Members of the Blue Ribbon Housing Committee weighed in on how Portsmouth’s affordable housing crisis is impacting the city’s economy and character.
Committee member Dagan Migirditch, one of the co-owners of Liars Bench Beer Company, said he was “happy to hear some consistent remarks about all of us” being concerned about “making sure normal people can live in this town.”
“As an employer of the very types of people who are losing housing at a rapid rate, I’m seeing the first-hand effects of what it’s doing to our community and our economy,” he said during a recent meeting of the Housing Committee.
Is Portsmouth’s economic vitality in danger?
City Councilor John Tabor, who co-chairs the committee, has lived in Portsmouth for 38 years.
“I’ve watched the city change over that time, from when there were boarding houses on McDonough Street where folks making $7 an hour could live, to what we have today,” Tabor said during the April 23 meeting held in City Council Chambers in City Hall. “I’m concerned that if we can’t find ways to create enough housing and enough … affordable housing, that our economy is going to be restricted.”
Tabor stated he doesn’t “want to see us lose our vitality because we can’t have a workforce.”
“It takes a diverse workforce to keep a city moving,” he added.
Members of the second edition of the Housing Committee selected by Mayor Deaglan McEachern discussed their hopes for the group and the city’s efforts to lessen housing affordability challenges in Portsmouth.
A feeling of ‘stuckness’
Committee members also addressed other housing-related issues during the meeting.
Byron Matto, a School Board representative to the committee, described what he called “a feeling of stuckness, I think generally in a lot of people’s lives.”
He attributed that “in no small part because of the conditions of the housing market locally, and more regionally,” Matto said. “Anything we can do to unstick those things is what I’m interested in.”
Committee member EricWeinraub of Altus Engineering said he’s been “working in the city since 1985.”
“I’ve seen a lot of things, the good, the bad, the ugly as far as development,” along with “the pushing out of the affordable housing and the change of the demographic,” he said.
Committee member Jen Stebbins Thomas, the director of Procon, Inc., said as a developer her company “builds hotels and also some multi-family housing, and a little bit of industrial.”
“My goal on the committee is to expand the ability for people to move to Portsmouth, make it easier to build housing,” she said.
Tabor pointed to the City Council’s vote in February to create a Housing Action Plan by July to address the city’s affordable housing crisis.
The initiative was inspired, according to City Council Kate Cook, who made the motion, by a housing plan created by Progress Portsmouth.
Setting priorities
Tabor called the plan “a very good document with 146 areas of action.”
“Our work between now and July, and it may take longer frankly than July, is to turn that document into our own document, in which we set priorities,” Tabor told Housing Committee members.
Tabor explained the committee’s “first effort is to look at stuff we can do this term and has big impact,” so then other items can be left “maybe for future councils.”
Prices to drop at older complexes?
Also during the committee’s discussion, Weinraub raised the idea of creating “public-private partnerships with existing apartment complexes.”
He reported there’s some older apartment complexes in the city that, because of “all the new stuff coming in, they’re actually talking about lowering their rental rates.”
“Can we find a way to partner with these entities that have all these units and make them affordable,” he said.
Izak Gilbo, a city planner, stated “we have currently 65 ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units)” since 2017.
City Councilor and committee member Beth Moreau noted “a lot of times some people apply” to get an ADU approved, “and they just never build them.”
Gilbo said the 65 number reflects the approved applications, “whether they were built, our data doesn’t have that specificity,” he said.
Weinraub stated he looked at doing an ADU at his house above his garage.
“Economically …it doesn’t work to start from scratch and build over a garage or something,” he said. “It’s so expensive to build it to get your return on it, it’s hard.”
This article originally appeared in Portsmouth Herald. Reporting by Jeff McMenemy.
