 A group of Monadnock Region activists and officials have banded together to work on a proposal to create a housing development trust fund to help combat the crippling scarcity of affordable housing in the Granite State. The research team, comprising representatives of local housing authorities, elected officials, people who have experienced housing insecurity and members of the Monadnock Interfaith Project, formed about a year and a half ago. They began drafting a concept for a fund that would incentivize housing developers to build and price units at rates affordable for people earning less than 60 percent of the area median income. These types of funds are established by local governments that receive ongoing, dedicated sources of public money to support the production and preser vation of affordable
housing. The goal is to increase opportunities for people to access
decent, affordable homes, per the Monadnock Interfaith Project website. The
median area income in Cheshire County is $64,686 for a two-person
household, according to the most recent census. For a home to be
affordable, rent should cost only about 30 percent of one’s income, said
Angela Pape, community organizer of the Monadnock Interfaith Project. The
Monadnock housing fund would likely come from a pool of public dollars —
which could be raised through fees, taxes or allocated from an existing
budget — and private funding from local organizations, though the group
is still ironing out the details, Pape said. Money could then be drawn
from that pot and loaned at low interest rates to developers, who could
also apply for low-income housing tax credits. — HUNTER OBERST/THE KEENE SENTINEL |
