New Hampshire’s affordable workforce housing problem has been around as long as the equally intractable problem of education funding. Despite the seriousness of the issue and the potential longterm negative impact on the state’s economy (the worker talent drain), coming up with solutions while facing a labyrinth of obstacles has been a decades-long frustration for major employers, policymakers and workforce housing advocates.
Sarah Wrightsman, executive director of the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast, can speak from personal experience. The New Hampshire native and University of New Hampshire graduate struggled to find an affordable home in the red-hot Seacoast real estate market until finally locating one in Newmarket.
“It’s hard to find a starter home anywhere. So many young workers struggle to afford housing costs in this region,” Wrightsman said.
Q. Tell us about the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast.A. The coalition was created in 2001 in response to concerns from Portsmouth employers struggling with staffing due to the lack of housing affordable for members of the workforce. In 2009, the coalition became an independent 501(c)(3), and in 2018 we formed a strategic partnership with the Regional Economic Development Center. We moved into REDC’s Raymond office and expanded our territory westward. We work in 53 communities, from Nashua to the Seacoast.
Like many nonprofits, our financing is a mix of grants, individual donations and corporate sponsorship. In addition to supporting the coalition financially, our members strengthen our voice — when we reach out to local policymakers and can point to the businesses in their region that support our mission, they listen.
Q. How does the organization make a difference?
A. Our work is collaborative and involves significant community engagement and consensus-building because, ultimately, changing land-use regulations is a collaborative and iterative process. We recognize each community in our catchment area is different, and that the solutions we may end up recommending are going to be custom tailored based on what we hear from the community.
Our mission is to educate and engage communities and municipalities to advance diverse housing options. We want to see a housing stock that is affordable and diverse, but we also want the community to own the solutions.
We provide technical assistance and data to municipal staff, elected officials and other local leaders through our housing design charrettes, presentations and more.
More recently, we’ve been working on an initiative to build and train local groups of advocates — Newmarket residents, for example, created a Newmarket Housing Coalition. Local coalitions of trained advocates expand our capacity at the local level.
We aren’t developers, but we work with communities to create opportunities for development.
Q. What are the obstacles to creating more workforce housing?
A. The biggest obstacle is zoning. The state’s housing crisis is the result of decades of exclusionary zoning. Despite the passage of the 2008 workforce housing law, there are still far too many communities where the development of housing affordable to the workforce isn’t financially feasible for a developer. Addressing the housing crisis starts at the local level, but luckily there are resources available to every community including the workforce housing coalitions.
Persuasive myths are a big obstacle. No, workforce housing won’t increase your property taxes or decrease your property values. Yes, workforce housing can be built without municipal water and sewer. No, workforce housing isn’t subsidized. Workforce housing is as simple as it sounds: housing for members of the workforce. When folks say they don’t want “those people” living in their town, they don’t realize they’re talking about me, my mom, my brother and his fiancée, and some of my closest friends. Housing doesn’t make a neighborhood; the people who live there do. Changing the conversation about workforce housing is constant and challenging, but ultimately it is about asking people to confront their own housing story because everyone has one.
Q. How could the Covid-19 pandemic impact the workforce housing situation?
A. Certainly, the Covid-19 pandemic has added some urgency to the state’s housing crisis, especially if we see a rise in evictions and foreclosures, but in a very real way, the pandemic hasn’t changed anything for us.
Prior to the pandemic, we had a housing crisis on our hands. We needed more housing and better zoning. After the pandemic, the housing crisis will still be there, and we’ll still need more housing and better zoning.
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