The state Council on Housing Stability says New Hampshire will need to find ways to produce almost 90,000 new homes in the next 16 years if it wants to get a handle on its affordability problems.
The estimate is drawn from calculations built off research by the state’s nine Regional Planning Commissions (RPCs) and New Hampshire Housing, the state’s quasi-public housing finance agency.
The Fair Share Housing Production Model, as the calculations are known, estimates a community’s anticipated housing production need based on that area’s projected population and employment growth. Tallying that up, the state of New Hampshire will need an additional 88,395 housing units by 2040, the Council on Housing Stability said.
“The data in the statewide and regional Housing Needs Assessments provide an invaluable foundation for guiding decisions affecting housing production and choice,” Rob Dapice, NH Housing’s executive director, said in a statement. “We now have in-depth reports that examined supply and production, affordability challenges, housing needs, and projected housing demand as the basis for understanding and planning for New Hampshire’s housing needs.”
The Fair Share Housing Production Model’s statewide figures are part of a collaborative effort by local governments to understand how much housing their communities need to build at a time when the entire state is struggling with having too few houses, condominiums and apartments for those who currently live here.
The process also led the state Department of Business and Economic Affairs and New Hampshire’s nine regional planning commissions to develop a housing toolkit that gives municipalities suggestions on how to tackle the housing crisis at a local level, like making it easier to build accessory dwelling units and cluster housing.