A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
While it’s too soon to tell what the hard figures for 2020 will be for agriculture, trends emerging from the area tell a complicated story. One that Beth Hodge of Echo Farms and current Cheshire County Farm Bureau president says is “a year of highs and lows.”
With consumers looking for safe alternatives to grocery stores, the clear winners this year were produce-based businesses.
Innovation and the ability to pivot and adapt to the changing marketplace became more important than ever before for manufacturers in 2020. Many Monadnock Region manufacturers predict growth in production in 2021 because of the pandemic and the varying demands it has created.
“It was an unconventional year, and it was a challenging year, but it was a good year,” notes Whitney Brothers Company President Mike Jablonski.
Uncertainty is something that many retail owners are dealing with, both around the country and throughout the Monadnock Region. Since coronavirus shut down large swaths of the U.S. economy in March, the retail industry has been rocked. While online mega-retailers, such as Amazon, are seeing profits skyrocket, most retailers have seen a sales slump. Overall, it is estimated that the American retail market will drop more than 10% in 2020, a more significant fall than in 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis.
For some, keeping active amidst an ongoing pandemic has posed many challenges, but for those operating various fitness centers in the Monadnock Region, a whole new set of obstacles are stretching them thin.
This past summer, local gyms and yoga studios were able to ease back into in-person activities, which helped these businesses gain momentum. But as the winter approached — and the second wave of the pandemic hit our area — gym and yoga studio attendance has fallen by the wayside.
In the nine-plus months since COVID-19’s torrent upending of everyday life, Michael Polizotti, a policy analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI), has concluded that, despite the economic recession induced by the coronavirus, the ability to draw comparisons between the current state of local economies and other eras of financial turmoil isn’t simply apples-to-apples.
The pandemic has impacted every level of tourism in New Hampshire, from leaf peeping to the 2021 ski season. Visitors are faced with state regulations both in New Hampshire and often in their home state as well.
It’s because of these challenges that Lori Harnois, New Hampshire Tourism Director, says, “The Division is not forecasting travel or spending for the 2020-21 winter season. Similar to summer and fall, due to COVID-19, there are many unknowns and variables with the potential to impact visitation and visitor spending, making it difficult to project those figures.”
While some sectors have seen business plummet due to the pandemic, the construction industry seems to be moving ahead as usual in New Hampshire. Both residential and commercial construction projects are still in demand.
“We’ve definitely still seen a steady set of pre-development activity and applications” for funding for commercial projects, notes Katherine Easterly Martey, executive director of the New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA). “That’s been good.”
The beginning of the year is usually the busiest time for gyms, with New Year’s resolutions resulting in new gym devotees and people coming in from the cold to work out. The recent boom in-home workout options like Peloton and Mirror makes competition fiercer, so gym owners are working hard to make clients feel safe despite the ongoing pandemic.
Trends from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI) suggest that New Hampshire’s food insecure households recovered from the Great Recession slower than the rest of the nation -- a trend that has worsened in the state as complications from the coronavirus crisis continue to arise.
NHFPI hosted a virtual event Wednesday (Feb. 3) featuring guest speakers from the New Hampshire Food Bank and New Hampshire Hunger Solutions in an effort to understand trends of food security in the midst of the pandemic. The presentation, titled Food Insecurity and Economic Conditions During the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Crisis, highlighted New Hampshire residents’ ongoing struggles with food insecurity and endeavors to combat the issue.
Despite all that has been learned and all the precautions taken, COVID-19 has continued to find its way into New Hampshire nursing homes with alarming regularity and deadly consequences.
The virus has killed 168 people just in current or recently closed outbreaks in congregate living facilities in the state, according to statistics compiled by the Health and Human Services Department. Hundreds more died in previous outbreaks.
A variety of factors may contribute to some nursing homes having a much worse experience than others, Health Commissioner Lori Shibinette said.
In the middle of March when coronavirus first hit the United States, many thought it was a rogue wave: stunning, but isolated and not long-lasting. Schools reacted quickly, thinking that remote education would be a short-term response.
But like everything else since the pandemic hit, there were no timetables in the early going. And decisions having to be rescinded due to spikes and clusters has many parents heads spinning. As the second half of the school year begins, parents and educators alike are overwhelmed by the ongoing uncertainty.
Officials with The Salvation Army are anticipating totals nowhere near last year’s mark. At the Salvation Army office in Concord, Major Richard Sharkey said they have four or five kettles this year instead of the usual nine. Sharkey said typically they have seven locations, (two at some locations) and with nine kettles received about $100,000 last year. But this year Sharkey said he trimmed the anticipated revenue to about $75,000, though it could be less, because he expected some difficulty finding volunteers. While the Concord location hires seasonal staff, they also rely on volunteer groups and charitable organizations during the Red Kettle Campaign.
As Jeremiah and Kathryn Eisley fight to keep their red kettles out this year, COVID-19 is fighting back.
The Eisleys, who run the local Salvation Army in Rochester, NH, are determined to keep this year’s red kettle campaign — long an icon of holiday giving — alive during the pandemic.
They came prepared: the Salvation Army established guidelines to keep volunteers and donors safe, as well as options for contactless giving.
November’s COVID-19 surge in New Hampshire saw the first outbreak of cases among inmates of the state prison system, including 10 cases in a Concord unit that treats mental illness and substance use disorders.
Although multiple prison employees had tested positive for COVID-19 before then, no evidence had surfaced indicating that the virus was present and circulating in the prison population.
Soon after, the state Corrections Department’s tweaked its testing policy. During much of the pandemic, the policy has been to test “residents who are symptomatic and any resident identified during contact-tracing to have had close, prolonged contact with an infected person.”
When the pandemic hit in March gigs for standup comedians came to a screeching halt. Comedian and talent booker Rob Steen of Manchester normally books shows throughout the Northeast and on cruise ships. He saw around 1,700 shows canceled this year.
But by mid-summer, when stay-at-home restrictions were lifted, comedy shows returned as one of the safer options for live entertainment -- with only one person performing for socially distanced and stationary audience members.
In May, Catholic Medical Center and Southern New Hampshire Health took over the Doorway programs, through which people suffering from substance use disorder in Manchester and Nashua can access treatment. Since then, there’s been an increase in the number of people connected with treatment through the Doorways program in both cities.
As of October, there are 6,780 applicants waiting for affordable housing through the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority. The majority of them will wait 7-9 years for subsidized housing.
Many other families are newly housing insecure, after pandemic job-loss undermined their fragile ability to pay rent. While there is currently a federal moratorium on evictions, housing experts are concerned that come January — when that expires — there will be a wave of new families facing eviction and homelessness in the height of the New Hampshire winter.
