Recently the Washington Valley Housing Coalition organized an affordable housing charette in Ossipee, NH. There were two nights of public input, gathering feedback from the public regarding if county land should be used for creating housing. If so, how should this development address local housing needs?
The idea was to provide housing for local people who are struggling to enter the housing market because of high prices and lack of inventory. Participants indicated workers were moving to Rochester or Manchester or elsewhere because housing was more affordable than in the Lakes Region. In addition, according to the county and private employers testifying, they are in desperate need of workers, and a lack of affordable housing is keeping the necessary work force from moving here.
So the question was - if the land was gifted - would these starter homes be affordable? Note, they weren't asked to look into what federal or state funds might be available to subsidize the project so the project was developed as a stand alone privately funded housing development. Most likely the land would be under a 99 year lease which would allow people to get mortgages.
In a process that allowed for two public sessions, no doubt not all public input was garnered, but the sessions were well attended and people provided lots of feedback. A group of housing experts then took time examining the land and selecting site options, incorporating the public input into priorities for the development, examining local zoning and other regs, creating several housing options including single family, duplex and fourplexes, and number crunching.
This was never to be an examination of all options. And yes there is no way of guaranteeing the houses would only be sold to local people. This is a risk we take in all sorts of things we do as a community -- we make improvements for ourselves which also benefit future community members. There would, however, be restriction blocking purchase as a second home.
A large part of developing rural affordable housing is the lack of infrastructure. Along with building the housing, the water, sewer and road infrastructure has to be built, which increases the price tag substantially. The experts who did the analysis and developed a plan based on the public input, said they couldn’t make the numbers work for rentals. The rents would have to be too high.
As it turned out the cost of the housing was greater than most people expected as well, coming in at the mid to upper $300,000. Still, it was a useful process identifying not only what the community wanted but also the many hurdles to creating affordable housing. There are many reasons why support for affordable housing projects goes to more urban areas — this was an illustration of some of those factors.
All the people who were part of the planning and execution of the charrette were volunteers and or the staff of the sponsoring nonprofit. All the 'experts' volunteered. And the process expenses were paid for by the sponsors. So no money or commitment came from the county and no cost has been passed to anyone for this charette. We should be grateful for the wealth of information benefitting all of us at no cost.
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