There’s No Place Like Home
There’s no place like home
Communities work to meet workforce housing standards
By Casey Farrar
Sentinel Staff
Housing Commission Workshop
Please join us for New Hampshire’s first Housing Commission Workshop, Thursday, May 13, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Room 101 Putnam Science Center, Keene State College, Keene.
Partners: Heading for Home, Southwest Region Planning Commission, New Hampshire Housing
Panelists: From the Hanover Affordable Housing Commission, Len Cadwallader, Executive Director, Vital Communities, White River Junction, VT. From NH Housing, George Reagan, Administrator, Housing Awareness Program and Ben Frost, Director of Public Affairs.
The panelists will present a variety of information that will give participants a better understanding of how a community can benefit by the establishment of a local housing commission. The first half of the program will include lessons learned in creating a housing commission by the Hanover Affordable Housing Commission, an overview of the new Housing Commission Workbook developed by New Hampshire Housing and a summary of potential legal and tax implications for municipalities. The second half of the program will be a facilitated question and answer session focused on the formation of a housing commission.
Registration: There will be a buffet at 5:30 p.m. with the program from 6-7:30 p.m. There is no charge to attend this workshop, but pre-registration is required. To register for this event or for additional information, please contact Lisa Murphy at (603) 357-0557, lmurphy@swrpc.org or Susy Thielen of Heading for Home at susyt@headingforhome.org. Please register no later than 5:00 p.m., May 11, 2010.
Affordable housing critical to future of Keene
By Jessica Arriens
Sentinel Staff
Published: Saturday, November 07, 2009
Picture a middle school dance. Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other, everyone too shy to make the first move onto the gym-turned-dance floor.
In a sense, the relationship between young professionals and their elder counterparts can be thought of the same way.
Either side may want to participate in community initiatives, but their involvement won’t happen without a first step. Or: until somebody walks across that room, nobody dances.
Talk of how to take those first steps — and why they are important — happened Friday morning in Keene, at an annual Business Leaders Breakfast sponsored by Heading for Home, the Monadnock Region’s housing coalition.
Though the discussion hinged on the economic necessity of young professionals, much of it also centered on the necessity of their having affordable housing — something a community needs for a vibrant workforce to flourish in the first place, event participants said. Read the rest of this page »
2009 Business Leaders Breakfast Invitation
Heading for Home’s 4th annual Business Leaders Breakfast on November 6.
Topic: Will the Monadnock Region be ready for economic recovery?
Panelists:
Neil Giarrantana, President and CTO of Lucidus Internet Solutions, Katie Sutherland, Architect, and Steve Reno, the former Chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire.
The panel discussed the economic necessity of having affordable housing available when trying to recruit and retain younger professional workers. This is one of the critical issues that could make or break the Monadnock region’s future economic growth as we compete with the rest of the state and New England.
Dan Scully, Daniel V. Scully Architects, presented his three dimensional model of central Keene showing how housing density could be increased in the central business district by adding upper levels to existing buildings.
Community Sponsors:
This event was sponsored by the Savings Bank of Walpole and Connecticut River Bank, NA.
New Innovative Summer 2009 Donor Campaign
Heading for Home offers an easy way for our community to support workforce housing in the Monadnock Region. Click here or on the “Donate Now” white text link above to submit your donation. You will receive email confirmation via PayPal that your donation has been accepted.
We are utilizing this approach to maximize the impact of our donors’ contributions while minimizing the high overhead costs (postage, printing, etc.) incurred when using a mail-based donor campaign.
Do you have questions about what Heading for Home has accomplished? Click here to see a summary of Heading for Home’s recent accomplishments.
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. Read the rest of this page »
May the Force be with You: Workforce Housing in the Monadnock Region
On April 15, 2009, Heading for Home and the Keene State Department of Geography presented 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.
Homes key to growth of jobs, Businesses need workforce housing
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 »
Towns confused over requirements
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.” Read the rest of this page »
Communities & Consequences Film May 14
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