NH Housing & Economy Conference: New approaches can help solve NH housing crisis

Speakers at the 2024 Housing and Economy Conference take part in panel discussion about overcoming housing obstacles. From left, moderator Lisa Prevost, Tina Lund, of Urbanomics Inc.; Angela Brooks, president of American Planning Association; Linlin Liang, of Pew Charitable Trust; Forrest Mandeville, state senator from Montana. Maureen Milliken photo

CONCORD, NH – New Hampshire’s housing crisis can be solved, but it will take new approaches that may upend the way some in the state perceive housing, policy, and their communities, attendees at the 2024 Housing and Economy Conference were told Wednesday.

“It’s up to us as Granite Staters to push for real solutions and real progress,” Rob Dapice, CEO of New Hampshire Housing told the audience of more than 300 who’d gathered at the Grappone Center for the agency’s annual flagship event.

New Hampshire needs up to 150,000 more units of housing by 2040, according to the 2023 New Hampshire Housing Needs Assessment.  The crisis has not only led to median single-family home prices above $500,000, but skyrocketing rents and huge growth in the homeless population.

Solutions discussed Wednesday ranged from easing up on restrictive zoning, allowing accessory dwelling units and manufactured housing, lowering density requirements and doing away with parking minimums. They also included changing the language around housing solutions, better educating community members about the impact and aim of projects, and debunking myths that make it difficult to build housing.

Restrictive zoning

“This isn’t just a housing issue, it’s an economic development issue,” Angela Brooks, president of the American Planning Association, said. “It isn’t going to be solved by one entity, its going to take all of us together.”

Zoning restrictions are the biggest barrier to creating more housing, Brooks said. “Zoning is used to restrict access to opportunity…regulations have choked the housing supply.”

Changing zoning restrictions though, doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all solution, but there are some general common issues. Some solutions include adaptive reuse (repurposing office buildings, churches, etc.), rethinking parking requirements, and changing perceptions.

How the issue is approached in the community is key.

“We have to think about how we present change in our community,” Brooks said. “We don’t do a good job of using language around what we’re doing.”

The word “density,” for instance, can be triggering, Brooks said. When advocating for projects, language that touts the benefits to the community and dispenses with jargon is more effective.

She said that showing examples in the community that are similar to what’s being proposed is helpful.

It’s also important to get the message across that zoning changes, including eliminating a single-family home zone, doesn’t mean someone can’t have a single-family home. “Add, rather than subtract,” she said. Get the idea across that “we’re not judging your single-family home.”

Welcoming federal support, allowing more multi-family development, streamlining the process are all key.

The Housing Supply Accelerator has a free took kit that can help communities that don’t have the resources find solutions. The project is a national campaign to increase the country’s diverse and safe housing supply, including identifying solutions, and is a partnership of the APA, National League of Cities, National Association of Realtors, National Association of Home Buildings, and Mortgage Banking Association.

“What we do today will impact our communities for generations,” Brooks said, just as the actions taken decades ago are having an impact on today’s housing.

The housing-rent-homeless connection

The housing shortage isn’t unique to New Hampshire, Linlin Liang of The Pew Charitable Trusts said. Across the U.S. there is a “massive shortage” of four to seven million homes that began with the 2009-2011 downturn. “We’re still digging out,” she said.

It may seem obvious, but a new Pew study backs up the fact that when housing is added, rent increases are much lower.

Minneapolis, for instance, fast-tracked housing growth between 2017 and 2023, increasing it by 8%. Rents during those five years did not increase.

The study also draws a direct line between high rents and increase in homelessness.

In New Hampshire, rents have increased an average 57% since 2017. Homelessness has increased 63%.

Liang said that New Hampshire’s home construction has rebounded somewhat from the high of 60 new homes per 10,000 residents in 2005, but at 32 per 10,000 is nowhere near what’s needed to reach housing goals.

Some solutions that have worked across the country are:

  • Allowing ADUs, small living units that can be built on a single-family home property [they are allowed in New Hampshire, but up to municipalities to legislate].
  • Simplifying the permitting process.
  • Allowing multi-family housing in more areas, particularly where multi-story offices are allowed.
  • Faster approval times on developments.
  • Building code reforms, including allowing manufactured homes [manufactured homes, unlike pre1976 mobile homes, meet U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requirements and are built on permanent steel frames. New Hampshire law says communities must provide “reasonable opportunities for them, but zoning restricts them in many areas].
  • Easing restrictions on minimum lot sizes and parking.

Liang said that easing restrictions for manufactured homes, particularly lot size restrictions, would make home ownership affordable to a variety of people, from those starting out to those who are downsizing. She noted that Maine allows them on any lot that a single-family home is allowed on.

The school burden myth

One of the most common pushbacks multi-family developments get from communities is the impact on school enrollment and the resulting hike in taxes, Tina Lund, of Urbanomics Inc., said.

Because public schools are funded largely by local property taxes, it’s a hot-button issue in the state.

Lund said that in reality, the tax impact from the amount of public school children added to a system by multi-family housing is tiny compared to the larger impact of property taxes the development brings. Because of declining enrollment across the state, many school districts are able to absorb new students without a big increase in cost, she said.

Single-family homes are the biggest contributor to school enrollment, an Urbanomics study found, but contribute less to local property taxes than multi-family developments do.

Lund’s statistics show that:

  • Higher‐density housing is most likely to have the highest net fiscal impacts.
  • Fewer school children live in multifamily condo and rental apartment units on average.
  • Units without school children taxes reduce the education cost burden on households with children
  • High‐density housing produces larger tax generation per acre than low‐density housing. 

She said, though that the state is primarily zoned for single‐family residential with few opportunities for high‐density housing, and that the infra infrastructure to support that type of hosing is lacking in many residential areas.

She said, too, that there is little political support for multi-family housing and that residents and local officials are often not well-informed about what the impact would be.

Pushback from the public persists, Lund said, “Despite previous studies that debunk [the belief that] increasing multi-family housing dries school cost increases.”

She said that advocates for solving the housing crisis have to work on better information the public about the realities.

Montana’s approach

Montana found a way to attack the housing crisis with a planning-centric focus, State Sen. Forrest Mandeville said.

Like New Hampshire, Montana has a lot of small communities.

Mandeville said that the committee looking at ways to solve the housing crisis began by “focusing on places we had agreement.” This included laws that weren’t working. He said solutions were also focused on the state’s larger population areas.

Solutions included allowing ADUs in single-family zones, allowing residential development in commercial areas and passing the Land Use Planning Act. The Planning Act requires that municipalities with more than 5,000 residents that are in counties with more than 70,000, update their land use plans and zoning and subdivision regulations by 2026.

He said that housing advocates should understand the political factors they have and “take what you can get.”

“Don’t burn all your bridges fighting for a lost cause,” Mandeville said.

Restrictions ‘getting worse’

“Towns use zoning to exclude, if not by intention, then by effect,” said Lisa Prevost, author of “Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice and Real Estate.”

Prevost said that it’s getting worse. “The same patterns play out over and over.”

Some of the biggest obstacles to building more housing across New Hampshire are large minimum lot sizes, inflexible parking requirements, minimal residential land zoned for anything other than single-family homes, ordinances that appear to invite affordable housing but have too many restrictions to be effective, and minimal residential land zoned for anything but single-family homes.

Public opposition and aversion to density “are tough nuts to crack.”

“The most common argument I hear is ‘this is out of character for our town.’ It’s a vague term, and somewhat loaded,” she said.

She echoed the other speakers on how important it is to inform people and change perceptions.

For instance, the income limits for who qualifies for affordable housing, which is a defined term, may surprise people. Someone earning no more than $79,500 to $115,100 , depending on family size, qualifies to buy an affordable home. To qualify for an affordable rent, someone must earn a maximum $42,930 to $62,150.

She said building more housing in the state requires “political leadership at every level and a winningness to think outside the box.”

Pushing the normas

Reframing the issue of “community character” was elaborated on by a panel of the four speakers, moderated by Prevost.

“It’s time for us to push the norms on what ‘character of community’ is and what we want in a community,” Brooks said. She said most people would agree, for instance, that they want a multi-generational population.

Lund said that she’s found people’s perception of what their community “used to be” is skewed.

A resident of a town in Maine where they were restoring downtown buildings with residential space above commercial told her “that’s not how it was in my day.”

But Lund had photos that showed that “actually, it was.”

In answer to a comment from the audience, panelists agreed that opposition to housing is frequently rooted in racism.

Lund said that people will rarely say it out loud, “but it’s implied.”

It’s not comfortable to talk about, but “it’s a conversation you have to have,” Brooks, who is Black, said. She said that some planners don’t get it, or choose not to see it. But she said that everyone understands that everyone needs a safe, healthy place to live.

In answer to a question about tackling homelessness, Mandeville pointed out that “what a lot of people thought of as homelessness is changing.”

Montana does have a state income tax, but also relies heavily on property taxes, and the increase in housing prices is having an impact.

“We’re seeing people who’ve lived there for 50 years being taxed out of their home,” he said. “We’re taxing people into homelessness.”

The panelists also said businesses can play a part in advocating for changes that will allow more housing. Businesses are having trouble finding workers because they can’t house them, Liang said. “It’s a big issue.”