Who can afford to live in the Granite State?
Many municipalities have adopted land use controls that, when applied, allow only for the building of housing that is affordable to buyers with higher incomes. While developers were responding to a market demand for upper priced housing, they were also effectively prevented from addressing the lower priced market because of the cost to the development due to those local regulations. • Where will everyone else live? It’s basic economics that reveals that builders who cannot make profits on lower priced homes will not build such homes. For low- and very-low income housing (a portion of which is workforce housing), the few available government subsidies can make up the difference, but this system creates a “polar” housing market with either very high prices or very low prices. This leaves much of New Hampshire’s diverse workforce shut out of the housing market, earning too much for government subsidies and too little to afford the housing being built. Further, providing reasonable and rea
