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The next steps for housing advocates in 2025 • New Hampshire Bulletin

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1 year ago

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The next steps for housing advocates in 2025 • New Hampshire Bulletin


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.” 

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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.

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“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. 

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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.” 

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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. 

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“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.

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New Hampshire

Bill to outlaw using student IDs to vote clears NH Legislature

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4 hours ago

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March 9, 2026

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Bill to outlaw using student IDs to vote clears NH Legislature





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New Hampshire

NH cold case solved 40 years after police found man’s skull in woods

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16 hours ago

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March 8, 2026

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NH cold case solved 40 years after police found man’s skull in woods


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Investigators partnered with a nonprofit genetic genealogy analysis organization to identify the man who the remains belonged to.

Warren Kuchinsky was born in 1952 and last known to be alive in the mid-1970s. New Hampshire Department of Justice

By Darin Zullo

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2 minutes to read

After nearly four decades, a man whose skull was discovered in the New Hampshire woods has been identified.

Warren Kuchinsky was born in 1952 and was last known to be alive in the mid-1970s, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Mark Hall said in a statement. In 1986, his skull was found in a wooded area in the town of Bristol.

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At the time, investigators weren’t able to identify whose skull it was, according to officials. Last year, however, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner partnered with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization, to solve the case using forensic genetic genealogy techniques.

Kuchinsky’s identity was confirmed through DNA testing of a surviving family member, according to officials. There is no evidence that his death was caused by foul play, according to the statement.

Founded in 2017, the DNA Doe Project partners with law enforcement, medical examiners, and volunteer genealogists to apply investigative genealogy to John and Jane Doe cases. By analyzing DNA profiles and building family trees from publicly available genetic databases and historical records, the organization has helped solve more than 250 cases nationwide.

“We are honored to have partnered with the State of New Hampshire on this case,” DNA Doe Project Team Leader Lisa Ivany said in the statement. “Through the power of investigative genetic genealogy and the dedication of our volunteer genealogists, we were able to develop a critical lead in less than 24 hours. We truly hope that this identification brings long-awaited answers to Mr. Kuchinsky’s family.”

Initial DNA testing turned up only distant matches, so the DNA Doe Project selected the case to be worked on at a virtual retreat in May 2025, according to the organization’s case profile. Over the course of a weekend, more than 40 genealogists from the U.S., Canada, England, and Scotland collaborated virtually to work on the case.

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Within hours, the team discovered that the unidentified man had roots in New Hampshire and Quebec, according to the profile. They later zeroed in on Kuchinsky, who had attended school in Plymouth, N.H., but had no official proof of life past 1970.

“This identification reflects the power of partnership and scientific advancement,” Formella said in the statement. “The dedication of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the investigative support of the New Hampshire State Police, and the extraordinary work of the DNA Doe Project have restored a name to an individual who had been unidentified for nearly 40 years. We are grateful for their professionalism and commitment.”

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire House Advances One of The Nation’s Most Extreme Transgender Bathroom Bans

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1 day ago

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March 8, 2026

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New Hampshire House Advances One of The Nation’s Most Extreme Transgender Bathroom Bans


The proposal would fine transgender people up to $5,000 for using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity.

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Bathroom bans targeting transgender people have been spreading rapidly across the United States. In previous years, adult bathroom bans in public buildings were limited to a handful of states with extreme laws. This year, they have become one of the primary vehicles for anti-trans legislation nationwide. Kansas was the first to act, passing a bathroom bounty hunter system and invalidating transgender people’s IDs. Idaho and Missouri began advancing their own bills. Now, the New Hampshire House of Representatives has passed its own version — one of the most extreme in the United States, which states that a trans person using the bathroom of their gender identity is a crime under the state civil rights act, violations of which carries hefty penalties. The bill passed 181-164 on Wednesday night, just weeks after Governor Kelly Ayotte vetoed a separate bathroom ban. Republicans are now sending her something far more aggressive — raising the question of whether they are trying to move the goalposts or simply daring her to veto again.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, with the exception of RSA 21:3, RSA 21:54, and paragraph II below, all multi-user facilities, including bathrooms, restrooms, and locker rooms located in buildings owned, leased, or operated by any municipality shall be used based on the individual’s biological sex,” reads the new bill. This prohibition is expansive: it applies to parks, rest stops, airports, civic buildings, and more, and could leave transgender people struggling to find a public place to use the restroom across the state.

The bill contains a novel enforcement mechanism not seen in any other state. It declares that a transgender person “asserting” that their gender identity allows them to use the bathroom is against the law under the state civil rights act, turning civil rights protections that were meant to be protective of transgender people into a weapon against them. “It shall be unlawful for any person to assert that their gender identity is a sex other than that defined in RSA 21:3 for the purposes of accessing places or services restricted on the basis of sex,” reads the bill. Such violations could result in fines of up to $5,000 per incident and even jail time if a person violates a resulting court injunction by continuing to use the restroom.

The bill also contains provisions for private businesses. It permits any owner or operator of a “place of public accommodation” — a category that under New Hampshire law includes hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, bars, and concert venues — to restrict bathrooms by assigned sex at birth. The bill then immunizes those businesses from discrimination claims: “Adoption or enforcement of a policy pursuant to this section shall not be deemed discrimination under RSA 354-A or any other state law,” it reads.

A separate bill, HB 1217, also passed on Wednesday. That bill permits governmental buildings and businesses to classify bathrooms and locker rooms by assigned sex at birth — similar to the bathroom bans Ayotte has already vetoed. It passed by an even wider margin, 187-163. It contains no enforcement mechanism, but rather, states that bathroom bans and sports bans are not discriminatory towards transgender people under New Hampshire law.

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The bills are part of a larger movement towards bathroom bans for transgender people. Just last month, Kansas passed a bathroom ban that allows every citizen in the state to become a bounty hunter, where reporting transgender people in bathrooms can net them $1,000 per trans person caught. This law also invalidated trans people’s drivers licenses in the state. Meanwhile, Idaho and Missouri are both advancing extreme anti-trans bathroom bans of their own, with Idaho’s ban even applying to private businesses, making it against the law for a private business to allow a trans person to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

The bills are substantially more extreme than the one vetoed by Governor Ayotte just weeks ago. In a veto statement of a bathroom ban last month, Ayotte stated, “I believe there are important and legitimate privacy and safety concerns raised by biological males using places such as female locker rooms and being placed in female correctional facilities… At the same time, I see that House Bill 148 is overly broad and impractical to enforce, potentially creating an exclusionary environment for some of our citizens.”

It remains unclear why Republicans are pushing an even more extreme version of a bill their own governor has already vetoed three times. The bill still needs to pass the New Hampshire Senate and be signed by Ayotte to become law. One possibility is that the more extreme HB 1442 is designed as cover for HB 1217 — making that bill appear moderate by comparison and improving its chances of earning a signature. Another is that Republicans believe they can pressure Ayotte into signing, or are simply laying the groundwork for an override attempt down the line. Regardless, HB 1442 is one of the most extreme bathroom bans moving through any state legislature in the country, and transgender people across New England will be watching closely as it advances to the Senate.

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