Increasing Housing in the Monadnock Region
Who needs Affordable Housing? Everyone!
For a healthy, thriving local community, having housing available across income levels is vital. Increased housing options provide the stable infrastructure that contributes to a robust local economy:
- Attract and retain professional employees and business leaders
- Ensure older adults can live in their communities as they age
- Sustain rural schools
- Control and reduce local tax rates
- Preserve local services such as early childhood teachers, hospital and nursing home caregivers, restaurant and retail staff
MIP’s Housing Development Fund Campaign
The housing costs in our region are growing faster than incomes. To help address this challenge and expand housing options, MIP is bringing local stakeholders together to work towards the creation of a local Housing Development Fund. This could be an important tool in our region to create, renovate, and preserve affordable housing units.
Housing Development Funds receive public or private sector monies in the form of direct investments or low interest loans. The Fund would grant or loan these monies to support the production and preservation of affordable housing, and increase opportunities for people to access safe, decent, affordable homes.
In a New York county similar to Cheshire, a Housing Development Fund helped to create, renovate and preserve over 800 affordable housing units in the last 12 years. Sixty percent of the units were new construction. Here in New Hampshire, the Upper Valley is creating a Housing Development Fund that is projecting creating 260 new affordable units for low and moderate income workers.
MIP is working with leaders in both the public and private sector towards this effort. Please email Angela Pape at angelapape.mip@gmail.com if you are interested in joining these conversations.