PORTSMOUTH Burdened with a continued statewide housing unit shortage, state Sen. Rebecca Perkins Kwoka, D-Portsmouth, came into this legislative session poised to take action on a crisis in her policy wheelhouse affordable housing.
Fresh off a stint on a 2019 task force aimed at addressing New Hampshire’s housing crisis, Perkins Kwoka is a cosponsor for NH HB 586, an act “relative to training and procedures for zoning and planning boards and relative to financial investments and incentives for affordable housing development.
The bill, she believes, is a step in the right direction toward cutting a housing deficit that Ben Frost, managing director for policy and public affairs at the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, says is about 20,000 units statewide.
NH Business Review
Smaller lot sizes get mixed reception, tax incentives praised
February 9, 2021
House Bill 132 prohibits New Hampshire municipalities from requiring that towns permit half-acre lots in areas where public water and sewer is available.
HB 154 would allow towns to use community revitalization tax incentives to put affordable housing anywhere they wish.
Guess which bill got a better reception during Tuesday’s public hearing before the House Municipal and County Government Committee?
It turns out lawmakers are a lot more amenable to passing enabling legislation than a mandate, even if that mandate enables developers and homeowners to build the house they want.
TAMWORTH â âEvery citizen, business and organization has a stake in the economic health of the Granite State,â reads the tagline for the New Hampshire PBS film, âCommunities & Consequences II: Rebalancing New Hampshireâs Human Ecology.â
The Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth along with several other Mount Washington Valley-area community organizations, will partner with New Hampshire PBS to offer an online screening of Jay B. Childs âCommunities & Consequences IIâ on Tuesday, Jan. 26, at 6 p.m.
At this interactive screening, participants will watch the documentary online, share thoughts, ideas and questions in a chat space, and then have an opportunity to engage in an online question and answer with panelists Andrew Dean, chair of Mount Washington Valley Housing Coalition, Marianne Jackson of Mount Washington Valley Age Friendly Community and Shannon Rogers, State Specialist of Nature Based Economic Development on UNH Cooperative Extension s
NH Business Review
But amid hopeful forecasts come warnings of inequitable recovery
January 21, 2021
Photo by Paula Tracy/InDepthNH.org
State budget writers heard optimism over future growth from experts, but also concerns low wage growth among the middle and lower classes and housing affordability may slow the expansion.
The members of the state House and Senate Ways and Means Committees heard two days of testimony as they begin determining how much money the state may spend in the next biennium.
The lawmakers heard how the state budget is faring in the current fiscal year; about economic trends, projections and concerns; local business health, and other local and federal impacts influencing state revenue over the next two fiscal years.
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