POLITICS

Get worked up about work-force housing
Business owners need to be a voice for change

We've heard it all before: New Hampshire's economic growth, currently the best in New England but lagging behind many other areas of the country, is being threatened by an increasing shortage of skilled workers.

With no income or sales tax, a great quality of life and a supportive business community, the question is: "Why are skilled workers leaving the state for other parts of the country?"

The answer, according to many local business advocates and economists is clear — a lack of affordable housing in the state's most populous areas, including here on the Seacoast. The equation that could spell economic disaster for the state was clearly stated by Stephanye Schuyler, chairman of the Workforce Housing Coalition of the Greater Seacoast, at a recent forum for business people held in Portsmouth.

"The area needs businesses and businesses need workers," Schuyler said. "Workers need housing; without housing, workers leave. Without workers, business and the tax revenues they bring to our communities go away."

Schuyler presented some startling statistics. Since 2003, the Seacoast has been consistently listed as one of the 100 least affordable areas for housing in the country, and the conservative Brookings Institution has named the Seacoast region one of the most exclusionary in the country when it comes to land-use zoning issues.

Couple that with the results of a recent survey the coalition conducted among area businesses and the problem becomes clearer. The survey said 50 percent of those polled indicated that having employees who commute more than 10 miles to find affordable housing negatively impacts their businesses' competitiveness, that two-thirds of the companies responding felt the housing shortage made it more difficult for them to recruit and retrain talented staff, and more than three-quarters of those surveyed said the work force housing shortage forced them to increase wages and other benefits to attract qualified employees.

No wonder not only established businesses, but those considering starting up on the Seacoast are thinking twice about locating here. Even the national housing crisis has not helped to reduce the cost of housing as much here as in other parts of the country.

Work force housing is critical to maintaining a vibrant economy. There is some need for subsidized housing for the truly poor and less of a need for senior housing, which appears to be springing up all over the region. The need is for work force housing priced at a level so that the people who make our communities run — teachers, police officers, firefighters, store clerks, restaurant workers, health care workers, child care providers — can afford it.

And work force housing means not just affordable, single-family homes, but affordable apartments in downtown areas. And the biggest deterrents to the construction of these types of housing are local zoning regulations, coupled with a lack of federal and state monetary incentives.

We've seen it in Portsmouth, with the death of the proposed Islington Woods project, and in Hampton Falls, where the New Hampshire Housing Partnership has owned a piece of land on which it has wanted to build affordable housing for years, but has been stymied consistently by town land-use board and zoning restrictions. Nathan Szanton has successfully built a 30-unit, mixed-use apartment building right next to Exeter's old Town Hall on Water Street, but is still fighting with that town's zoning board over what kinds of businesses can go into the first-floor commercial spaces in the building.

Szanton noted that if he had been able to construct his building on the other side of Water Street, he could have had 75 units with no problems. He said the answer to the affordable housing crisis is for communities to recognize the economic need for it and change their zoning to allow for it.

He also notes that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has virtually gotten out of the business of creating affordable work force housing and that state agencies, such as the Business Finance Authority, are not making or guaranteeing loans that would support affordable housing in our communities.

Mike Donahue, an attorney and member of the Exeter Chamber of Commerce's Economic Development Committee, said that if businesses are concerned about the continuing decline in the pool of skilled workers available to them, they need to become a voice for change in their communities. Donahue stressed the fact that, because the business sector is a major source of tax revenue for both communities and the state, having that sector become involved is critical to overcoming the objections of a handful of residents who equate work force housing with the kind of unbridled growth they came to New Hampshire to escape.

The Workforce Housing Coalition is urging local businesses to speak out individually about the need for affordable housing, join with their local chambers of commerce to push the issue or work with the United Way of the Greater Seacoast, the coalition or other organizations advocating for an increase in affordable housing in this region.

"Businesses are an important player in this issue," Schuyler said.

Shir Haberman is the business and political writer at the Portsmouth Herald. He can be reached at shaberman@seacoastonline.com