‘For more than 24 years we have been successful in using direct rental assistance as part of a program called Moving to Work,’ says Keene Housing Executive Director Joshua Meehan. ‘We do not hesitate to be a policy laboratory and try new ideas to serve our community.’ (Courtesy photo)
After slowly percolating for years, the housing shortage and how to address it has become one of the top 2024 election issues in New Hampshire and across the nation. The collision of escalating rises in rent and home prices with a shortage of housing has led to the most severe housing shortage since the end of World War II in 1945. Vice President Kamala Harris, the democratic presidential nominee, has called for the building of 3 million housing units during her first term if elected.
In New Hampshire, according to a 2023 report by Up for Growth, there is a need for 60,000 housing units between now and 2030, and the state is fourth in the country in housing need.
While there is much focus on the need for affordable and workforce housing, local housing officials like Joshua Meehan, the executive director of Keene Housing, are at ground zero for a critical and overlooked part of the housing sector: housing for the elderly, disabled and low-income families. Housing shortages and affordability issues across the spectrum squeeze down and impact most those who are limited by income.
Since its founding in 1965, Keene Housing has served more than 15,300 people in the region. And it has the pedigree to find solutions that might vex others. Meehan has almost two decades of experience in municipalities such as Houston, Texas, Cambridge, Mass., and, for the past 12 years, Keene. He told NH Business Review that he came to the Monadnock Region due to Keene Housing’s national reputation for its innovative, comprehensive policies to tackle the problems of not only housing but homelessness, employment, health care and child care — all with 16 full-time employees and on an annual budget of around $16 million.
Q. How severe is the housing shortage for the people you serve?
A. In the 12 years I’ve been here, I haven’t seen anything like the profound lack of housing in our region. It’s not only for lower-income people but everyone. We have a waiting list of 3,000 of low-income households, with half of those in Keene and the other half in the immediate Monadnock region.
Q. Why is the shortage so acute?
A. We are hyper focused on finding solutions for low-income housing, which is a lot different than the various programs and income guidelines for affordable or workforce housing. The issue is that no one really develops housing for extremely low-income residents, and a vast majority of them are elderly or disabled. One of the problems is with federal housing vouchers, and we are not alone. For decades going back to the Nixon administration, agencies like ours had marching orders to issue vouchers for the people we serve. It was more common for them to be accepted by landlords, but that is no longer the case. Though it has gotten somewhat better as we continued to recover from COVID, landlords are not required to take them and fewer are.
Q. What does Keene Housing do for the people it serves?
A. We buy and rehabilitate properties to provide housing with no concerns about vouchers, and we also provide direct rental assistance. We target low-hanging fruit projects such as vacant properties or those in need of rehabilitation. We manage 29 properties (in Keene and the surrounding area) and more than 590 units of housing for more than 1,700 people, with a majority being elderly or disabled. One of our current projects is to renovate and modernize 90 units in Central Square to provide long-term, energy-efficient housing for 40 years that will help those folks who don’t want to go to nursing homes.
Q. Why interested you about Keene Housing?
A. When I was working in Cambridge and later in Houston, I saw this small agency had an outsized impact on national policy by developing housing programs that didn’t exist before.
Q. How did that happen?
A. There was a Congressional mandate in 1996 for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to loosen rules that had sometimes made it difficult to respond at the community level. Keene Housing was one of those high-performing agencies given broad waiver guidelines in exchange to use funding to increase the number of units they managed and to help raise their socio-economic status. For more than 24 years we have been successful in using direct rental assistance as part of a program called Moving to Work. We have also put a community garden in place to build community, found ways to help clients get mental health assistance, help the homeless get housing, worked with drug courts, and assisted families with elementary school children. We do not hesitate to be a policy laboratory and try new ideas to serve our community.
To learn more about Keene Housing, visit keenehousing.org.
