Send a one-click email to town officials in support of more affordable and diverse housing types in the community.
There are a number of ways you can help support this project and your larger community:
- Spread awareness of the need for workforce housing in your town.
- Attend town meetings and explain to local leaders how the lack of affordable and available housing has impacted you and your loved ones.
- Sign or start petitions in support of local housing initiatives.
- Reach out to the Epping Board of Selectmen, Planning Board Members, Zoning Board Members, and Water and Sewer Commissioners and voice your support; names are listed below.
- Reference the talking points below to brush up on statistics and facts related to workforce housing.
How Your Support Will Impact the Community
By supporting the workforce housing initiative in Epping, you will help to stabilize the volatile housing market, increase the supply of local housing, and allow residents of Epping to work, engage, and live in the community they reside in. Ultimately, we believe that police officers deserve to reside where they save lives, teachers deserve to live where they instruct, and construction workers deserve to live in the communities they help build. By introducing more workforce housing into the community, we can help make this a reality for our town’s critical workers.
Because of the scale and complexity of these initiatives, often, the support of community members is necessary to bring these projects to fruition.
Talking Points
When addressing town officials or residents on the importance of reasonably priced housing to the community, feel free to cite some of the below points to bolster your message.
- Discuss your personal experience with expensive mortgages or rent—if more housing was available, there would be less demand and the housing market would not be as expensive for everyone.
- Speak to the fact that NH has the fourth highest number of regulatory barriers in the country, making it all the more difficult for developers to bring their projects to fruition.
- Make reference to our state’s vacancy rate—according to the NHHFA, NH’s current rental vacancy rate is 0.5%, whereas the national average is 5.8%—more than 4 percentage points lower than what is considered to be a “balanced market” for both tenants and landlords.
- Talk about New Hampshire’s aging population, which is the second-oldest population in the United States. One out of every five residents is over the age of 60, and the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 26.3 percent of New Hampshire’s population will be 60+ by the year 2030, an increase of almost 40 percent from 2012. These stats reflect the challenges for young workers and families to make ends meet, leading to a rapidly aging population as young Granite Staters look for more affordable communities out-of-state.
- Refer to published statistics:
- The SB (Senate Bill) 21 Commission concluded that “New Hampshire, and Epping specifically, currently lacks an adequate and balanced supply of housing to meet the needs of the population. This shortage is especially acute with regard to workforce housing – housing which is affordable to families earning 80% or less of median income.”
- SB 21 also found that “our housing crisis is a product of our economic success during the last decade. Unless we allow our housing markets to keep pace with our economic growth, we will kill the economic engine we are relying on to continue that success in this decade.”
- Workforce housing is so crucial to the prosperity of local economies and the NH labor force that the State of New Hampshire enacted a law mandating that towns facilitate the construction of workforce housing if their allotted quota is not met (RSA 674:59). Currently, Epping has not met its quota, and the proposed workforce initiative will go a long way to help correct that deficiency.
- Besides the impact on families—where one or both parents must commute long distances to work—the shortage of workforce housing also hurts local employers by making it more difficult to attract and retain workers.
- Communities benefit from having increased access to affordable housing, including both homeownership and rental homes. According to the Realtor® Association, “higher homeownership rates generally correspond to greater neighborhood stability as well as increased tax revenues from both the homeowners and the retained businesses.”
- Consider speaking on the environmental impact of limited housing: “When working families are not able to live close to work, their long commutes contribute to traffic congestion and air pollution,” as attested by Realtor® Association.
- Finally, refer to published studies concluding that school enrollment has no correlation to local tax rates. Link to study by UNH professor emeritus of economics Richard England, who conducted a comprehensive analysis on the correlation between school enrollments and tax rates using data from every town in NH.
Reach out to Selectmen, Board Members, and Commissioners
Reach out to Kellie Walsh or Dennis Koch to show your support for this initiative and the importance of Workforce Housing to the town of Epping.
| Name | Title | |
| Casey Wolfe | Town Planner on the Planning Board | planner@townofepping.com |
| Dennis Koch | Administrator on the Water & Sewer Commission | waterandsewer@townofepping.com |
Other Members on Epping’s Boards and Commission
Board of Selectmen
To contact the Board of Selectmen, call (603) 679-5441 or Email Joyce Blanchard.
| Name | Title |
| Joe Trombley | Chairman |
| Tom Gauthier | Vice Chairman |
| Bob Jordan | Selectman |
| Pamela Tibbetts | Selectman |
| John Cody | Selectman |
Planning Board Members
To contact the Planning Board, call (603) 679-5441 ext. 34 or Email Planning Board.
| Name | Title |
| Michael Vote | Chairman |
| Michael Sudak | Vice Chairman |
| Heather Clark | Member |
| Sean Morrison | Member |
| Michael Sudak | Alternate |
| David Reinhold | Alternate |
| Bob Jordan | Selectmen’s Representative |
| Joe Trombley | Alternate Selectmen’s Representative |
| Phyllis E. McDonough | Planning Secretary |
Water and Sewer Commission
To contact the Commission, call (603) 679-5441 ext. 28 or Email Water & Sewer
| Name | Title |
| Marc Nickerson | Member |
| Thomas Dwyer | Member |
| Dennis Koch | Administrator |
| Tom Gauthier | Board of Selectmen Representative |
| Scott Pim | Member |
Epping Workforce Housing 