By Jenny Whidden, Granite State News Collaborative

With the state legislature adjourned until January, I’ve been taking this time to look back on what our representatives worked on these past several months — namely affordable and workforce housing. 

A deeply complex issue, the state’s ongoing housing crisis has long been a hot topic at the state level, but legislators say that at its heart, affordable housing is a local issue. That’s because it’s so reliant on municipal zoning, in which towns and cities divide land into different areas that have varying sets of regulations. It’s these zones that often either allow, encourage or impede affordable housing. 

As a result, the bills that move through the state legislature are often aimed at encouraging municipalities to in turn encourage affordable and workforce housing. This is done through things like tax incentives and preferential access to state resources. 

For instance, House Bill 586 was aimed at making changes to different systems and tax credits to encourage workforce development, such as shortening the appeals process for zoning board decisions and expanding the community revitalization tax credit period to up to 13 years. 

The bill had bipartisan backing among lawmakers but was ultimately tabled in the House by just three votes amid concerns that it would shift costs to local boards and override the zoning processes that communities already have in place. 

The legislation’s sponsor, Rep. Joe Alexander Jr. (R-Hillsborough), said the bill could be introduced again next year, but plans to go in a different direction are in the works. 

Alexander said a key part of the housing issue moving forward will be education for municipalities and local officials. He wants to get the word out that many of the bills introduced in the legislature, including HB 586, are designed to support municipalities, but they’re not mandatory. 

“They’re opt-in,” he said. “Municipalities that want to do more, we’ll have resources for them.

Alexander added that he frames the issue as workforce housing rather than affordable housing — “We’re talking about having our current workforce being able to live and work in the state,” he said.

Housing authorities typically define workforce housing as homes aimed at households earning from 60 percent to 120 percent of the area’s median income (AMI), while affordable housing is generally used for households whose income is less than 60 percent of AMI. However, the two terms are often used interchangeably.

Alexander’s comment reminded me of a June article in Business NH Magazine that touched on the negative stereotypes about affordable housing, and how they’re one of the many roadblocks to such development. 

I plan to continue keeping an eye on affordable and workforce housing legislation in New Hampshire, especially how it intersects with race and equity. In the meantime, what do you think about the housing issue in the Granite State? Have you struggled to find housing that meets your budget? Do the terms affordable and workforce housing leave you with different impressions? How would you feel about affordable housing being developed in your municipality? 

If you’d like to share your thoughts, I’d love to hear them at jenny.whidden@collaborativenh.org.

One bill that did become law, House Bill 154, enables cities and towns to offer community revitalization tax incentives for developers that construct additional housing in a "housing opportunity zone." 

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Casey Conley (D-Dover), expands an existing special tax-break program that allows towns to provide property-tax relief to affordable housing projects for up to nine years, given that one third of that zone includes units for households with an income of 80% or less of the area median income. 

For years, the tax breaks only applied to projects within downtown areas. The bill, which Gov. Chris Sununu signed last month, opens up the incentives to any project within the town limits.

Sen. Rebecca Perkins-Kwoka (D-Portsmouth), who sponsored HB 586 in the Senate, said looking ahead, she is interested in helping to create additional model ordinances.

“One of the challenges is that even if local municipalities do want to enact housing-friendly policies, they still have to hire someone who knows about zoning and can write it for them, and that can be expensive,” she said. “At the state level, if we could write at least something that they could work from, it might make it easier for them.”

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative as part of our race and equity project. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.