Faced with a long waitlist for its units and significant need for housing at moderate pricepoints throughout the Seacoast, the head of Portsmouth’s public housing authority is floating the idea of developing significantly more homes on publicly-owned property.

Portsmouth Housing Authority Executive Director Craig Welch was responding to a recent City Council discussion of how to use city land to build more affordable housing, according to the Portsmouth Herald.

“We’ll build whatever the city wants. We’ll build more workforce housing, more senior housing, whatever there’s the biggest demand for,” he told the Herald. “I really believe there’s tons of opportunities to work with the city to address this.”

One likely candidate for new development, Welch said, was the city’s 124-unit Gosling Meadows garden-style apartment complex next to The Crossings shopping center. The property could hold twice as many units, Welch said.

The state’s year-to-date median single-family home price jumped 17 percent in February on a year-over-year basis to $325,000 according to The Warren Group, publisher of The Registry Review. At the same time, Rockingham County’s median price jumped 16 percent, to $433,167 on the same basis. Both jumps are being driven by intense demand fueled by low interest rates, the Millennial generation’s arrival at prime homebuying age and years of under-production in the homebuilding sector fueled in part by restrictive zoning laws, market-watchers say.