Two days ago, my lovely bride and I took a short drive to hang out with a packed backroom at Murphy’s in Manchester. Americans for Prosperity NH was hosting a Pints and Policy event, and the subject was housing and New Hampshire’s “Housing Crisis.”
It was good to see Victoria Sullivan, Len Turcotte, Jon DiPietro, Chris Maidment, Dan McGuire, and a slew of other folks. The please was packed. And it wasn’t just the free food, drink ticket, and APF swag. As we were reminded, housing is a priority concern for New Hampshire residents. That’s what all the polling says. Everyone is concerned about housing.
More demand than supply. Prices are too high. Young people can’t afford to move out or move here. The solution is simple. We need more housing. But how do you do that?
The Panel included Greg Moore and Drew Cline, and my apologies for forgetting the names of the other two guys (one not local), the other part of a special standing committee in the NH House on housing. I was eating and not taking notes. They each spoke for a bit, and the consensus was this. We need more housing. Local government is the most significant barrier. If you don’t want the state to command and control the Zoning and other issues from Concord, you must find ways to make changes in your town.
The Panel
The response to this and the general conversation about addressing the issue was predictable, and it is likely what drew the crowd. Getting elected to a zoning or planning board won’t make a damn bit of difference, say people who’ve done that. The citizens vote on the master plan, and while housing may concern them, they don’t want it, whatever it is, in their backyard.
Concerned about city apartment complexes with no green space for kids
The “it” could be apartment complexes, duplexes, smaller lot sizes, workforce housing, or mixed Zoning to allow any of the above.
The Panel brought up great ideas and explained the issue, and there are solutions somewhere in there, but I don’t see that happening if the goal is to avoid a top-down statewide solution. People don’t want closer neighbors or increased traffic or – as I like to joke in my town – thousands of new families using up the water we haven’t had enough of (odd/even watering bans) for what seemed like decades.
Rep. Walsh waiting to have a say.
One thing that came up that made sense was to address barriers to construction in general. There are always excessive regulations, not just from the Department of Environmental Services. Most towns have plenty of buildable residential land to suit one-acre lots and more affordable housing if permitted. There are Mixed-use industrial areas where apartments would make sense.
Jack talks about Zoning…
Merrimack has been adding apartment buildings like mad, almost exclusively in industrial/mixed-use areas, and at least one near Route Three with easy access to the highway. I’m still miffed about the alleged water-use problem being ignored while we add thousands more water users, and I don’t think we were short on water, but now? Thanks, planning Department. Maybe we will.
Another issue not broached, and one I have discussed with landlords is that while developers want to build apartment buildings, they are never affordable. Rents are high. Apartments are in demand. You build to take advantage of that. No one is going to develop themselves into lower rents. So? None of these new buildings will be” affordable” unless it’s government subsidized – and do we want to go there? I don’t think we do, at least not in any local master plan. This brings us back to what the Panel agreed we didn’t want—top-down state mandates. But I doubt there is another way.
And guess whose fault that will be?
The Republicans, some of them, will argue for less government interference, but you’ll have to stomp on local control to get them out of the way, which will piss off their base. Democrats love top-down interference and would gladly stomp on local control (as long as they leave gentrification loopholes for places like Hanover, Portsmouth, Durham, Keene, and Plymouth). Still, those kooks will vote Democrat anyway for the grooming and abortion, so that’s not a risk for the Left.
If Republicans protect local control, the Dems will crush them as uncaring bastards unwill to address the housing crisis, but if they do, their voters might revolt – party divisions, civil war.
We never said Liberty wasn’t messy.
In other words, everyone thinks this is a problem, but the problem has problems.
It was a good idea for AFP to get it out there. But in the end (IMO), Republicans could end up paying for it.
