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Estimates help quantify the housing crisis. New Hampshire Housing predicts a need to build 60,000 units by 2030 and 90,000 units by 2040. Median home prices continue to exceed $500,000, while rental vacancy rates remain below 1 percent.
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.
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.
“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.
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.