CONCORD, NH – A coalition created in 2020 to tackle the state’s housing crisis is embarking on its next phase, a three-year roadmap to continue work that over the past four years “made significant progress toward its mission.”
The New Hampshire Council on Housing Stability’s goal is to create a roadmap to address the state’s housing challenges by providing short- and long-term recommendations to support planning, policy, and resource allocation for statewide, regional, and local efforts.
The objectives of the council’s 2025-28 strategic plan’ are to remove barriers to building affordable housing, create a pro-housing regulatory landscape, increase supportive housing and advance homelessness prevention and services.
The council’s mission, though, is increasingly challenged by state and federal budgets and policies that have already eroded some of the achievements of it’s first three-year strategic plan. That includes decreased funding in the state budget for the Affordable Housing Fund and Housing Champions program, both touted as successes by the council.
The 2025 annual report, also released Thursday, doesn’t specifically cite those budget cuts, but does reference challenges that remain, including the fact that housing unit production didn’t fully meet projected targets. That challenge reflected “broader barriers including limited funding, regulatory complexities, workforce shortages, and local zoning issues.”
The repot said, “In some instances, ideas proved difficult to scale without the necessary resources to support them.”
The council also needs to focus on “strengthening communications, and clarifying the council’s role and partnerships,” as well as “broaden engagement, proactively inviting diverse voices to participate and diversify perspectives, which will help advance the plan’s objectives and ensure long-term, sustainable progress.”
“The release of both the Annual Report and new Strategic Plan represents both a reflection on how far we’ve come and a renewed commitment to addressing the housing challenges ahead,” Rob Dapice, executive director of New Hampshire Housing, said in a news release Thursday. “Together, we are working toward a future where everyone in New Hampshire has a place to call home.”
Dapice is co-leader of the council with Katy Easterly Martey of the Community Development Finance Authority and Associate Commissioner Patricia Tilley of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.
The council’s first meeting is 9-10:30 a.m., Monday, Dec. 1, DHHS, 129 Pleasant St. in Concord. It’s open to the public, and remote attendance is also available.
Four working groups aligned with the council’s objectives will develop detailed workplans, timelines, and identify necessary resources to implement what they come up with, the strategic plan says.
The 40-plus member board includes state and municipal officials, representatives from nonprofits, providers, and people with lived experience, like landlords and people who are current or recent tenants or have other relevant life experiences. The council is co-led by New Hampshire Housing, the New Hampshire DHHS, the Department of Business and Economic Affairs and the Community Development Finance Authority.
Strategies that can achieve housing objectives
The 2025-28 plan lists strategies to help achieve the council’s objectives. Much of includes drilling down on what’s working and what isn’t, incentivizing development, and thinking outside the box of traditional zoning and codes standards.
Some of the strategies in the plan are:
- Supporting training and technical assistance for developers who are producing affordable and workforce housing.
- Exploring and promoting new occupancy and ownership models, such as home sharing, co-living and cooperative housing.
- Inventory existing and emerging housing programs, including public and private financing, to identify gaps and find opportunities for replication, and identifying and connecting to new financing sources.
- Offer training and education for communities, with a focus on staff on effective housing policies, land use tools, and development readiness.
- Develop and expand participation in community engagement opportunities.
- Ensure housing needs and other relevant data are regularly updated and available at the state, regional, and local levels.
- Expand technical assistance to communities to update their regulations, as well as assess progress regarding local zoning changes.
- Align state grant programs and funding opportunities with communities demonstrating housing-friendly policies
- Identify best practices of building and fire codes, and code enforcement, to balance safety needs with housing production and affordability, and partner with safety official organizations to inventory appropriate updates to codes.
- Assess success of recent changes to state and local permitting, track and report on best practices in other states and exploring a unified permitting system.
Steps up, steps back
The council’s annual report lists some of the achievements of the council’s first three-year plan, including a variety of programs that help incentivize development, including the Housing Champions Program and the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. It also cites programs funded by federal Community Development Block Grants and administered by the Community Development Finance Authority.
It also cites the $100 million InvestNH initiative, funding by the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act.
There were also many legislative achievements supported by the council, including those that advance policies that expand supportive housing and homelessness prevention initiatives, streamline local zoning and permitting processes to encourage development, and establish funding and incentive programs to engage landlords, developers, and service providers.
“Collectively, these efforts strengthen the foundation for long-term housing solutions across New Hampshire, promoting collaboration, innovation, and accountability in ending homelessness,” the report says.
But the state’s new two-year budget that went into effect July 1, allocates $40 million less for housing than the previous budget, and those cuts eroded some of the achieved objectives. Others are in jeopardy because of potential cuts on the federal level.
The biggest housing hit when the budget was approved earlier this year was to the Affordable Housing Fund. The AHF was allocated $10 million in the state’s 2025-26 fiscal year budget, down from $35 million in the previous budget.
The AHF provides low-interest loans and grants for construction, rehabilitation, and acquisition of low to moderate-income housing. Of the 35 New Hampshire Housing-funded developments completed or under construction in fiscal year 2025, 21 of them, comprising 1,915 units, used AHF financing.
The budget also doesn’t include funding for the Housing Champions Program, which last year awarded $5 million in grants to 11 cities and towns to directly develop housing or to help upgrade infrastructure to support housing. The Housing Champions program was established by the Legislature in 2023 to encourage and support affordable housing development by awarding state grants to cities and towns designated as Champions. The grants helped pay for infrastructure improvements and community-driven solutions to address the housing shortage.
Among the municipalities awarded grants was Nashua, which received $828,000 in a Housing Production Municipal Grant, which went into the city’s Housing Revolving Fund. The fund issues loans for construction, acquisition, and rehabilitation of affordable housing, and is replenished as loans are repaid.
Manchester was awarded more than $300,000 in grants – $205,500 in Housing Production Municipal Grants and $116,753 in Housing Infrastructure Municipal Grants to help increase capacity and upgrade fire suppression systems at 231 Merrimack St., which is being developed into affordable housing. The money allows the project to expand from 16 to 30 units.
The Community Development Block Grant program is still supported by the U.S. House, but the Senate wants to cut it and the Trump administration wants to eliminate it all together. The 51-year-old program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, provided nearly $13 million to New Hampshire housing and development programs last year. The federal budget is operating under a continuing resolution as the House and Senate haggle over funding. The CR continues current spending until Jan. 30.