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.
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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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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 25th, 2007 — in Housing News
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Freeman Klopott
Keene Sentinel Staff
Ashuelot River Park in Keene is going to have a new neighbor — 83 condominiums.
After more than two years of back and forth between the Keene Planning Board and the developer, the Boston-based Mayo Group, the planning board gave the project a green light Monday night in a 6-3 vote.
The development has met stiff opposition from Ashuelot River Park officials and residents in the surrounding neighborhood, who have said the 75-unit, 52-foot-tall, T-shaped building that will sit as close as 60 feet from the park’s edge is too big for a neighborhood with mostly single-family homes, and will cast a dark shadow on its surroundings.
The plan also calls for four separate two-unit townhouses on the 3.5-acre lot that currently serves as an overflow parking area for Colony Mill Marketplace and as access to Ashuelot River Park.
The Mayo Group owns Colony Mill and The Center at Keene. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 16th, 2007 — in Housing News
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sarah Palermo
Sentinel Staff
WINCHESTER — Though the Boston and Maine Railroad tracks by Franklin Mountain have been silent for some time, the property next door has been generating noise in recent months.
Rindge developer Robert Van Dyke has plans for what could be Winchester’s first planned residential development, on the property, and will appear before the planning board Monday night for a continuation of a public hearing.
The project, off Route 10 just south of Westport Road, could create 32 new condominium units and a community center run by a homeowner’s association. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 16th, 2007 — in Housing News
Saturday, September 15, 2007
David Crary and RACHEL KONRAD
Associated Press
STAMFORD, Conn. — This isn’t how Simon and Jennifer Morris envisioned married life — sharing a charity-subsidized suite with four other hard-up families, abiding by a curfew and other rules that make them feel they are back in high school.
But for a working-class couple with two small children, trying to stick it out in their pricey hometown, housing options are few.
They abandoned their previous one-bedroom apartment when the rent rose from $1,200 to $1,425. Public housing has long waiting lists, so they moved into a shelter for dislocated families in a converted YMCA. The goal: Save enough money to move south and buy a home where costs are lower. Read the rest of this page »
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Posted by Susy Thielen on September 10th, 2007 — in Housing News
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Keene Sentinel
USDA, Rural Development’s Direct Home Loan program is available to income eligible households to purchase an existing home, a site on which construct a dwelling, or a condominium in rural areas.
Rural Development will hold a workshop on the program on Wednesday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to noon at Keene Housing Authority, 831 Court St., Keene.
Laura Gibson, a Rural Development specialist, will answer questions about home buying and the USDA’s home-loan program.
For reservations or information, call Rural Development at 802-257-7878 extension 108.
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Posted by Susy Thielen on July 24th, 2007 — in Housing News
Planners propose units as small as 250 square feet. After all, New York and Paris have them.
By Sharon Bernstein, Times Staff Writer
July 24, 2007
Is Los Angeles ready for the 250-square-foot apartment?
That’s what city planning officials have in mind with a series of sweeping new zoning proposals that would allow developers to build smaller condos and apartments than ever before.
The tiny units — studios that officials hope would be as small as 250 square feet — are part of a package of proposed zoning changes aimed at significantly increasing density in downtown L.A. The rules would apply to the roughly five miles around downtown but could eventually be extended elsewhere in the city.
The idea is to encourage developers to continue to build high-rises downtown even as the market appears poised to slow down — while also spurring them to build units that are more affordable. Supporters — who include the city’s top planning officials, some developers and Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes downtown — say the rules will encourage the construction of housing at a time when the city desperately needs it.
“This is a landmark event,” said Dan Rosenfeld, a principal in the development firm Urban Partners, which is behind several downtown projects. “The people who care about downtown L.A. have been waiting for these ordinances for a long time.”
But the proposal — slated to come before the City Council next week — is already drawing criticism from those who see it as another effort to boost development in a region that is already in a high-rise building boom stretching from downtown through Koreatown and into Century City, Westwood and Marina del Rey.
Some land-use experts question whether there is much of a market for tiny apartments in downtown L.A., which, despite its recent resurgence, still lacks the cachet of Manhattan, central London or Paris. Others fear overcrowding and slum conditions if the market goes sour and the units are too densely packed.
“I see it as creating a neighborhood where parking is horrendous and families are squeezing themselves into these units which are very small because they are affordable,” said Noreen McClendon, a developer of affordable housing. “It’s just a tenement.”
The tiny apartment is a fairly new concept in Southern California, which has a long history of suburban sprawl and larger spaces.
But in New York, Boston, San Francisco and many European and Asian cities, residents have squeezed into tiny apartments for decades, usually because the lure of the downtown area is so great — and the prices for larger places so high.
Gretchen Broussard, who co-owns Tiny Living, a Manhattan store that sells furnishings for small spaces, lived in a 200-square-foot apartment in that New York borough until five years ago.
“I couldn’t even turn around in the space,” Broussard said. “I maxed out every inch of the wall space, mounted everything to get it off the floor … ”
In San Francisco, Martin Eng rents a 300-square-foot studio in the swanky Nob Hill neighborhood, across from the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Though Eng has several other homes around the state, the apartment is his primary residence — and he said it’s livable only because it has a good view and plenty of light.
With a rent-controlled cost of $400 a month — below the market rate — the studio is a convenient city crash pad for Eng, 53, who works in investment.
“Mine is a tiny place, not somewhere you would want to entertain or bring people,” Eng said. “It’s like a poor man penthouse — you can’t really be proud of it.”
Although the new L.A. ordinance does not directly address the size of the apartments that could be built, it would remove all restrictions on the number of units that developers could put in a single building, a move that planners hope will result in residences as small as 250 square feet — about the size of a hotel room or a modest living room.
The ordinance would also let developers willing to reserve some apartments for low- and moderate-income families to make their buildings 35% bigger than zoning rules normally allow and to opt out of providing half the open space typically required. Those who build units for those with very low incomes would not have to offer parking spaces for those residences.
Perry said the proposed rules would concentrate new housing downtown while preserving single-family homes elsewhere.
The smallest units, Perry said, might be attractive to young professionals who want to buy a condo but can’t afford anything larger, or to service workers who couldn’t otherwise afford to buy or rent near their downtown jobs.
Burbank architect Mark Gangi, who also teaches at USC, said the rules could help mold downtown into a lively metropolitan center.
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