Does this lament sound familiar?
“Our members in the business community are telling us this lack of affordable and available housing is beginning to impact their ability to hire and retain employees…”
That comment could easily have come from a business leader in Vermont, but instead it’s someone from the statewide chamber of commerce … in New Hampshire!
New Hampshire! That’s where Vermonters go for motorcycle rallies. That’s where Vermonters go to buy stuff, because there’s no sales tax. And that’s where Vermonters might even think about moving to, because there’s no income tax, either … except that New Hampshire is just about as housing-unaffordable as Vermont, maybe more so.
Most renters who work in the Lebanon-Hanover area, according to this story in the Manchester Union Leader, have to commute 25-30 miles. Who, knows, maybe some of them are commuting from our Vermont tax haven!
Well now, if housing unaffordability is a crisis even in almost-tax-free New Hampshire, you might think that issue will come to the fore in the run-up to the presidential primary. Don’t bet on it, though. So far, housing is off the table for contending luminaries in both major parties.
Enough small talk about the two little neighbor states. Let’s go to the numbers, provided by the National Low Income Housing Coalition in its 2014 “Out of Reach” reports:
Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment: $1,007
Housing wage (i.e., the hourly pay rate needed for that apartment to cost 30 percent of income): $19.36
Estimated average wage for renter: $11.24
Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment: $1,049
Estimated average wage for renter: $13.35
Housing wage: $20.18