Protecting rural lands from development and building new homes for New Hampshire’s growing population are both popular and laudable goals. However, it often seems that these two objectives contradict each other and that one must choose one and abandon the other. I would like to argue that it is possible to reduce the tension between land conservation and housing construction and achieve part of both.
To save the state’s forests and small towns from sprawl, New Hampshire has already protected many lands from development. Federal conservation lands, much of which in the White Mountain National Forest, exceed 800,000 acres. National and local conservation lands cover over half a million acres. Almost 725,000 acres of private land have conservation restrictions preventing development.
That still leaves a lot of undeveloped land in New Hampshire that could be used as hospitality sites, and yet we seem to be facing a shortage of new homes, especially at affordable prices. According to the NH Association of Realtors, the median selling prices of a single-family home exceeded $ 400,000 in July, an increase of 18.2% from the previous year. The average time to market for new listings was just 18 days in July, down from 43 days a year ago.
There is no doubt that these numbers will stimulate more housing construction in the coming year, but will it be enough? Maybe not, because too many cities in New Hampshire have adopted minimum square footage restrictions on building land that make new home prices too high for many families. Simply put, a family can afford a house on half an acre of land, but not if the same house is built on two or four acres.
Local zoning ordinances contain minimum lot sizes for a variety of reasons, but the main one is to protect groundwater from contamination by septic waste. If a city does not provide water and sewer services to much or all of its land, homes need land large enough to separate wells from septic fields. A growing city east of Manchester, for example, allows half an acre of land in a small residential area served by its municipal water and sewer system. However, most of the city is not served by this system, so the minimum lot size is 1.4 or 2 acres in other residential areas. Growth in this case means sprawl.
If New Hampshire cities are to provide affordable housing for young families and avoid eating up large swathes of rural land, then their city officials need to reduce zoning restrictions on large lots that produce unaffordable housing and low-density sprawl. This means that cities must invest in the creation or extension of public water and sewer networks to serve compact neighborhoods.
Residents and city officials have the opportunity to make these investments now, but this opportunity will not last forever. Interest rates on municipal bonds are at their lowest level in forty years. If inflation continues as it has recently, however, these municipal bond rates will eventually rise as the Federal Reserve turns to fighting inflation. Now is a good time to borrow for local capital projects like water pipes and wastewater treatment plants.
With the bipartisan passage of the massive Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in the US Senate, there is also the prospect of many federal grants for local water projects. If passed by the House and signed by the White House, this law will provide $ 55 billion for water and sanitation infrastructure projects across the country.
For those who want to protect rural lands from urban sprawl and build affordable housing for New Hampshire residents, promoting compact housing estates by investing now in the city’s water and sewer systems is a worthy strategy. to be taken into consideration.
(Richard England is an economic consultant specializing in property tax and land use issues and a retired professor of economics and natural resources at UNH. He lives in Durham.)
My Turns are opinion-based essays submitted by Monitor readers and members of the community. The opinions expressed in My Turns are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Concord Monitor and its staff.