Posted by Susy Thielen on December 7th, 2011 — in Smart Growth, Uncategorized
Economist: Affordable housing not the culprit
By Steve Gilbert Sentinel Staff
Falling property values in Cheshire County are directly attributable to the recession-fueled national housing bubble, not local affordable housing issues, a state economist said.
“This is not your fault,” said Dennis Delay, an economist with the N.H. Center for Public Policy Studies and the New England Economic Partnership. But you still have to deal with it, he added.
Delay said workforce housing, defined as affordable housing for people who work, as opposed to subsidized housing for the unemployed, is not responsible for driving property values down in Cheshire County. It’s not a case of declining values because of declining neighborhoods.
Rather, he said, the recession caused by the sub-prime meltdown, which peaked in 2008, primarily accounts for the record-high 3,900 foreclosures in New Hampshire last year, and more than 3,000 so far this year.
“Falling property values had nothing to do with workforce housing and everything to do with the (housing) bubble,” he said. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on December 7th, 2009 — in Smart Growth
Amy Pyle
Dec 5th 2009
Marianne Cusato was busy designing cottages for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina when requests started pouring in from developers, builders and homeowners across the country begging her to create a similarly compact dwelling for them.
“I was very focused on disaster housing and the small-house movement came to me,” Cusato told WalletPop.
Though Cusato’s 300- to 1,800-square-foot Katrina Cottages — now for sale at Lowe’s — are an extreme example of the smaller-is-better mentality, the movement appears to be more than a fad, especially now that the economy has tanked.
A slew of surveys shows that homeowners are looking to slim down, hoping for less space to heat, cool and clean, and cheaper mortgage payments. A recent CNN poll found 69% of respondents felt homes had gotten too big and Kermit Baker, an American Institute of Architects economist, reported in October that while people want a home office more than ever (reflecting in part the growing number of self-employed and telecommuting workers), special-function rooms such as home theaters, exercise rooms, guest wings and three-car garages have become less popular.
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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 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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