Tag Archives: New Hampshire

A digital-age summit in the oral tradition

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The J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families held a daylong “housing summit” Friday attended by assorted luminaries and seven presidential candidates (six Republicans and one Democrat).

summit

No doubt you’re wondering what they said. You’re probably also wondering about J. Ronald Terwilliger. He is, among other things, a developer of rental apartments in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville and Raleigh/Durham. He established the foundation last year, the foundation’s website informs us, “to recalibrate federal housing policy to more effectively address our nation’s critical affordable housing challenges and to meet the housing needs of future generations.” The foundation’s five-member executive board, besides Terwiller, comprises former senator Scott Brown, former congressman Rick Lazio, former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, and Harvard Business School real-estate lecturer Nic Retsinas.

Besides the candidates, who were each allotted about a half-hour in a conversation format, the event featured several panel discussions, including one on “Accessing Private Capital to Build Affordable Housing.”

Fine, so what was said of substance? Don’t ask the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation. No transcript was made of the proceedings. For some reason, perhaps because it’s relatively new, the foundation didn’t take any steps to “seize the narrative” of its own event. The only record of the summit is in a spotty collection of news stories and snarky commentaries.

Chris Christie got a fair amount of attention, in a Boston Globe story and a harshly critical Times blog post, but also for his Twitter-worthy remark that housing doesn’t get a lot of notice in the presidential campaign “because it’s not the sexiest issue in the world to talk about, and it kind of depresses people.”

The most comprehensive account we’ve found was an article on a TV station’s website. The Republicans (who also included Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and George Pataki) acknowledged that many Americans have an affordability problem, but some tried to link that to federal regulation. The lone Democrat, Martin O’Malley, called for doubling funding for the low income housing tax credit program and Community Development Block Grants.

But we’re not going to attempt a synopsis. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the summaries you get at places like Real Estate News or Forbes or NH1 TV news, or a video clip of Huckabee, on base guitar, backing Scott Brown’s daughter, the singer. Good luck finding any account of the panel discussions.

 

Teachable moments in New Hampshire

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If you think New Hampshire is a socio-political backwater, from its license plate slogan to its lack of an income tax, think again. The state has been grappling with its affordable housing shortage for years — certainly since 2008, when a “landmark law” (as state housing officials termed it) sought to goad towns into taking action.

New Hampshire’s Workforce Housing Law mandates that every municipality provide “reasonable and realistic opportunities” for the development of workforce housing. What is “workforce housing”? As defined by the law, it means housing for that’s affordable (a cost burden of no more than 30 percent of income) for families making up to 100 percent of median income, and for renter families who make up to 60 percent of median income. (Click here for the income numbers.)

Now, “reasonable” and “realistic” may be subject to varying interpretations, as a recent discussion at a City Council meeting in Londonderry suggests. Londonderry officials are trying to open up more opportunities after an examination of the towns ordinances last year revealed impediments. The current push, as this news article indicates, is both for multi-family developments and increasing density in single-family zones.

londonderry-nh

The latter got pushback at the meeting. (We’d recommend that people in Londonderry and elsewhere watch our “Thriving Communities” webinar when it becomes available on our site, because it shows, among other things, how neighborhoods of the same density can be designed well (aesthetically pleasing) or badly (cookie-cutter ugly).

In any case, we’d argue that this kind of discussion – from the opening up of restrictive land-use practices to the acceptance of residential density in workable and appealing forms — could be going on in Vermont towns, as well. Never mind that Londonderry, N.H., with population of about 24,000, is bigger than every Vermont community except Burlington. The same challenges apply here, on a Vermont scale.

 

So much for the Promised Land to our east

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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!

newhampshire

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:

Vermont:

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

New Hampshire:

Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment: $1,049

Estimated average wage for renter: $13.35

Housing wage: $20.18