What would make a New Hampshire community resistant to new housing? • New Hampshire Bulletin

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Commentary

Commentary

What would make a New Hampshire community resistant to new housing?

Dana Wormald

May 13, 2026<br>5:43 pm

Housing is in short supply throughout New Hampshire. (Photo by Dana Wormald/New Hampshire Bulletin)

To witness the New Hampshire Legislature in action can feel like watching someone try to identify the shape of a cloud from inside the vapor.

While the interconnectedness of policy may seem self-evident — “If you make this change it will affect x,y, and z and in these ways” — the on-the-ground approach by lawmakers rarely feels holistically considered.

Take, for example, the housing shortage. If you ask New Hampshire voters what they consider to be the “most important problem” facing the state, as the UNH Survey Center did in February, housing is most likely to claim the No. 1 spot. In that Granite State Poll, 22% of respondents named housing, followed by taxes (16%) and education (9%).

There is no mystery why housing is the top concern. In 2023, a major study for New Hampshire Housing determined that a healthy state market would require a whopping 90,000 additional units by 2040. Also, the median home price here is $560,000, and New Hampshire is the 12th most expensive state for rent. Meanwhile, the vacancy rate for a two-bedroom apartment has for years hovered around 0.6%. According to New Hampshire Housing, it would take a 5% rate for the state’s rental market to be considered “balanced” for tenants and landlords.

“Bienvenue au New Hampshire”: No vacancy.

The Legislature, for its part, has determined that the main impediment to more housing is local zoning restrictions, and so there have been frequent efforts in recent years to clear those barriers. Last year, for example, Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed a number of zoning-related bills, many of them bipartisan, such as allowing the construction of detached accessory dwelling units by right and requiring towns and cities to permit mixed-use housing developments in commercial zones. More changes are coming down the pike this session, including one focused on what kind of development must be allowed on dead-end roads.

Predictably in the “Live free or die” state, lawmakers’ heavy-handedness has proven divisive. And while the “not in my backyard” mentality is hardly the sole domain of the political right, it seems possible that the messaging of the state’s Republican majority might be inspiring some of the local hostility to housing developments.

If you run on a plank that aims to win people’s votes by making them suspicious of immigrants, resentful of neighbors who require public assistance, fixated on crime in this low-crime state, and generally wary of any “new arrivals,” you shouldn’t be surprised when people rush to fortify the walls of their community rather than swing open the gates. Elections have consequences, but political rhetoric does, too.

Inseparable from the housing availability and affordability debate, of course, is New Hampshire’s high property taxes. Republican lawmakers’ approach to solving the tax problem, No. 2 on the UNH survey list, has been to attack the main driver of property taxes, public education. They’ve done this directly through enacted or attempted tyranny-of-the-minority policies such as universal school vouchers, universal open enrollment, and even one bill this session that would allow just 20 voters to petition for “the discontinuance of elementary and high schools.” And they’ve done so indirectly by railing against everything from vaccine mandates to “obscene materials” in school libraries to the imagined “leftist indoctrination” of our school kids. Education is the third “most important problem” facing New Hampshire according to the UNH Survey Center poll, and the Republican solution appears to be steady erasure.

I’m sure the destruction of community schools will do wonders for local housing markets.

If local zoning restrictions are viewed as the greatest impediment to New Hampshire reaching 90,000 new units by 2040, the right question to ask is why that kind of opposition is so prevalent. Is it the fear that new housing will lead to more kids in public schools and a corresponding increase in a town’s property tax burden? Because if so, there’s ample research from New Hampshire Housing to suggest the opposite is true. Is it a more complex problem related to the psychology of NIMBYism, which often stems from personal likes and dislikes about factors such as density, character, and tradition? If so, that means it’s time for some hard questions and honest answers — from right and left alike — about who and what we include in our concept of “community” and who and what we don’t.

But I also worry about the solo “prepper” mentality that runs rampant in New Hampshire policy debates these days, which discounts the...