable as a whole under the group’s definition, including the presidential election swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As of this year, there is none. Even the states with the closest match between income and home prices – Iowa, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan – didn’t make the cut.
Since the pandemic, two states, Montana and Idaho, have surpassed California as the most unaffordable states for local homebuyers, according to the analysis. Hawaii and Oregon round out the list of the five least affordable states.
The Realtors’ analysis assigns affordability scores to states and large metro areas on a scale of 0 to 2. A score of 0 means that no household can afford any home on the market.
A score of 1 means that homes on the market are affordable to households in proportion to their position on the income ladder – in other words, 100 percent of families can afford at least some homes on the market. And a score of 2 would mean that all households can afford all homes on the market, but no state or metropolitan area even reached a 1.
The least affordable metro area was Los Angeles, which scored only 0.3, while the metro areas of Youngstown (0.97) and Akron (0.95) in Ohio were rated most affordable.
According to the latest estimates from July by real estate company Redfin, median single-family home sale prices were $175,000 in Youngstown and $239,500 in Akron. That compared with $487,000 in Las Vegas, $490,000 in Boise, and $1 million in the Los Angeles area.
The Las Vegas area, where the Reese family had lived for 18 years, had a score of 0.5 on the Realtors’ scale. No state earned an overall score of 1, though Iowa, West Virginia, and Ohio came close, at nearly 0.9. The least affordable states, Montana, Idaho, California, Hawaii, and Oregon, all had scores around 0.4.
Nationwide, home affordability has evaporated over the past three years as interest rates have gone up, according to a monitoring index maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. It measures affordability more simply than the Realtors’ analysis, focusing solely on the ability of a homebuyer with the median household income to buy the median-priced house.
By that measure, the national affordability percentage was above 100 percent between January 2019 and April 2021. But it fell as low as 67 percent last year and remained below 70 percent in June, meaning a homebuyer with the median income had only two-thirds of the earnings needed to buy the median-priced house.
Home prices have increased by 47 percent nationwide just since 2020, according to a June report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. A major factor is that there aren’t many homes for sale: Many current homeowners are reluctant to sell because they’re locked into historically low interest rates. Meanwhile, investors have gobbled up single-family starter homes, reducing the supply.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said there are signs of more houses coming up for sale. For example, there was a 20 percent increase in houses and condos for sale in July compared with July 2023, according to the association.
“We are still short on inventory, but I think the worst is over,” Yun said. “We have seen mortgage rates begin to decline, so it’s less of a big financial penalty to move and give up a low interest rate. And the second factor is just the passage of time – life-changing events always occur, a death, a divorce, a new child, or just job relocation, and that means changing residence.”
Along with high prices and interest rates, home buyers are getting slammed by higher property taxes and insurance costs, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Home prices in northeast Ohio might be lower because the area has a stable population, curbing competition and bidding wars, said Alison Goebel, executive director of the Greater Ohio Policy Center, a Columbus nonprofit aimed at revitalizing Ohio cities.
“Our population numbers have remained fairly steady in the last several decades, so we don’t have egregious demand and supply issues like you see on the West Coast and other rapidly growing areas,” Goebel said.
Montana and Idaho are the least affordable states: Housing prices are exploding in both, as deep-pocketed newcomers – many of them white-collar employees working in high-wage jobs based out of state – have driven up prices beyond what longtime residents can afford.
The city of Boise scored 0.4 on the Realtors’ affordability scale, on par with the New York City area. Like Montana, Idaho has natural beauty that is attracting people who are cashing out of more expensive areas, said Nicki Hellenkamp, Boise’s director of housing and homelessness policy.
“It’s one of the Zoom boom towns, where it’s beautiful but the wages are low, and the cost of living is low. If you sell your house in Los Angeles and buy two houses here, as my uncle did, then you can have a very different standard of living,” Hellenkamp said.
It’s not just home prices – rents are up 40 percent in Boise since the pandemic began, she added.
“Obviously wages didn’t go up 40 percent, so some people have been displaced,” Hellenkamp said.
The city is working on modest proposals to help with down payments and to create more affordable apartments, she said, but building more affordable housing will mean state and federal cooperation to help solve labor shortages and soaring material costs.
“We can’t do this alone as a city. This issue is a big one,” Hellenkamp said.
A state housing task force in Montana made recommendations in June to streamline construction of houses and apartments statewide and create incentives for cities to loosen zoning and allow denser housing.
A member of the task force, Kendall Cotton, said he personally found it impossible to buy a house in Montana, but was happy to recently purchase half a duplex for his growing family.
“We were thrilled to have that as an option, just to get our foot in the door and start on our journey to homeownership,” Cotton said. “Montana is an in-demand place. We’ve been kind of discovered in the last couple of years.”
Republicans and Democrats have come together to support fighting restrictive zoning, said Cotton, director of the Frontier Institute, a nonprofit policy and educational organization.
“We’re a free-market organization that tends to lead from right of center, but when I was at the governor’s press conference to support these issues, I was standing shoulder to shoulder with a Democratic socialist city council member and we were all united on this,” Cotton said.
Shallon Lester, a YouTube influencer who moved from New York to Montana and paid $1 million for a five-bedroom house in Bozeman in 2022, said she likes both the lower cost of living and the lifestyle there. Locals tend to think she’s an outsider “invading” the area, she said, but “people like me take nothing from this economy – we only give. We spend and spend.”
“People who are remote workers are sick of the cost of living in cities,” Lester added. “There’s a mass return to the concept of the simple life.”
Even in the Youngstown metro area, which includes a slice of Pennsylvania, housing can be a challenge for residents with low incomes. A forthcoming regional housing study has found a 4,000-unit shortage for households making less than $25,000 a year; 7,500 people are on a waiting list for subsidized housing. Black and Hispanic residents are more likely to struggle with housing costs, as are older people, young singles, and families with young children, according to preliminary conclusions discussed in April.
But for many, Youngstown is a rare island of affordability. Jim Johnston, 40, a digital account executive at media company Nexstar in Youngstown, said many of his high school classmates from the area, who now live in places such as Montana, Illinois, and Maryland, envy his decision to stay there and buy a $250,000 house in 2022 when interest rates were lower.
“One of them has a mortgage payment three times mine for the same size house, and a child care bill that’s bigger than my mortgage,” said Johnston. “They could put an extra $50,000 or $60,000 a year in their pockets. Remote work has opened up new possibilities for them, and they’re considering this very seriously.”
This story was originally published by Stateline, which like the New Hampshire Bulletin is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
New Hampshire
Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters
As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.
“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.
“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”
Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.
“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.
He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”
Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.
For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”
Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.
CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.
On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”
Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.
29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.
“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.
While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.
“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,
“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.
“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.
Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.
“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.
Local News
Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.
A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.
Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.
The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.
The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.
He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.
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