Hanover
“On the one hand, we have these high-paying jobs at the college and the hospital … People with these jobs can afford to spend a lot on housing,” said Winter. Meanwhile, many others in the Upper Valley work low-paying, often minimum wage, service jobs, many of them part-time and without benefits. “And you cannot afford most housing if you’re trying to get by on a minimum wage job.”
The discussion was one of several that took place during a forum on housing needs at Dartmouth College’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences. The event centered on the pressing need for more affordable housing units in the Upper Valley, with “affordable” defined less than 30 percent of household income.
The Upper Valley needs to add at least 5,000 such living units, said Ron Shaiko, associate director for curricular and research programs at the Rockefeller Center and board member of the Hartford-based nonprofit Vital Communities, in the opening session.
If this figure seems exorbitant, “it’s important people understand that this is not about 5,000 units tomorrow in one community or two communities or four communities,” Winter said in his discussion group.
Rather, the affordable housing effort is about creating a variety of options, spread across the Upper Valley, that address different income levels: low-income, very low-income, extremely low-income and chronically homeless.
One major challenge that came up in discussions was NIMBY-ism, or the mindset of “not in my backyard.” This phenomenon came up in a survey, conducted and presented by Dartmouth seniors Ray Lu and Julia Decerega during the forum’s opening session: Nearly all respondents agreed that the Upper Valley needs more affordable housing, but notably fewer respondents thought that affordable housing was a priority in their hometowns, Decerega said.
Part of peoples’ reluctance to embrace developments in their “backyards” could stem from a feeling of not knowing enough about the project in question, said Susan Brink, who sits on the Norwich Planning Commision, during a discussion focused on the obstacles of building new developments.
She alluded to a recent controversy in Norwich, in which some residents bitterly disagreed over whether an affordable housing development would subtract Norwich’s natural beauty and small-town charm.
“It’s hard for people to imagine a mixed-use development without knowing what it’s going to look like,” Brink said. “People say, ‘We don’t want them here,’ without knowing who ‘they’ or ‘them’ are.”
David Clem, a West Lebanon-based developer, added that planning board meetings should be made more accessible to the general population, so as to better include the community in a process that Brink acknowledged was “boring.”
“They could make it like a game show,” he suggested. “You want to engage people. … I’m of the opinion that most reasonable people will come to a reasonable conclusion if presented with the same set of facts,” but this is difficult when there is such a “disconnect” between the planning and the people.
For those who need affordable housing, transportation in the Upper Valley is also a key issue. If one can’t drive, walk or bike to work, the Advance Transit bus line is the main option — and it only runs Monday through Friday, leaving people with weekend shifts in a lurch.
For those who do drive, parking spaces may be an issue: At one Twin Pines site under construction in White River Junction, residents will probably have to use whatever public parking spaces they can find, said Winter, adding that “transportation is at the forefront of our minds” in working out the logistics of its development projects.
Lebanon resident Kathy Beckett was shocked to learn, while chatting with the people who cut her hair, that some of them commute all the way from Concord, “and for a hair-cutter’s salary,” she said.
Driving commutes of an hour or more are not uncommon in the Upper Valley, said Winter, noting that “part of it is choice, but part of it is cost (of living)” in a particular area.
He listed some of the possible side effects of a long commute as lost productivity, poor nutrition, less sleep and toxic stress, and noted that these daily drives also leave commuters at the mercy of fluctuating gas prices, which can be a determining factor in deciding what that commute is really worth.
Some attendees felt that major employers, where recruiting and retaining employees often depends on how reasonable the commute is, could do more to help ensure that their employees live relatively close by. John Wallace, from Upper Valley Cohousing, suggested that Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center could easily offer housing for its workers.
“Why don’t the big folks step up a little more?” Wallace wanted to know. “You’d think with all the companies complaining about housing, they would do something about housing.”
Though Twin Pines has a number of sites under construction, Winter said the affordable housing movement will continue to face a multitude of planning, political and public-relations complexities in reaching its goal. “Here’s where sort of the rubber meets the road,” he said.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at ejholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.