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 Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition, NH Housing Coalitions, 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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Posted by Susy Thielen on February 5th, 2008 — in Housing News, Monadnock Region Coalition
Thursday, January 31, 2008
NORMA LOVE and Sarah Palermo
Associated Press and Sentinel Staff
CONCORD - Towns are using delaying tactics to prevent developers from building moderate-priced housing for workers, witnesses told a Senate committee this week.
And one local housing advocate says the high price of land and overly restrictive planning and zoning laws in the Monadnock Region dissuade developers from even starting the process here.
Workforce housing - often a euphemism for low- to moderate-income housing - has the unearned reputation of degrading the appearance of its neighborhood, said Susan R. Thielen of the Keene-based Heading for Home Coalition on Wednesday.
“It’s a difficult term for most people to understand. … The sentiment is often ‘we don’t want those people,’ but they are … normal working people with families,” she said.
The coalition, run by local members of the business community, is trying to increase affordable work-force housing in the region.
On Tuesday, Senate President Sylvia Larsen testified “firefighters, bank tellers, any number of contributing workers … are having difficulty finding housing.”
Larsen acknowledged housing prices have dropped recently, but said workers still are having trouble finding places to live near their jobs.
She spoke for two bills that would create an expedited appeals process and take away some local discretion over development of multifamily structures.
Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, the prime sponsor of both bills, asked the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee to amend both to add definitions of “affordable” based on household income. She said she wanted the law to focus on making units available for families, not those age 55 and older.
“We are trying to make sure that everyone who lives here has a chance for decent housing,” she said.
Other witnesses said a 1991 state Supreme Court decision requires towns to provide reasonable opportunities for construction of so-called “work-force housing” but some communities set up so many hurdles that developers can’t afford lengthy court battles to go ahead with the projects. They said the delays increase the projects’ costs so they no longer would be affordable.
Michael LaFontaine of the N.H. Community Loan Fund and N.H. Nonprofit Housing Network said builders bypass those towns rather than waste money in court.
“If we want affordable housing, the option of allowing communities to say, ‘No, we don’t want it here,’ has to be taken off the table,” LaFontaine told the committee.
Obtaining money to build the projects isn’t as hard as finding suitable sites, LaFontaine said. The federal government, which provides much of their construction money, balks when problems arise with sites, he said.
“We simply don’t build in those towns,” he said.
According to Thielen of the local work-force housing coalition, many towns in the Monadnock Region are being bypassed in just such a way.
Because of the high price of land in the area, developers cannot build housing and sell it at a low enough price to be considered work-force housing - between $134,000 and $225,000 a unit, according to Thielen.
“If you look at the real estate ads around here, there is very little available in that level. … The housing market has dropped, but that doesn’t solve the problem. The prices don’t drop enough, and rents are very high here, too,” she said.
Even if developers were interested in building work-force housing in the area, planning and zoning regulations in many Monadnock Region towns are very restrictive and would allow residents and towns to delay the process, she said.
“If I decided I didn’t want work-force housing in my neighborhood, I could keep going back to my planning board with questions and issues,” Thielen said.
She added questions “should be raised - when they are relevant - but many times they are used as a weapon to keep work-force housing out of the neighborhood.”
Towns obeying the spirit of the law then question why builders concentrate on them, LaFontaine said.
Larsen said delays can cost builders the option to buy the land.
Ignatius MacLellan of the New England Housing Investment Fund said developers have to take into account the risk of a project. By expediting the appeals process, they have a fairer chance of breaking through local roadblocks, he said.
Elliott Berry said in his 32 years at N.H. Legal Assistance there have been three lawsuits over the issue. He said the small number is because the cost makes the projects unaffordable.
“If a town doesn’t want to host work-force housing, there is no reason in the world for them not to say, ‘Go ahead, sue us,’” Berry said.
Judy Silva of the N.H. Municipal Association said association members support the 1991 court ruling and putting its guidelines clearly in law. But she questioned whether the Senate bills go beyond that ruling.
Locally, current regulations seem to run against the grain of the original development of the region, Thielen said.
“This isn’t just about the fact that these people can’t afford a house: If we can’t have housing that’s affordable, we’re not going to have the medical people we need, and companies like Markem will not stay because they can’t find suitable housing for their people,” she said.
“If you tried to recreate a small town village, like Westmoreland or Chesterfield,” she said, “the laws we have on the books right now would not permit those uses. You couldn’t do it.”
Sarah Palermo can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or spalermo@keenesentinel.com.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on December 12th, 2007 — in Housing News
By DENIS PAISTE
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007
Manchester – Foreclosures on home loans, led by troubled subprime mortgages, will dog the state for another 24 to 30 months, according to a new report by the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.
An average of 300 new subprime loan foreclosures a month will continue through next fall, according to the study, principal author of which, Dan Smith, is a senior research analyst with the housing agency.
During the two-year period beginning April 2007, the study estimated 6,700 subprime loans will go into foreclosure.
“It’s likely to get a little worse before it starts getting a little better,” Dean J. Christon, NHHFA executive director, said yesterday.
However, the study to be released today, http://www.nhhfa.org/rl_subprime.cfm, found that New Hampshire’s foreclosure rate is slightly better than the average for New England, the U.S. and the other New England states except Vermont. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on December 7th, 2007 — in Housing News
A Flagstaff Arizona example of how a promised workforce housing project morphed into a large lot housing development.
——————-
By J. FERGUSON
Arizona Sun Staff Reporter
Flagstaff, AZ
Friday, December 07, 2007
Plans for the massive Villaggio Montana master-planned community that would have provided affordable, workforce housing for Flagstaff have been scrapped.
In its place is a much smaller, large-lot residential subdivision.
One of the principal land owners, Ross Wilson of the Phoenix-based First United Realty, has confirmed that the controversial project is dead. Originally, it called for 3,591 homes on 1,020 acres.
He said the decision was primarily due to the high cost of two highway interchanges for which Villaggio would have been partially responsible. One estimate put that figure at $170 million to build the two interchanges.
“It really prevented us from what we needed to do,” said Wilson. “In the end, it was unworkable.”
Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on October 14th, 2007 — in Housing News, Smart Growth
By J. FERGUSON
Arizona Daily Sun
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Vice-Mayor Scott Overton may seem like an unlikely advocate for affordable housing.
Since he joined the council last year, the local contractor has repeatedly raised concerns about the creation of a city-run housing land trust, supporting market-driven solutions to the affordable housing crisis.
But Overton says a recent proposal to adopt a set of mandatory energy-efficient building codes will push home prices further out of the grasp of the average homebuyer. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 29th, 2007 — in Housing News, Smart Growth
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Elizabeth Farrell
Keene Sentinel Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON — A N.H. congressman is working to make the financial services industry more green — not with greenbacks, but with green policy.
A House Financial Services Committee task force, headed by Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., and Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., is drafting legislation that would provide incentives to promote green policy to all of the industries under the committee’s jurisdiction — the banking, securities and insurance industries and much of federal housing. Read the rest of this page »
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