The latest statewide poll by Saint Anselm College shows 6 in 10 Granite Staters want more pro-housing zoning in their towns, and even more support modest densification in some neighborhoods.
The college’s Initiative For Housing Policy and Practice has polled New Hampshire voters every year since 2020 about their attitudes toward housing policy.
This year’s poll sampled 1,209 voters across the state and found 61 percent agreed with the statement that “New Hampshire towns and cities should change their planning and zoning regulations in order to allow more housing.”
That’s the same result as in last year’s poll and nearly the same as 2023’s, but more than double the 28.7 percent who said they agreed in 2020 thanks to a large number of previously-undecided voters and voters opposed to the idea changing their views.
Fifty-seven percent said they supported more affordable housing in their neighborhoods, while 37 percent said they opposed the and 6 percent said they were unsure.
And 61 percent said the state needed to do more to encourage municipalities to remove barriers to development, with 32 percent opposed and 7 percent unsure.
“Housing has indeed become a unifying policy concern for the New Hampshire electorate,” Elissa Margolin, director of the Initiative for Housing Policy and Practice at Saint Anselm College, said in a statement.
Perhaps even more significantly, though, 68 percent of respondents said they backed the idea of letting owners of large single-family houses convert those buildings into up to four apartments if they had water and sewer service. And 59 percent said they liked the idea of a statewide policy that lets municipalities designate smaller-lot single-family districts.
A leading housing advocate said the 2025 poll results showed a need for action when state legislators return to Concord. The last state legislative session produced some notable wins, but the budget for a statewide affordable housing development fund was slashed and bills that blocked various municipal rules to prevent development failed to pass.
“As we approach another legislative session and an election year, it is clearer than ever that Granite Staters expect our elected officials and candidates to support solutions to address the affordable housing shortage in New Hampshire,” Nick Taylor, director of Housing Action NH, said in a statement.
Leaders of the state’s two biggest business groups – New Hampshire Realtors and the Business and Industry Association – released statements with Housing Action NH saying they expected big things from lawmakers in the upcoming session.
“Despite some increases in available homes, housing and rental prices continue to increase,” NH Realtors 2025 President Susan Cole said in a statement. “The poll shows that families and workers across the state want policymakers at all levels to remain focused on long-term solutions to address the housing shortage. New Hampshire still has a long way to go to get back to a balanced housing market.”
The head of the BIA, the state’s main business lobby group, put the matter in stark terms.
“The stakes for the future of New Hampshire’s economy could not be greater,” BIA President and CEO Michael Skelton said in a statement. “Businesses and employers across the state consistently cite housing supply and affordability as a key barrier to attracting, retaining, and growing their workforce. The 2026 legislative session is a critical opportunity to deliver on what voters are calling for by advancing more pro-housing policy solutions into law.”
