This originally appeared at JBartlett.org.
On housing, a consensus has settled in among Granite State voters. It can be summarized in four main points:
- New Hampshire desperately needs more housing.
- Local governments should lift regulatory barriers to the construction of new housing.
- The state government should act to prompt local regulatory changes.
- Multifamily housing is acceptable in suburbs and rural areas.
The St. Anselm College Center for Ethics in Society has polled New Hampshire voters on housing since 2020. The 2024 poll, released this week, shows that voters’ views have solidified into a strongly pro-construction, anti-regulatory, pro multi-family majority.
A supermajority (75%) agrees with the statement, “my community needs more affordable housing to be built.”
Roughly 60% (59%-62%) welcome the construction of affordable housing in their own neighborhoods, the relaxation of local land use regulations to allow that construction, the building of multifamily housing in suburban and rural zones, and state intervention to make all of this happen.
In the 2020 poll, just 28.7% agreed that local governments should relax their planning and zoning regulations to allow the construction of more housing.
In the spring of 2021, the poll found a 10% increase, to 39%, of voters saying local governments should relax planning and zoning regulations.
In the fall of 2021, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy released our landmark study showing that local land use regulations were the primary cause of the state’s housing shortage.
The next year, the percentage of N.H. voters who agreed that local planning and zoning regulations should be relaxed to allow for more housing shot up to 52%. It now stands at 61%.
High-profile conversations about specific policy problems matter. By 2021, Granite Staters were becoming more receptive to the idea that local land use regulations were a problem. A push by the Bartlett Center and others to identify the root cause of the housing shortage and propose solutions helped more people understand the problem and demand the right fix, rather than continue to falsely blame developers or the market.
Today, a strong majority of voters understands the problem and demands that it be fixed. Yet local voters and boards have not gotten the message.
A few recent examples:
“Hampton Falls rejects proposed 88-unit condo project on Route 1”
“Owner: McIntyre building still a parking lot due to Portsmouth zoning rules”
“Stratham select board sues town zoning board over 59-unit condo approval”
“Exeter 120-plus apartment project faces opposition”
“Portsmouth board rejects plan to raze 1900-era home for four new houses”
“Board nixes variance for North Newport senior housing project.”
New residential developments are being approved in New Hampshire. But boards continue to reject housing proposals simply because pre-existing regulations don’t allow the type of housing the market now demands.
In the Hampton Falls and Stratham stories linked above, boards rejected variance requests because members didn’t want to contradict old, outdated rules.
In the Newport example, the rural zone doesn’t allow multifamily housing. Since the developer could conceivably propose a different use for the property than its highest, best, most in-demand use (multifamily housing), the board rejected the proposal.
Though Granite Staters now say overwhelmingly that they welcome multi-family housing in suburban and rural zones, local boards continue to reject such proposals simply because old rules don’t allow them.
This discrepancy between voter and market demand on one side and inflexible regulations on the other cannot continue indefinitely.
The Center for Ethics in Society polling shows that on questions of housing, large majorities of New Hampshire voters are on the side of developers, not local regulators. And they want the state to act if local governments won’t.
Voters say housing is the “most important problem facing New Hampshire,” the UNH Survey Center found last month. Thirty-six percent of voters named housing as the state’s top problem. In second place was education, with only 7% of voters naming it the top problem.
In the most recent legislative session, the House Education Committee dealt with 156 bills.
The number of bills referred to the Special Committee on Housing? Nine.
Housing beats education as the top concern of voters by 29 percentage points. But legislators, like local land use boards, are operating on outdated beliefs. They’ve yet to adapt to the changing voter preferences.
But there’s an election this fall, and we’re already seeing candidates campaign on pro-housing agendas.
Given the firmly solidified pro-housing position of most voters, hardened each month by news of rising home prices, and the slow pace of change at the local level, it would be political malpractice for lawmakers not to make significant regulatory reform a top priority next year.
For years, we’ve predicted exactly this development. The slow pace of change at the local level has voters turning to the state for solutions. So far, legislators have been reluctant to act. That won’t be the case much longer. The pressure to act is too great.
It’s a safe bet that we’ll see a significant increase in legislative proposals to address the housing shortage in 2025. People are tired of waiting for government to get out of the way and let developers solve the housing shortage government created in the first place.
