Region sees housing decline, Study: Workforce stock is shrinking
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.
The report, which looked at single-family homes only, was the students’ senior project: Forler and Kane will graduate next month, Hjelmstad graduated in December.
“This is the first time we’ve really had a study of this caliber,” said Susan R. Thielen, coordinator of Keene’s nonprofit housing coalition Heading for Home, which collaborated with the students on the report.
The students surveyed city and town planners, selectmen, employees of Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, and did a case study in Walpole, looking at why that town chose to conserve 52 acres of land, known as the Ballum Farm property, from development.
In the end, what most surprised the students was “how big of a problem this really is,” said Forler.
“You just don’t really think about it as an issue,” she said.
To determine how much of Keene’s workforce housing shrank between 2001 and 2008, the students first used the median income of Keene residents as a benchmark for what an affordable home would be.
In 2008, the median income was $61,089. Using the N.H. Housing Finance Authority’s “affordability calculator,” students determined that an affordable home for a family of four in Keene would be about $188,351.
The affordability calculator takes into account such things as interest and property tax rates, mortgage repayment terms and available cash for a down payment.
In 2001, when the median income was $57,640, an affordable home was $176,130, the report said.
The students then applied those figures to assessed property values to find which homes in the city would be considered workforce housing.
The result? Those shocking tax maps — one for 2001 and one for 2008, with the workforce housing properties marked in green.
In 2001, Keene had 3,958 single-family homes that could be considered workforce housing. In 2008, there were only 2,193 — a 55.4 percent decrease.
This workforce housing shortage also contributes to a host of other problems, according to the report.
It has skewed the average age of residents in Keene: Young families cannot afford to live here, but the city has a high population of 20 to 24-year-olds, due to Keene State and Antioch University New England, and a high population of 40- to 55-year-olds.
But while Keene’s population has basically flatlined for the past 20 years, the population of Cheshire County has continued to rise, from about 75,000 in 1970 to 100,000 in 2007.
People are finding it more practical to live outside of Keene and commute to work, the report said, since both property taxes and home prices are much higher in the Elm City.
The report ended with ways to alleviate the workforce housing shortage, such as revamping zoning regulations, offering better incentives to developers and dispelling myths about the definition of workforce housing — that it equates to building ghettos that will overcrowd towns, for example.
People also have to realize how big of an issue workforce housing truly is, the students said.
“You have to spread the word to everyone,” Kane said.
Hjelmstad agreed. The importance and shortage of workforce housing needs a bigger audience, he said, “to make a dent in people’s consciousness.”
Jessica Arriens can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1433, or jarriens@keenesentinel.com.