Posted by Susy Thielen on April 16th, 2009 — in Monadnock Region Coalition, Housing News
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Thursday, April 16, 2009
It’s not often that a tax map is so shocking it makes people gasp.
But when those maps show that in six years more than half of Keene’s workforce housing — housing stock that employed people in low- and middle-income brackets can afford — simply disappeared, otherwise mundane tax maps become unbelievable.
Put simply, “It’s a pretty significant decrease,” said Torin Hjelmstad, one of three Keene State College geography students responsible for the map, one part of a workforce housing study titled “May the Force be with you: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region.”
Hjelmstad, along with students Sarah Forler and Elizabeth Kane, presented the report to the public Wednesday night at Bentley Commons in Keene. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 6th, 2009 — in Monadnock Region Coalition, Housing News
Heading for Home and the Keene State Department of Geography invite you to attend the report, “May the Force be with You: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region,” an original study comparing the changes in workforce housing availability in the Monadnock Region in 2001 and 2008.
Come, hear this new information and see the maps that show the changes in housing patterns. Learn of the potential impact on the region’s economic vitality.
Join us from 5:30-6:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 15, Bentley Commons, 197 Water Street, Keene. Light refreshments will be served. Email Susy Thielen at susyt@headingforhome.org or call 352-1449 to register for this event.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 6th, 2009 — in Monadnock Region Coalition, Housing News
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Susan R. Thielen has heard the myths.
When people hear “workforce housing,” they picture derelict trailers, imagine an influx of children and cry out that such a move will cost them more in property tax dollars.
It’s all part of what Thielen, coordinator of Keene’s workforce housing coalition Heading for Home, calls workforce housing’s “image problem.”
“(People) want the younger people, they want the workforce, they want the viable tax base,” she said. “But they just don’t want their neighborhood to change.”
Whether towns like it or not, that change has come, in the form of a new workforce housing law, passed last year and set to take effect this July. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on February 3rd, 2009 — in Monadnock Region Coalition, Housing News
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Monday, February 02, 2009
New Hampshire’s workforce housing law, passed this summer, has a grand goal: To fight the state’s affordable-housing shortage, and in turn create a productive, thriving workforce that can afford to live where it works.
Despite this lofty goal, the law — set to take effect in July — has caused communities across New Hampshire to struggle with meeting its web of new requirements.
“The law is difficult for communities to understand and comply with,” said Bruce D. Simpson, chairman of Dublin’s planning board.
To give these communities time to figure out what to do, state Rep. Peter R. Leishman recently helped sponsor a bill to delay the law for a year, until July 2010.
The Peterborough Democrat said he decided to introduce the bill after receiving a call from town officials in Sharon.
“They were totally overwhelmed by the (workforce housing law) due to their size and lack of resources,” he said.
“(They) didn’t feel they could get things together before July of this year.”
The law requires towns to ensure that land-use ordinances and regulations “provide reasonable and realistic opportunities for the development of workforce housing.”
All towns are required to allow developers to build workforce housing in more than half of their residential areas. Towns must also allow for “reasonable and realistic” opportunities to develop multi-family housing, which is a building with at least five dwelling units.
The law describes workforce housing as being affordable to a household with an average income for the region.
Affordable housing is defined as housing that costs, at most, 30 percent of a household’s gross annual income.
The mean income for a family of four in New Hampshire is $72,606, according to 2004 data from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services.
That means that for housing to be considered affordable in New Hampshire, families making that amount must spend no more than $21,781 a year on housing — be it in a combination of rent and utilities, or a mortgage, property taxes and insurance.
Delaying the start date won’t wipe out the workforce housing law, Leishman said.
It will simply “give people a little more time to implement it.”
For small towns like Sharon, which have no full-time planning and zoning staff, it is a challenge to decipher what needs to change, or doesn’t, to meet the law’s requirements, Leishman said.
“The towns are concerned that they can’t put ordinances in effect quick enough,” said Lisa J. Murphy, senior planner at the Southwest Regional Planning Commission.
And while the law doesn’t impose penalties on towns that fail to meet its requirements, it does open the door to potential litigation.
If a developer is denied a building permit on a workforce housing application — or if a permit is approved with “adverse” conditions or restrictions — the developer can appeal the town’s decision directly to superior court, according to the law.
The law doesn’t state what “adverse” conditions might be.
Towns “need that first lawsuit to come forward” to understand just how workforce housing litigation will play out in the state, said Murphy.
Waiting to be sued, however, is not exactly appealing.
“Nobody wants to be that first guinea pig,” she said.
The law, as it is written now, is also vague, Murphy said.
For example, towns are required to provide their fair share of workforce housing in their region, she said, but the law doesn’t define what “fair share” is.
To help navigate the legislation, towns could commission a study to cull all information about available and desired housing in town.
But thost studies are “quite costly and would take some time to do,” Murphy said.
Paying for a land-use consultant is also an expense towns might not be willing to take on now.
“All the towns are struggling, just like families,” Murphy said.
The poor economy has also stalled the nation’s building market, Murphy said.
Combine this stagnant building market with the confusion in the law, and both Murphy and Leishman said there are enough reasons to delay it.
There are still changes towns can make in the interim, Murphy said, such as revising zoning ordinances to allow buildings to have accessory apartments, which would boost the town’s housing stock, and therefore help towns meet the new requirements.
In Dublin’s village district, 1-acre zoning already provides a reasonable opportunity for more affordable housing, said Simpson.
The smaller lot sizes means more housing, and more affordable housing, can be built in downtown Dublin.
The town has also considered expanding the size of the village district, and Simpson said he plans to discuss the workforce housing law with the planning board in the coming months.
Rindge is also working on trying to “get our arms around what (the law) means,” said Town Administrator Carlotta Lilback Pini.
The town already has a jump-start on complying with the law, she said, thanks to the creation of a workforce housing committee and a $6,000 grant, which the town used to hire a housing consultant.
Rindge is also considering building workforce housing on town-owned property at Cromwell Drive.
“It’s an economic development issue,” Pini said of the need for workforce housing in Rindge, and the rest of New Hampshire.
Without workforce housing, a town won’t have a viable pool of employees to draw from, she said. This makes it harder for a town’s government and businesses to remain viable.
Simpson agreed that the lack of workforce housing in New Hampshire is a problem.
“The Legislature had a good intent,” he said, but something got lost in translation.
“No one knows exactly what they’re supposed to do to comply with (the law),” he said.
Jessica Arriens can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or jarriens@keenesentinel.com
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Posted by Susy Thielen on October 6th, 2008 — in Housing News
The Village at University Heights (Flagstaff, AZ) will have 10 two-bedroom condos priced as low as $149,000 for residents earning no more than $73,750 a year.
By J. FERGUSON
Arizona Sun Staff Reporter
Monday, October 06, 2008
Another local Flagstaff developer has answered the call from the community for more affordable housing options.
John Crowley has recently lowered the price of nearly 5 percent of his condo conversion units at The Village at University Heights by $30,000 apiece to help locals buy their first home. Crowley has created 10 permanently affordable units in the former apartment complex for Flagstaff residents earning between 80 and 125 percent of the area median income, which is currently about $58,000 for a family of four.
That means households earning between roughly $46,400 and $73,750 would qualify for Crowley’s condos.
Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 24th, 2008 — in Housing News
Census: Housing costs eat up half of more than 7 million Americans’ incomes
By ADRIAN SAINZ
The Associated Press
MIAMI
Al Ray is so strapped for cash, the only time he eats out is on Wednesday or Sunday, when the local McDonald’s sells hamburgers for 49 cents.
Ray lost his engineering job last November, and has been working as high school tutor, scratching out about $1,000 a month — if he’s lucky. He struggled to make his $1,400 monthly mortgage payment and $330 monthly homeowners’ association fee until May, when he stopped paying.
Ray, 44, is looking for work and renting out a room in his two-bedroom condo in Davie, Fla., for $500, but his monthly income doesn’t match his expenses and he’s facing foreclosure.
“I barely have money to survive,” he said. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 4th, 2008 — in Housing News
By Casey Farrar
Sentinel Staff
Published: Thursday, September 04, 2008
JAFFREY — The Jaffrey Zoning Board of Adjustment has given a Rindge developer the green light on plans for a 28-unit development near Mount Monadnock.
But an opposition group, made up of local residents and the Society for the Protection of N.H. Forests, has vowed to take the matter back to court.
A ruling earlier this summer from Cheshire County Superior Court Judge John P. Arnold forced developer Robert B. Van Dyke to seek a variance from town wetlands ordinances for the proposed development between Cutter Brook and Stony Brook.
Arnold’s ruling meant the 28-unit development would have to be considered separate lots, each of which would be required by town ordinances to meet a 200-foot wetland buffer.
The zoning board ruled Sept. 2 that allowing a variance of the town ordinance would not be contrary to the public interest and a 50-foot buffer is more than adequate to protect both the brook and the pond.
“Neither the pond nor the brook are ‘public waters’ governed by similar state law or regulation,” the ruling said.
Opponents argue the development, which would have only 119 feet of shoreline frontage per unit, instead of the 200 feet required by town ordinances, should include only 11 units.
The variance includes four conditions, including a stipulation that residents of the development not use fertilizers or pesticides or other chemicals behind the buildings.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on July 31st, 2008 — in Housing News
Committee looking at Evans Flats
By Casey Farrar
Sentinel Staff
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2008
PETERBOROUGH — A 40-acre property known as Evans Flats is back in the forefront of town business.
Four years after voters trounced a proposal to sell a 4-acre piece of the land for a Stop & Shop, selectmen have formed a committee to determine the fate of the property.
The 10-member committee, made up of neighbors of the property and local leaders in construction, arts, recreation, finance, business and conservation, will have six months to come up with a plan for the land. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on June 2nd, 2008 — in Housing News
Keene Sentinel
Friday, May 30, 2008
As the legislative session in Concord comes to an end, I look back and see that we have much to celebrate.
During the past two years, we met the N.H. Supreme Court mandate by successfully defining an adequate education and identifying the cost. For the first time, we created legislation that promises to provide a quality education by first answering the question, what is important for our children to learn? Our next step was determining the cost of that education, and we did. This legislation provides every child with an equal opportunity to an education regardless of what school they attend and regardless of the wealth or the poverty of the school district. Next year is a budget year and I remain confident that we will transition our current funding system to a new constitutional one in the most fair and equitable manner.
We have passed legislation that benefits students in all phases of their education. Public kindergarten is now a part of adequacy, ensuring that young children will have access to the kind of early childhood learning that sets the stage for future academic success. I led the way for legislation that would guarantee safety in our schools. This legislation mandates annual fire inspections in all schools and provides a process of open communication between the community, the schools and the state. The goal of this bill is to address safety issues, to plan accordingly and responsibly. We passed legislation that helps college students by increasing funding for our community colleges and the university system. We also lowered interest rates on college student loans. A well-rounded education policy lends itself to a strong state economy.
In order to continue to provide economic viability and innovation in our community, I supported legislation that establishes research and development tax credits for businesses and reinstated our job training program. I pushed to increase the minimum wage and supported legislation that establishes affordable workforce housing. We also passed HealthFirst, an affordable wellness-based health insurance plan for small employers.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on April 29th, 2008 — in Monadnock Region Coalition, NH Housing Coalitions, Housing News, Smart Growth
Learn how New Hampshire’s changing human ecology is impacting our economic vitality.
See the full length film, “Communities & Consequences,” The Unbalancing of New Hampshire’s Human Ecology, & What We Can Do About It.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Recital Hall, Redfern Arts Center
Keene State College, Keene, NH
5:30 p.m. – 5:55 p.m. - Registration and refreshments
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. - “Communities & Consequences” film.
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Audience questions, answers and discussion session with expert panelists, facilitated by a moderator.
Panelists:
Peter Francese, Demographer, Author
Dick Couch, CEO Hypertherm
Curt Hiebert, CEO, Keene Housing Authority
Katie Cassidy-Sutherland, Architect, Daniel V. Scully Architects
Ryan Owens, Director, Monadnock Conservancy
Moderator: Steve Chase, Director of Environmental Advocacy Program, Antioch Univer., New England
Seating is Limited.
Please RSVP
352-1303 or info@keenechamber.com
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