At the end of last year, members of the N.H. House of Representatives created a standing committee to consider ways to address the shortage of affordable housing across the state.
And as communities throughout the U.S. contend with the impact of the nationwide housing crisis, momentum has been building across the Monadnock Region with a slew of efforts to address the problem locally. They include obvious strategies, such as building new apartment complexes, and out-of-the-box approaches like house sharing.
The Sentinel recently asked four local professionals with expertise in planning, affordable housing and homelessness to weigh in on how the crisis evolved in 2024, how people are being affected, what progress was made and what work still needs to be done in 2025.
While some expressed cautious optimism about what the year has in store, the experts also noted there are still measures that could be taken to ease the crisis.
Change through local zoning
Ivy Vann, owner of Peterborough-based Ivy Vann Town Planning and Urban Design, believes local zoning and land use laws are key to addressing the region’s housing crunch.
These local laws govern what and how much can be built in a particular area.
Vann says every municipality should allow duplexes and four-plexes anywhere single-family homes can be built, let developers transform old buildings into new housing without enforcing a maximum number of units for the space, and adopt a cottage court ordinance. The latter allows for construction of smaller homes with communal space for residents.
Cities and towns should also allow two accessory dwelling units on all residential lots and eliminate requirements on the number of parking spaces a dwelling must have, she said.
“This won’t cure all our problems, but it will go a long way,” the former state representative and former Peterborough Planning Board member said. She thinks the state government should require municipalities to adopt these policies.
Vann feels progress on solving the housing crisis stagnated last year. The big strides in expanding what and where different kinds of residences can be built, which she thinks will alleviate significant pressure on the housing stock, aren’t happening.
“We’ve got some new housing being built; not enough,” she said.
Last year, Keene Housing broke ground on a 30-unit affordable housing complex on Washington Street and has plans to add another 30 apartments at that site. In Peterborough, a religious nonprofit began building a 64-unit development, and a Walpole-based developer opened two 42-unit apartment buildings in Swanzey in late 2023 and early 2024.
But these dwellings make a miniscule dent in the roughly 23,670 units the state was short in 2023, per data from N.H. Housing, a government department that works to implement housing solutions.
“We have not made any kind of substantive changes that will allow more different kinds of housing. That’s the real thing that I see that we’re not making progress on,” Vann said.
Her work includes helping local governments across the state do just that. Through a statewide grant program that awards funds to municipalities for specific actions and efforts to address the housing crisis, Vann helps municipalities change planning and land use regulations. The program, InvestNH, began in 2022, and offers grants for demolishing run-down buildings and to incentivize affordable housing construction, in addition to planning and zoning grants.
Last year, Vann worked as a consultant through the program with residents in Hinsdale, Chesterfield, Fitzwilliam, Dublin and other communities.
Stopgap measures for the short term
Another planning expert, J.B. Mack, said he’s optimistic about the housing crisis improving.
“I think that there’s been a whole lot more attention given to the issue of homelessness and housing affordability,” said Mack, the assistant director at the Southwest Region Planning Commission, in a recent interview.
“There’s been a great deal of conversation and interest … that I’ve seen coming from nonprofits, local government and even businesses as well,” he said. “So I think the awareness has really picked up, and I think that’s a really good thing.”
Mack noted that housing development can be a lengthy process. “But this is the first step to moving towards … addressing the housing crisis, is by understanding what the issues are, what the challenges are, and starting to focus on ways to address the challenge.”
He said an example of the greater attention being paid to the problem in recent years was the inception of the InvestNH program.
“I’ll say there’s been a lot of participation in the Monadnock Region from communities taking advantage of the [InvestNH] program, which is a program that was made possible by the state of New Hampshire.”
SWRPC is a member of the Monadnock Resource Alliance, a coalition of area businesses, nonprofits, individuals and other entities that work on efforts to address the housing crisis. Late last year, Mack represented SWRPC as a member on a team that hosted a workshop on “house sharing.” The collaboration sees this as an immediate way to ease the housing crisis.
In early December, the group held a panel event in Keene to make the case for people to rent out spare rooms in their homes.
He said a number of other groups have hosted panels on other housing ideas and issues as well.
“I think that there are more people that understand that … wages have not been keeping up with housing costs. So that’s been a major theme, and so we have to be creative about creating more affordable housing that people can afford.”
Mack said he’s witnessed the discussion turn at times to public infrastructure, which can make housing development easier.
“I think we’ve come to understand broadly that to create affordable housing, it often takes better public infrastructure than what we have here in the Monadnock Region … So there are some communities looking at their water and sewer infrastructure more closely and how to maybe maintain what they already have or expand what they have.”
Mack said there are some state programs to support this kind of improvement. “But a lot of investment would be needed up front to make that … really work in our communities, and a lot of our smaller communities, that’s just not something that they’re prepared to get into to this point with property taxes continually … increasing. It’s not something that a lot of towns have a strong appetite for.”
State and local solutions
From the vantage point of Joshua Meehan, executive director of Keene Housing, the progress made on the housing crisis in 2024 is encouraging.
“I think it was a year of progress, largely because our housing crisis is no longer up for debate. I think it’s generally accepted that if it’s not the number one concern we have for the region’s economics, development and obviously people’s well-being, that it’s, you know, top two or three issues,” Meehan said.
“… And in 2024 we started to see some real concerted efforts to make things a little bit better.”
Keene Housing works to provide affordable housing and support residents of low and moderate income in the area. The organization has an extensive waitlist for one of the 590 affordable units it manages.
Meehan said the bipartisan support he sees in state politics is promising, too. “I think removing the politics from these sorts of issues increases the likelihood that we’ll see action.”
At the end of last year, the state government also created a housing committee to help address the crisis. The new panel’s members include Rep. Dick Thackston, a Troy Republican and Realtor.
When asked if he’s noticed any resounding sentiments on housing from the demographics he helps, Meehan said, “I don’t think it’s that different from what you would hear from almost anybody that you talk to who’s looking for housing, particularly rental housing: There’s just not enough stock available, and what is available is too expensive for folks generally, and in particular people at the lower end of the income scale.”
The rental vacancy rate across the state and in Cheshire County is significantly lower than what housing experts consider healthy. In 2023, it was 0.8 percent in New Hampshire, and 1.8 percent in the county, according to N.H. Housing. The Granite State hasn’t hit the healthy rate of 5 percent in about 15 years.
And costs are high. People paying the median gross rent in the state for any size apartment fork out more than $1,200 each month, according to N.H. Housing. And four years ago, housing costs in Keene made up more than 30 percent of incomes for about a third of residents, a 2023 housing needs assessment conducted for the Elm City found.
Recently, the City Council voted to make development in some parts of Keene more attractive by raising the maximum height a building can be. Potential changes to loosen restrictions on the size of lots when additional dwellings are added and residential parking space requirements are in the works too. And the municipality has adopted some of the recommendations Vann says are key. Last year, Keene approved a cottage court ordinance, and in 2023, made it easier for people to build accessory dwelling units on properties by expanding where they can be built to any district in Keene.
Meehan said the state and local-level actions are encouraging.
“I hope that they’ll keep moving in the right direction.”
Building momentum
Like Meehan, Beth Daniels works with some of the people struggling the most in the Monadnock Region. As CEO of Southwestern Community Services, which provides a number of resources to people of low income in the area, she also helps the organization run its homeless shelters.
“I think the biggest is ‘we’ll never be able to afford rent on our own,’ ” she said, of the way people she works with are thinking about the housing crisis. “And that feeling of, like, ‘… This is never gonna get any better. You know, this is never gonna change.’ ”
The housing crisis is a root cause of the rise in the number of people experiencing homelessness. And according to the N.H. Coalition to End Homelessness, it’s imperative communities build more housing to address this.
“I think that if you were to look at even 10 years ago, you know, there was always a question of, ‘Is there enough shelter beds?’ … Sometimes would people be looking for shelter and all the beds were at capacity? I’m sure yes,” she said. But the situation has become much more severe.
There are almost 150 shelter beds in the area, and the programs that exist to help people experiencing homelessness aren’t meeting the region’s needs, according to Daniels.
“You realize that there’s more need than what we have with all of those resources … this is unusual compared to 10 years ago.”
Today, the issue evokes a “critical feeling” that Daniels said it didn’t a decade ago.
Although unsure what the solution is, she was confident people understand the roots of the problem, and the next step is action.
“I don’t think we need any more forums or councils or community panels … I think we’ve done that. I think we’ve got the reports. We’ve got lists of reasons why the homelessness problem exists, the housing crisis exists.”
Now, action based on those ideas and a continued response to the crisis are needed, she said. And it’s a matter of individuals and organizations doing what they can.
“I think we’re all trying to do exactly that,” she said. “Just take whatever piece we can and try to move the needle a little bit.”
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