Updates from the Housing Opportunity Planning Committee
The availability and cost of housing is an issue of mounting concern in New Hampshire and across the nation. A tight market has forced many of us to make difficult decisions about where and how we live. As real estate prices surge, many towns face challenges attracting and housing a local workforce. In response, New Hampshire has allocated $100 million in federal ARPA recovery funds through its InvestNH initiative to encourage the creation of new workforce housing.
The Town of Plymouth applied for this funding in September 2022 to participate in the Housing Opportunity Planning (HOP) grant program. Our application was approved and we received $134,000 to work with a planning consultant to produce a housing needs assessment, a review of our zoning and other development regulations, and provide regulatory recommendations. The final housing needs assessment report is on the Town of Plymouth’s landing page for this project (https://www.plymouth-nh.org/housing-study/). There, you will also find other informative materials, including a guide to common housing terminology, such as “workforce housing” which is an important and yet often misunderstood term.
Upon receiving the grant, the Planning Board assembled a steering committee and engaged Barrett Planning Group to work with us to realize our goals. The steering committee launched a robust program of public engagement and outreach. With weekly organizational meetings to keep on track, our team of volunteers, town staff, and consultants has organized face-to-face community meetings, surveys, individual and small-group interviews, PBTV features, and more.
We have learned a great deal about our community and much of it affirms how much we appreciate its unique character. Many of us enjoy our morning walk down Main Street to a favorite shop or to greet familiar faces. We enjoy a quiet stroll through our varied residential neighborhoods. We cherish our open spaces and our agricultural heritage. And yet, how many of us also know someone who has struggled to find a home in Plymouth? Some might want a large house with abundant land. Others prefer to live in something smaller, to find a home in a walkable neighborhood near other families, or wish to downsize to a townhouse or find an apartment. Every one of these choices makes a broader impact on the character of the town and how we allocate our limited resources and maintain our infrastructure.
The town of Plymouth is not in the business of building housing, so our primary tool to guide development is our Zoning Ordinance. The Planning Board anticipates presenting the town with several proposed Zoning Amendments this fall. These will be presented at two public hearings in December and January and then potentially come to a vote in March 2024. Meanwhile, we encourage you to attend our Planning Board work sessions. These are held on the first Thursday of every month at 6:30 PM in Town Hall (also accessible via Zoom) and will be devoted to these discussions. You can also follow our progress online and on PBTV. If you are unable to attend these meetings or wish to have your voice heard in some other way, for example through one of our mobile “Meeting in a Box” events, please reach out to us through the Planning and Development Department at Plymouth Town Hall.
John Christ (chair), Susan Wood (vice chair), Mike Ahern, Patti Biederman, Brian Chalmers, Brian Eisenhauer, Bruce Wiggett, and Matt Yeaton