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Thousands of housing units could be added to New Hampshire in the coming months if Gov. Chris Sununu and his allies in the state’s business community get their way.

Sununu unveiled details of his $100 million investment plan on Tuesday. He hopes it will alleviate the housing crisis that experts say is making it harder for employers to recruit workers and for young people to remain in the state.

Starting next week, developers will be able to apply for money from the new InvestNH Housing Fund, which will help cover the financial gaps in hard construction costs on affordable multi-family developments.

“We’re moving quickly. We don’t want to just talk about things in this state, we want to make them happen,” Sununu said.

Though New Hampshire’s economy is booming, the lack of affordable housing could put that growth in danger. There are tens of thousands of high-paying jobs available in New Hampshire, but not enough potential workers can find places to live, Sununu said.

“We just need affordable housing in this state to keep up with the level of economic growth,” Sununu said.

Elissa Margolin, director of Housing Action NH.

Businesses cannot find workers, and people are not taking jobs in the Granite State because there is nowhere to live. Ellisa Margolin, director at the non-profit Housing Action NH, said the $100 million fund represents a serious effort to address the crisis that impacts the state’s entire economy.

“The workforce shortage that we’re experiencing is directly related to our shortage of housing in this state,” Margolin said. “If it’s difficult for a new medical resident to accept his residency at an area hospital because he can’t find housing he can afford, you can imagine what it’s like for a single parent with children.”

Nicole Ward, general manager at the Copper Door in Bedford, is lucky enough to live in workforce housing located behind the restaurant. She said the potential for more businesses to be able to provide affordable housing for employees will make for better businesses and communities.

“I just think a project like this, being able to provide more affordable living for employees like myself, would lead to a better work ethic, more longevity and less turnover, and a better work environment altogether,” Ward said.

The InvestNH Housing Fund will use money from the state’s portion of the American Rescue Plan Act. The fund will direct $60 million to go toward developers. Of that, $10 million will go to the New Hampshire Housing Authority, and another $10 million is earmarked for non-profit and small-scale for-profit developers.

The remaining $40 million is going to municipalities to help streamline the process to get the projects built. There is also money municipalities can use to demolish old structures and for updating zoning ordinances to meet current needs.

Taylor Caswell, New Hampshire’s Business and Economic Affairs commissioner, said the state wants to encourage affordable multi-family developments, whether it is a large apartment project or a small Victorian home on Main Street that could be converted into a five-unit apartment building.

“The goal is to get more units online as fast as possible,” he said.

According to the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank based in Concord, the unwillingness of communities like Manchester to allow more housing construction has limited their growth when compared to nearby communities.

Between 1970 and 2020, the total number of housing units in the Queen City grew by just 37 percent. In Salem, they grew by 76 percent, in Nashua by 80 percent, and statewide by 127 percent. As a result, Manchester’s population and economic growth also lagged behind.

“Because city officials chose to limit growth, Manchester’s population and economy have grown at a slower rate than the rest of the state as a whole,” wrote the Bartlett Center’s Drew Cline. “Artificially limiting the city’s housing supply created a drag on the city’s economic growth and cultural life.”

The state’s housing shortage, which is contributing to its employee shortage, is just one of the current challenges facing the state. Another is the recent announcement of soaring electricity rates from the state’s largest utilities.  Sununu recently announced a $60 million utility bill relief package that includes a one-time $100 dollar grant to some 600,000 electric ratepayers. He also has plans to address the looming home heating crisis that will take hold this winter as oil costs continue to skyrocket.

Sununu said Washington is to blame for rising prices that are hurting New Hampshire families.

Commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs Taylor Caswell.

“This energy crisis in America — the Biden administration has created a massive problem,” Sununu said Tuesday. “When it costs you twice as much to put gas in your car, it’s going to cost you at least twice as much to put home heating oil into your tank.”

Sununu’s Democratic opponent in November’s election, state Sen. Tom Sherman (D-Rye) dismissed Sununu’s efforts as too slow and lacking in transparency.

“New Hampshire’s housing crunch is making it difficult for families to pay their bills each month and companies to find workers,” Sherman said. “While Granite Staters have been struggling for years, Sununu delayed so long in distributing rental assistance funds that nearly $20 million in federal funds were reallocated to other states. Sununu was the last governor in the region to put ARP funds towards affordable housing and chose to create a brand new program with more red tape instead of efficiently investing in existing programs. We need to make sure this is a transparent process that helps Granite Staters, not just a handout to campaign donors during an election year.”

Sununu said he was working with House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, and Senate President Chuck Morse, R-Salem, to address the heating crisis using state surplus funds. Sununu’s plan would allow the state to expand eligibility for heating assistance so that more families would be able to benefit. He is not interested in waiting for Congress to change the rules to make the federal assistance program more accessible as Granite Staters struggle to heat their homes. 

“We are not going to wait for the winter to see if the feds get around to fixing their problem,” Sununu said.

Information about the InvestNH Housing Fund and how to apply can be found at www.invest603.com. 

Lawyers representing hundreds of Sununu Youth Detention Center abuse claimants on Tuesday asked a judge to lift the court-imposed stay on litigation and let the victims pursue civil trials against the state.

In a new filing in the Merrimack Superior Court in Concord, attorneys David Vicinanzo and Rus Rilee accuse Attorney General John Formella of stalling the case so the state can pay as little as possible.

“Plaintiffs acknowledge that the State’s delay strategy and its related goal – paying as little compensation to as few victims as possible – is legally allowable to a certain point. But that point has come and gone. After decades of suffering in silence, it is time for Plaintiffs to be heard and receive justice,” they wrote in their motion.

The motion filed Tuesday is another sign that the victims are unhappy with the $100 million settlement offer approved by the legislature, and many do not plan to take the deal offered by the state. Instead, they want to go to trial.

Vicinanzo said Tuesday the list of more than 600 victims who filed suit continues to grow as more survivors come forward. The filing indicates there could be thousands of victims.

This year the state legislature approved a bill to pay out $100 million in settlements to the survivors. Still, Vicinanzo and others criticized the bill, saying it caps the settlement amounts, and effectively excludes many survivors from being able to obtain any settlement money.

“The New Hampshire legislature’s response to this tragedy has also been slow and underwhelming. It was not until late 2021 that the State legislature began discussions on a bill seeking to redress the harm suffered by the survivors. The bill that was ultimately signed into law last month falls well short of the “victim-centered, trauma informed” legislation that the Attorney General and legislators had promised and forces survivors to give up their rights for the mere chance to explore their options in this process,” they wrote in Tuesday’s motion.

David Meehan first came forward in 2017, telling State Police about the abuse he suffered at the center. Since then, hundreds of men and women have come forward to say they suffered sexual and other forms of abuse as children at the hands of some 150 staffers from 1960 to 2018, according to the lawsuit. That abuse includes gang rapes, being forced to fight each other for food, and being locked in solitary confinement for weeks or months.

“(T)hrough the actions of the Defendants in these matters, Plaintiffs were robbed of their childhoods and left with lifelong physical and emotional scars. The stories these individuals tell reveal unimaginable wrongs, including brutal rapes, forced abortions, broken bones, and weeks on end of isolation where individuals were at times shackled and forced to urinate and defecate, without a toilet, in the same room in which they slept,” they wrote.

The state has so far charged several former employees for their roles in the alleged abuse while simultaneously pursuing a settlement agreement. Vicinanzo and Rilee state that then-Attorney General Gordon MacDonald initially responded to the victims appropriately, pursuing a criminal investigation against the alleged abusers while negotiating a civil settlement. It was during the initial state response that Meehan and others agreed to stay their cases.

After MacDonald became Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court in March of 2021, Formella replaced him as attorney general. The lawyers blamed Formella for what they alleged was a change in the state’s handling of the claims.

“Unfortunately, Plaintiffs detected a change in tenor and direction from the Attorney General’s Office following a change in leadership with Attorney General MacDonald’s appointment and subsequent confirmation to the New Hampshire Supreme Court in early 2021. Since that time, discussions with the Attorney General stalled, and the State began to adopt tactics seemingly calculated to delay, if not outright deny, justice for the survivors,” they wrote.

Michael Garrity, the director of communications for the Department of Justice, takes exception to that characterization of Formella’s response.

“Any suggestion that the Attorney General’s Office is ‘dragging its feet’ or ‘trying to pay out as little as possible’ is categorically false. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have been attempting to work with plaintiffs’ counsel in good faith and are disappointed by this inflammatory and unnecessary filing,” Garrity said,

The abuse should not have come as a surprise, according to the filing. It was well-known in the 1980s. Then-Attorney General Tom Rath warned leaders that the abuse at the detention centers would end up costing the state.

“There is no question that the potential exists for the YDC (Youth Development 3 Center) to be the next Laconia [State School] in terms of litigation,” Rath said in 1980, the Associated Press reported.

The Laconia State School housed mentally challenged people until the revelations of the ongoing neglect and abuse revealed in the 1970s. A 1979 class-action lawsuit found that the school that was supposed to be training and educating mentally challenged people was instead “a human warehouse where residents were often left alone to sit naked in their feces and urine. Staff prodded residents with hatpins, burned them with cigarettes, and kicked them. They also shut off the water at night, forcing anyone who was thirsty to drink from the toilets,” according to The Boston Globe.

Rath told the Associated Press that the state was deficient in dealing with the abuse within the juvenile justice system.

“[I]f there is an area where we have been deficient in this state, it has been in this regard,” he said at the time.

Despite offering $100 million to the hundreds of Sununu Youth Detention Center abuse victims, it looks like New Hampshire will still end up in court. 

Lawyers and victims expressed frustration and anger at the deal, approved by the state Senate late last week.

“I should never have put faith in the state to create a fair settlement process. They already proved they don’t care,” Dwayne Underwood, one of the victims said.

There have been hundreds of allegations of misconduct and abuse against staff at what was then called the Youth Development Center between 1963 and 2018. That abuse included gang rapes, being forced to fight each other for food, and being locked in solitary confinement for weeks or months. The center has been under investigation since 2019 and is scheduled to shut down in 2023.

David Vicinanzo, an attorney with Nixon Peabody, said his firm has filed 450 lawsuits against the state over the Sununu Center abuse and said 100 more lawsuits will be filed soon. Vicinanzo plans to push forward with the lawsuits instead of taking the settlement.

“We are full speed ahead preparing the cases for trial or mediation, which may be appropriate depending on whether the state decides to be fair or continues to shortchange and disrespect the victims,” Vicinanzo said.

Anthony Carr, who represents Underwood, said the victims continue to be ignored.

“This bill will not bring justice to the minors who were abused under the state’s care. It’s unfortunate that the victims of the Sununu Youth Services Center and the Youth Detention Center and their advocates were not consulted when creating this fund. The result is a process that is not victim-centered and, speaking for the many victims we represent, will not be widely used, if at all,” Carr said.

Both Carr and Vicinanzo would rather see the legislature make changes to the bill, especially the way the settlement defines abuse. Under the law as passed, survivors like Underwood would be frozen out as their experience would not be considered abuse.

“I was forced to undress regularly in Wilkins Cottage and expose myself to the guards for no good reason. I was forced to swim naked by the guards both on and off property. One time, a guard took me by van to a campsite by a river and he made me swim naked with him,” Underwood said. “This has caused me great trauma over the years, and I just don’t see why the state would not recognize what I went through as sexual abuse.”

The law also includes a maximum $1.5 million settlement cap for victims, depending on the abuse suffered, and contingent on the state’s definition of abuse. It is another point the lawyers want to be changed.

Vicinanzo has been critical of Senate President Chuck Morse (R-Salem). Vicinanzo said Morse has refused to meet with victims.

“Many of the victims pleaded with Senate President Morse for a short meeting weeks ago so they could share their pain personally with him before he managed this process to the vote he wanted … He responded that he was ‘not interested’ in meeting with them,” Vicinanzo said. “Unfortunately, he is not the only political leader who still has no empathy for victims or understanding of their suffering. The child victims of the state have been ignored and dehumanized for years, so the senator’s cold shoulder is nothing new.”

Morse, who is running in the crowded GOP primary to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, did not respond to requests for comment.

Vicinanzo said the state needs to reckon with the victims.

“After being ignored, disbelieved, and disrespected by the state for decades, we are a critical mass right now that the state has to take seriously and treat with decency and fairness,” he said.

So far, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office brought more than 108 charges against 11 former staff members for acts committed against 20 victims.