Priced out: Exeter’s affordable housing crisis is no surprise. Will we listen this time?

We shouldn’t be surprised that Exeter is having an affordable housing crisis. We should have listened to Peter Francese back in 2008.

Peter, a widely recognized demographics expert, retired to Exeter for the quality of life, but soon identified a phenomenon that accounted for a mass exodus of young people from the state and a flocking of retirees. He tried to warn us.

“I could see the future very clearly when I looked at the demographics of New Hampshire in 2008,” Peter said this week when I spoke to him by phone from his new home in Pennsylvania. “There’s a reason why New Hampshire is the second oldest state in the nation. Demographically, New Hampshire is aging so fast, it won’t be long before we’ll be first.”

In a nutshell, New Hampshire went full speed ahead on building age 55-plus housing and retirement housing but didn’t do the same for affordable housing.

“The result of 12 years of doing this is that we have no workforce,” Peter explained. 

And no place for normal people to live.

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I know a couple who own a successful business in town, the kind of business that makes our downtown a destination. They opened their shop here because they loved the Exeter community. Just before the pandemic started, they sold their house over an hour away, had cash in hand, and hoped to buy a home here.

Despite putting offers in on multiple properties in the time since, including one where they pledged to deliver handcrafted chocolate weekly for a year to the sellers, they are still renting. Their rent is more than their mortgage was on the house they sold. But the alternative rents aren’t any cheaper. Pull up listings on the New England Real Estate Network search engine and there are currently three properties for rent in Exeter, a two-bedroom for $2,100, a one-bedroom for $2,300 and a two-bedroom for $3,999.

NH on its way to being oldest state in the nation

Along with Lorraine Stuart Merrill, Peter co-authored the book “Communities & Consequences: The Unbalancing of New Hampshire’s Human Ecology and what we can do about it,” which laid out how New Hampshire went from the 28th oldest state in the nation to the second. It was a call to action to rebalance the human ecology of New Hampshire before it’s too late. Exeter filmmaker Jay Childs made a companion documentary, and a sequel to both was released in 2021.

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But unfortunately, 15 years after the first book was released, its predictions have come full circle in Exeter. Look at the local workforce for retail or restaurant jobs. It’s high school kids who still live at home or retirees looking for part-time income.

The Inn by the Bandstand, a charming bed and breakfast with a restaurant in the center of town, had a bright red “help wanted” sign out front last week. This after they’d been posting on their social media for weeks looking for help. Up the street at Cornicello, a restaurant so popular you need reservations, chef/owner Tim O’Brien has been on the hunt for a steady dishwasher for months. He’s now offering $18/hour and free food.

As of 2020, there were 17,000 55-plus housing units across the state. When that number is combined with the number of seasonal units in the state, that are only used in the summer, there is very little left for the rest of us.

“The supply of regular dwelling units for ordinary people whether they have kids or not is so small that the price has gone right through the roof,” Peter says. “And it all comes back to the myth. The myth that every single child will raise your property taxes.”

He posits that it’s not the children but the state’s method of paying for education at the local level that is the problem. There are 160 school districts, including administrators, in the state. “It’s a very high-cost structure, almost all of which is paid for through property taxes by the local communities because the state of New Hampshire with no income tax or sales tax contributes essentially nothing,” Peter says.

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I don’t need to go down the rabbit hole of New Hampshire’s education funding debate that spans decades. We don’t have that kind of time. Back in 2008, Peter predicted the shortage of workers that we are now seeing locally.

We didn’t listen.

What happens next?

“The future is this. There are a dozen or more big employers in New Hampshire and one of the biggest is in the Exeter area,” he said. “They are now busing employees from Lowell and Lawrence (Massachusetts) every day. They are paying for buses, but at some point, the accountants are going to say to the board of directors, 'This is nonsense.'”

Other states will offer tax incentives for big companies along with a lower cost of living for employees. Businesses leave. Young workers leave. Colleges downsize or close. “There’s your answer to affordable housing,” Peter says. “And when the values of the houses go down, the property tax rates go up to make it up. One word describes that situation, catastrophic and catastrophe is what’s coming.”

After that uplifting prediction, you might feel we’re doomed. But Peter says there are three things we can do.

First, the state could pass a law that says housing can’t discriminate by age.

Second, Peter suggests towns need to loosen requirements to allow cluster-style developments on smaller lots, which would be less expensive and could share water and sewer.

And third, towns and school districts should look at how they can work together, and in some cases share resources, to lower costs, which would, in turn, lower property taxes and make it more affordable to live in the area.

We didn’t listen to Peter in 2008. It’s 2022 and his projections have come true. I hope we listen this time.

Lara Bricker is a former staff writer for the Exeter News-Letter, the author of the Piper Greene Exeter mysteries and a longtime Exeter resident. She can be reached at larabricker@hotmail.com.  

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Exeter NH affordable housing crisis no surprise. Will we act now?