Housing sale indicators are up in New Hampshire from a year ago, including inventory, which while still low, is on a three-month run of being higher than it had been in nearly five years.
As members of the Manchester Neighbors Welcome Coalition, we know that Manchester needs more homes at different prices and sizes for our current and future neighbors. Manchester is short 8,500 homes to meet today’s needs, to say nothing of the future. Rent for 2-bedroom apartments jumped over 20% last year. The average house costs over $180,000 more than four years ago.
The Manchester Planning Board appeared to have a positive response to a proposed 55-bed substance abuse recovery facility seeking to replace a now vacated New England College dormitory at 88 Lowell St.
For Granite Staters, access to affordable housing is a matter of top importance. A June University of New Hampshire poll found 36 percent of respondents cited housing as the top issue facing the state, far above any other concern.
The Planning Board will meet on Thursday, September 5 at 6 p.m. and the following applications will be heard.
The New Hampshire housing crisis may feel a positive effect when interest rates drop next month, but loosening up the state’s housing supply is still the biggest key, the president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors said Friday.
It became clear to me then that Jon Kiper, the only one of them to speak up on behalf of the people, is the kind of governor we deserve—one who respects everyone’s dignity and individual freedom enough to act with his feet and speak to our face.
Even with current protections in place, approximately 400 evictions occur every month in New Hampshire. We need that number to go down, not up. It’s clear that urgent legislative action is needed to protect renters. We cannot ignore the human suffering caused by policies prioritizing landlords’ interests over tenants’ rights. The time for action is now.
Renting in Manchester is often stressful. Too many of our friends and neighbors are wracked by the uncertainty of whether they’ll be able to remain in the community for another year, while trying to keep up with increasing rent costs, which are a direct result of the lack of homes here in Manchester and the surrounding towns. The shortage of attainable housing options for working folks is a policy choice – a choice that has forced young families who grew up here to move away, kept too many stuck in housing situations they cannot afford, and prevented young adults from growing up and moving out.
“There’s more positive news. The city’s CIP committee recently approved the expenditure of $200,000 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for the purchase of a building that will provide 8 units of housing at $800 a month per unit for individuals who were previously unhoused. The full Board of Aldermen will take up this agenda item on August 6.
Newly released polling data show an increase in pro-housing attitudes among Granite Staters again this year as New Hampshire grapples with its ongoing problem of housing affordability, according to the 2024 Saint Anselm College Survey Center poll on housing.
Home prices continued to rise and the ability of buyers to afford one continued to drop in New Hampshire in June, but the silver lining is that inventory is up slightly, according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors monthly market report.
The company maintains the tenant association’s view represents a small minority and that nearly 75% of the original residents of Devenscrest Village “chose to renew their leases at substantially below fair market rates, upgrade to a renovated apartment at a discounted rate or successfully relocate with our financial assistance. It is incredibly unfortunate that the Tenant Association, which does not speak for the majority of residents at Devenscrest Village, seeks to tarnish such a vibrant community of hard-working individuals and families.”
Wolf said she is stunned by the state’s rental unit vacancy rate of 0.8%, which she called “crazy low.” Nationally, the vacancy rate is 5.8% overall, and 5.6% for two-bedroom apartments. “You live here and you are used to this,” she said. But she found the numbers so “bizarre” that when she was reviewing them in preparation for her talk, she asked Kimberly Byrum, Zonda’s multifamily housing expert, if she was reading them correctly. She was.
The City of Manchester received a tentative $1,201,000 from 15 surplus properties on Saturday morning from an auction held at JFK Coliseum.
In 2022, the city was already starting to see residential projects, particularly downtown and in the Millyard taking off. But things picked up after the $44 million Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant was awarded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration, announced in November of that year, Jodie Nazaka, director of the Manchester Development Office, told Ink Link Tuesday. “That’s a trend we don’t see slowing down anytime soon,” she said.
In the span of 24 hours stories in three New Hampshire news outlets, on ostensibly three different subjects, collectively pointed to an increasingly greater threat to New Hampshire’s economic future.
Twice a day the fire department can expect a call relating to homelessness in some way, whether it’s a fire at an encampment that needs to be extinguished; the river flooded with high rains and campers are stuck on the banks, or a medical emergency requires the departments’ attention
This week, the City of Manchester’s Department of Planning and Community Development officially announced a draft of a new proposed zoning map for Manchester.
