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Board Of Aldermen - Agenda - 11/10/2020 - P114

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Fri, 11/06/2020 - 14:10
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Agenda
Meeting Date
Tue, 11/10/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
114
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_a__111020…

ORDINANCE:
PURPOSE:

ENDORSERS:

COMMITTEE

ASSIGNMENT:

FISCAL NOTE:

LEGISLATIVE YEAR 2020
O-20-036
Establishing Performing Arts Center Board of Trustees

Mayor Jim Donchess

Special Board of Aldermen meeting on November 24, 2020

None

ANALYSIS

This legislation establishes a Board of Trustees for the Performing Arts Center at 201 Main

Street, Nashua.

Approved as to form:

Office of Corporation Counsel

Date: Novewloer YQ ‘ QO aA

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Board Of Aldermen - Agenda - 11/10/2020 - P114

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P1

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
1
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, October 27, 2020, at 6:30 p.m. via
teleconference.

President Lori Wilshire presided; City Clerk Susan K. Lovering recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Susan K. Lovering; Alderman June M. Caron led in the Pledge to the Flag.
President Wilshire

As President of the Board of Aldermen, | find that due to the State of Emergency declared by the
Governor as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and in accordance with the Governor's Emergency
Order #12 pursuant to Executive Order 2020-04, this public body is authorized to meet electronically.

Please note that there is no physical location to observe and listen contemporaneously to this meeting,
which was authorized pursuant to the Governors Emergency Order. However, in accordance with the
Emergency Order, | am confirming that we are:

Providing public access to the meeting by telephone, with additional access possibilities by video or
other electronic means:

To access Zoom, please refer to the agenda or the City’s website for the meeting link.

To join by phone dial: 1-929-205-6099 Meeting ID: 811 6856 5211 Passcode: 896485

The public may also view the meeting via Channel 16.

We previously gave notice to the public of the necessary information for accessing the meeting, through
public postings. Instructions have also been provided on the City of Nashua’s website at www.nashuanh.gov
and publicly noticed at City Hall and the Nashua Public Library.

If anybody has a problem accessing the meeting via phone or Channel 16, please call 603-821-2049 and
they will help you connect.

In the event the public is unable to access the meeting via the methods mentioned above, the meeting will
be adjourned and rescheduled. Please note that all votes that are taken during this meeting shall be done
by roll call vote.

Let’s start the meeting by taking a roll call attendance. VWhen each member states their presence, please
also state whether there is anyone in the room with you during this meeting, which is required under the
Right-To-Know Law.

City Clerk Lovering called the roll and asked them to state the reason he or she could not attend, confirmed
that they could hear the proceedings, and stated who was present with him or her.

The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present: Alderman Michael B. O’Brien,
Sr., Alderman Patricia Klee, Alderwoman Alderman Richard A. Dowd, Alderman June M. Caron, Alderman
Benjamin Clemons, Alderman David C. Tencza, Alderwoman Elizabeth Lu, Alderman Ernest Jette,
Alderman Jan Schmidt, Alderman Brandon Michael Laws, Alderman Skip Cleaver, Alderman Linda Harriott-
Gathright, Alderman Wilshire. Alderman Tom Lopez was recorded present after roll call.

Alderwoman-at-Large Shoshanna Kelly was recorded absent.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P1

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P2

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
2
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 2

Mayor James W. Donchess, Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton, Sarah Marchant, Community
Development Division Director, and Carrie Schena, Urban Programs Manager were also in attendance.

ROLL CALL

Alderman O’Brien

| am present, | can hear the proceedings and | am home alone.

Alderman Klee

| am here, | can hear the proceedings and | am alone.

City Clerk, Susan Lovering

Alderwoman Kelly?

President Wilshire

Alderwoman Kelly won't be joining us this evening.

City Clerk Susan Lovering

Thank you. Alderman Dowd?

Alderman Dowd

Yes, | can hear everyone, | am present and | am practicing social distancing in according with the
Governor's rule.

Alderman Caron

Yes | am here, | am alone and | can hear everyone.

Alderman Clemons

Hi, | am here, | can hear everybody and | am at home. The only other person here with me is my wife.
Alderman Tencza

Present, | am alone and | can hear everyone, thanks.

Alderwoman Lu

| am here alone and | can hear you.

Alderman Jette

| am here, | can hear everything and | am staying safer at home with my wife.
Alderman Schmidt

| am present and | am alone in the room.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P2

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P3

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
3
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 3
Alderman Laws

I’m here, | can hear and | am alone.

Alderman Cleaver

| am here, alone and practicing social distancing.

Alderman Harriott-Gathright

| am present and | am in this room alone. | can hear everyone and | am practicing social distancing.
President Wilshire

| am here, | am alone and | am practicing social distancing. Also with us this evening is Mayor Donchess,
Corporation Counsel, Sarah Marchant, the Community Development Director and Carrie Schena, Urban

Programs Manager.

COMMUNICATIONS

From: Lori Wilshire, President

Re: Calling a Special Meeting of the Board of Aldermen on October 27, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss
affordable housing

From: Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director

Re: Nashua Housing Study

There being no objection, President Wilshire accepted the communications and placed them on file.

PRESENTATION
Affordable Housing

President Wilshire recognized Sarah Marchant, Director of Community Development, and Carrie
Schena, Urban Programs Manager for the affordable housing presentation.

President Wilshire

For the Affordable Housing Presentation, thank you for being here and we appreciate you doing this
presentation for us.

Sarah Marchant, Community Development Director

Thank you very much. | wanted to just open by saying that this is a project that the Mayor supported, along
with Economic Development and Director Cummings. This is a partnership together on this project and we
brought in RKG Associates who you will meet just shortly, Eric Halvorsen who has been a tremendous
asset to this process. And again we have worked pretty hard to understand a lot of data here. | know that
you got a report that’s over 80 pages long that’s in your packets. And so Eric is going to run through some
of the key highlights of this and then we hope to be able to have a discussion with you afterwards. So Eric,
| am going to turn it over to you to share your screen, if you have any trouble then | have your back.

Eric Halvorsen, RKG Associates

Can you see that there?

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P3

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P4

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
4
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 4
Director Marchant

Yes, you are a little bit quiet, but yes, we can see it.

Mr. Halvorsen

Alright. Hi everyone, thanks so much for having me this evening. | am happy to be here in front of all of you
to talk, hopefully at a fairly quick and high level about the findings from the Nashua Housing Study that my
company RKG Associates has been working on with staff over the last few months. So we are excited to
be here and to share the findings of the study with you tonight.

So just to start off the presentation with a few key considerations that | was hoping you all could keep in
mind as we go through this presentation and as you, if you haven’t had a chance to look at the full report
yet, as you do read that, | think these are kind of our big five takeaways. The first is really around growth.
The City has been growing both in its population as well as in its employment base. And it is projected to
continue that goal for the next ten years or so.

| think the questions around, “Does the City want to grow’, “How does it want to grow” and maybe more
importantly, “Where are those key questions” and some | know are going to be tackled through the City’s
Master Plan process, sort of around growth as one of our key findings. The second one is around
affordability and that’s a big challenge and becoming more of a challenge as time goes on. Both rents and
sale prices are escalating, have been escalating to a point where some residents are unable to afford it or
in some cases they might be forced to pay more for housing than what they probably should. Along with
the rising prices, | think it’s important to consider how these changes impact those that can’t afford to pay
more or end up having to maybe move somewhere else, possibly further from the City or outside the City,
further away from maybe where they work or maybe where they are going to school or their kids are going
to daycare or their existing neighborhoods and networks. So that’s an important consideration. We did a
deeper dive into downtown because there are very interesting dynamics here with a confluence of
development activity, future interest in development and a housing stock that is older and sort of as such is
just more naturally affordable. It’s not necessarily deed restricted affordable although some of it is, but there
is a fair amount of the stock that’s just priced below what the average is across the City and we will talk a
little bit more about that.

The Downtown does have higher concentrations of lower income households. It does have the City’s
greatest diversity of residents from a racial and ethnic standpoint. And much of the older housing stock is
in this area and some of it is in need of some investment. So really thinking through what happens in the
Downtown | think should be part of the ongoing Master Plan; | know that just started up. You know, how
does Downtown change, where does it change and maybe more importantly for whom does it change for?

The last one is around leveraging resources and addressing housing opportunities and challenges, as we
know requires resources. In most communities the resources (inaudible) often outplace what is available.
So coming up with strategic partnerships and leveraging human and financial capital as much as possible |
think would be important for the City going forward. | chose to arrange the presentation tonight to focus on
three issue areas and opportunity areas, they are sort of combined and select some of the supporting data
to kind of tell the story of what we think is going on in Nashua and the different influences that exist within
the housing market.

So the first issue and opportunity area | want to talk about is this idea around future growth. As | mentioned
before, the population has been growing in Nashua as shown in the figure to the left. So looking forward
into the future the City is projected to add another 8,000 residents if the trend from the last 10 or so years
do continue. The interesting piece is actually in the graphic on the right which is around the age
composition of residents in Nashua. So over the last five years, and |’ll say the last five years but by that |
mean 2013 to 2018, 2018 being the most recent year that we have census data for, so that’s what | mean
when | say the last five years.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P4

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P5

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
5
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 5

There has been a trend toward a large increase in residents over the age of 55. In this graph, we
compared it to Hillsborough County which is the orange bars; Nashua is the blue bars. Some of this growth
is from residents that are choosing to age in place in Nashua, so remain in the City as they get older and as
they move from age cohort to age cohort, but much is actually from the influx of those either nearing
retirement age or actually in retirement age. There’s also been a growing cohort of those aged 18 to 34, |
think that’s important to note because those folks may be actually looking for a different housing product
than maybe what was traditionally produced in Nashua or available in Nashua over time.

Nashua’s employment base has also been growing but as housing prices have continued to rise it is
making it more difficult for the lower wage employees to actually live in the City and a lot of time they end
up having to live elsewhere, where they can find more affordable housing options. Our analysis showed
that about 31% of workers who are currently working in Nashua aren’t able to afford the median rent or the
median sales price today, never mind if prices continue to increase over time. There are several factors that
are driving some of the change in the housing market which | think are worth pointing out. The first is that
Nashua is adding households at a faster pace than population is actually growing indicating an increase in
smaller one and two person households. This is a trend that we see in a lot of cities around the country
where we do work, where because of household formation, household sizes are getting smaller, people are
living longer and people are waiting longer a lot of times to get married or to have families. There’s just
generally an increase and a need for smaller units, so we are seeing a lot of growth in that one and two-
person household.

Householders living alone accounted for 37% of the household growth over the last five years. So one in
three households that has come into the City over the last 5 years has been householders living alone. One
and two person households increased by 12% for one-person household and 22% for two person
households. And interestingly we tried to look at the growth by age sector, age of the residents and age of
the householders and much of that growth has actually been driven, kind of as | mentioned before by
households age 65 and older and that’s sort of driven by both single person households as well as married
couple households who are age 65 and older.

One of the challenges that we potentially see for accommodating future growth is that nearly 63% of all the
residential land acreage in the City is occupied by single family dwellings, which tend to have lower density
and tend to be more expensive than a lot of other housing types. Right now single-family homes occupy
63% of that residential land acreage and they account for about 50% of all the housing units in the City.
Compare that to the larger scale multi-family units which comprise about 4% of the land area but account
for about 18% of the residential unit. With the push towards smaller housing units, and potential to
accommodate growth in the City, the City might want to consider appropriate locations for higher density
dissolvement over time. You would have the ability to utilize less land in doing that and those units might
tend to be smaller in size than your typical single-family home.

Adding to the pressure on the housing market in Nashua today from both new residents and households is
a very, very low vacancy rate. Only about 1.1% of all housing units in Nashua were being actively
marketed as for sale or for rent. So typically when you look at a market, we consider a healthy vacancy rate
for both owner-occupied and renter combined to be somewhere between 3% and 5%; Nashua is at about
1.1%. | just want to point out that this data is also from the latest census from 2018 and | can almost
guarantee you that with all the changes since 2018 including the pandemic and the impacts that the
pandemic has had particularly on the for sale market, | would be fairly certain that Nashua’s vacancy rate
has probably dipped below 1% at this point.

So some of this is likely to be eased by the development pipeline, which is projected to add about 615
housing units. About 60% of those units are in larger multi-family buildings and this is information that we
got from Sarah and her team. A couple of the developments, particularly 159 Temple Street that’s coming
in for 168 units and | am sure many of you know about the Bronstein Apartments Partnership that’s
permitted for about 216 units. So just between those two developments alone that’s a big portion of the
development pipeline, but again, those are in much larger multi-family buildings.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P5

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P6

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
6
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 6

As | mentioned earlier, Nashua’s population is anticipated to grow over the next ten years by about 8.4%
which means the City may need to produce another 4,800 housing units to accommodate that population
growth over time. If the housing split between renter and owner remains as it is today which is about 54%
owner and 46% renter, there could be demand for about 2,500 ownership units and about 2,300 rental
units. As prices continue to increase, households earning at or below 50% of their area median income will
likely have the most difficult time finding housing so those households that really that need truly and deeply
affordable housing in order to be able to stay in the City at an affordable price and still have money left over
at the end of the month or the end of the year for other costs that they may have to incur, that’s probably
the segment that might need the most attention going forward.

We also broke down the future housing needs by household size which can help to inform the size of the
units that the City, Housing Authority, future developers might want to think about targeting. If the City’s
household composition remained the same as it is today, about 65% of new households would consist of
either 1 or 2 person households. That’s the table that is shown in the left-hand corner. If household
composition continues to change in a similar way to what we’ve seen over the last 5 years, the shift would
be much more dramatic and really be geared more toward the 1 and 2 person household, which as |
mentioned before over the last 5 years have been experiencing the most growth and have led to most of
the household change that the City has seen over the last five years.

| would guess that these changes won’t be quite as dramatic as the table on the right. You will probably
see some hybrid of the two. But! think what is important to take away from this is that it points to a need
for smaller units for households at both the younger age of the resident spectrum as well as the older age.
What | was thinking about earlier was by focusing on the smaller units and having more housing choice in
the City, that could also help provide older residents looking to downsize with options for moving out of
single family homes, thereby opening those up for younger households or even families who might be
looking to either relocate within the City or locate to the City from other places.

The second issue area is around affordability and the financial resources of buyers and renters. In 2018 the
median household income in Nashua was just over $73,000.00 citywide. The map on the left shows the
median income delineated by census block groups across the City. So we can kind of look across the City
at different areas and we can see how median household incomes changes depending on where you are.
The lighter the color the lower the median household income for that block group; the darker the color the
higher the median income for that block. The Downtown has some of the lowest median incomes in the
City which we will discuss a little bit more later. It’s also important to note how household income varies by
race and ethnicity which is the graphic to the right.

White households in Nashua have a median income of almost 2 % times higher than Black, and Hispanic
Latino households, which also has direct impact on what those households can afford from a housing
perspective, something else to keep in mind as we talk about the downtown a little later on. On the
ownership side of the housing market, sales prices and home values are up pretty significantly. Value
citywide has increased about 19% over the last 10 years. In 2019, 84% of all the sales in the City were for
homes priced above $250,000.00. And what is interesting is while the sales volume of houses priced over
$250,000.00 accounted for 84% of all the sales, those houses priced at that level or valued at that level of
over $250,000.00 only comprised about 53% of all the houses citywide. So much of the sales activity over
the last year, the calendar year of 2019 was really focused on one specific segment of the market, those
higher priced houses. Homes are Selling (audio cuts out) average days on the market down 81% from
2011 to an average of 10 days on the market.

We also did a comparison of new, single family home sales and compared that to the sale of existing
homes and found that new homes, the homes that were built and sold in the same year, so a house that
was built in 2019, sold in 2019 or built in 2016 and sold in 2016, that sale price, the average sale price
stayed somewhat consistent at around $400,000.00 going back all the way to about 2010. But the
interesting thing is that the sales of existing homes are up to an average of $322,000.00 as of 2019. You
can see, that’s the darker blue bars that have been going up and up and up since about 2012.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P6

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 2/23/2016 - P16

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 21:36
Document Date
Tue, 02/23/2016 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 02/23/2016 - 00:00
Page Number
16
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__022320…

Board of Aldermen
February 23, 2016 Page 16

Alderman Cookson

Attorney Bennett, there were some comments made earlier by some of my colleagues or at least one of them
that raised concern in my mind and | just want for clarification sake, to make sure that we as a Board of
Aldermen know what our responsibilities are with regard to the contract before us. The Board of Aldermen is
not a negotiating Board and we do not roll up our sleeves and we do not have the ability to negotiate with any
one of the unions that come before us with a collective bargaining agreement. Is that a correct statement?

Attorney Bennett

That’s correct.
Alderman Cookson

| understand the enthusiasm, | think when | began close to 12 years ago that’s exactly the kind of thing that |
wanted to do but we as a Board of Aldermen do not have that capacity. As Aldermen O’Brien said, it’s the fire
commissioners, the police commissioners and the public works; they are the ones that are responsible for
negotiating the contracts and corporation counsel represents the city within those negotiations. | think it’s also
important to distinguish, especially this evening, because there is a lot of deliberation that’s going on and that
is that Alderman Siegel and Alderman Moriarty have made points about the spending cap and staying within
the spending cap and clauses and such. We as a Board of Aldermen have the responsibility to do one of three
things with regard to this contract this evening, we can approve the contract and all of its cost items, we can
reject the contract and all of its cost items or we can approve the contract but reject some of the cost items.
Attorney Bennett, is that an accurate statement?

Attorney Bennett

It's accurate except for the last one; you can’t approve the contract and reject certain items. If you reject
certain items or the entire contract then it goes back and they can accept it without the rejected items or
renegotiate. It doesn’t go to arbitration.

Alderman Cookson

No, it would go back to the police commissioners and they would determine whether they agree with the cost
items that were rejected.

Attorney Bennett

As well as the membership of the union.
Alderman Cookson

Correct.

Alderman Siegel

I'd like to thank my colleague, Alderman O’Brien, for pointing out the nature of retirement. Retirement has a
connotation in many peoples’ minds that you reach a certain age and you can no longer work. Often time’s
retirement means | am now eligible to receive a pension and I’m going to take advantage of it because | can
receive greater compensation elsewhere. That is an important distinction. As far as the line items of the
contract, the tallest pole and the far more significant one is the one that has the “me too” clause. That is the
major cost items in this contract and so if that’s the thing... we don’t really have a lot of giveback flexibility. One
could argue whether or not we would win if we went to arbitration but | honestly believe and | believe the
commissioners believe that that is not something we have much ability to change right now. Since that is the

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 2/23/2016 - P16

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P7

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
7
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 7

The map on the right shows the sales price activity over the last ten years and sort of looking at that
citywide and what locations in the City are selling for prices higher than other locations. Again, higher
priced housing tends to be located on the edges and in some of the historic areas in the City while lower
prices tend to be found in the older neighborhoods, kind of more in the center portion of the City.

It was kind of interesting to see the sale price data corelating with the median household income data as
the overlay goes on the map. Rents are also up over 19% over the last 5 years with the greatest increases
seen in units renting from between $1,500.00 a month and just under $2,000.00 a month. Some of this is
the result of new product coming online in the City, but much is likely attributed to the steady rent increases
keeping up with the market over time. So the pressure is not just on owner market but it is also on the
renter market and changes in the renter market tend to disproportionately impact lower income households
as well, particularly in the Downtown area where we have those concentrations.

So let’s just take a minute to talk a little bit about household income and what different households can
actually afford from a housing perspective. So this first chart shows households in Nashua broken down by
income and it shows how many households are within each category. We refer to these from bottom to top
as lower income tier, moderate income tier, and upper income tier. About 35% of existing households
couldn’t afford Nashua’s median sales price or median gross rent today. 66% of those existing households
couldn’t afford the median sales price alone. Really that upper income band, those who are earning say
over $75,000.00 a year are the ones who can pretty much afford the median rent prices and the median
sales price for a home in Nashua today.

Housing affordability is also looked at from the perspective of HUD programs, Federal Housing and Urban
Development Programs and the income restrictions that those place on housing units. That’s done by a
formula to determine basically what a household should pay based on the area median income for the
Greater Nashua’s HUD region. So this table shows the percentage of households within each of those
income brackets. These actually closely align with the breakdown that we were just showing on the
previous slide. This information is important as we think about affordable housing, deed restricted housing
and any HUD or City programs that are targeting — that are sort of using targeted programs and using area
median income thresholds to target those programs.

What we like to do when we think about housing supply and potential demand is to look at any mismatches
that we might have between a household in a particular income bracket and then compare that to the
number of owner or rental units that are priced to those households. So the graph on the right shows
owner households and the units. And we can see there’s a huge gap between the number of owner
households earning over 120% AMI and the number of units that are technically affordable to those
households based on what they can pay for housing costs based on their income. This likely means that
higher income households are purchasing housing that’s actually at a lower price than what they could
otherwise afford, because that’s sort of Nashua’s market and a lot of the housing units that are coming
online, even though those prices have been going up they are still very affordable to households earning at
those top income tiers.

What ends up happening is because those folks who can technically afford to pay a little bit more, but might
not be able to find housing that is sort of priced to their income range are ending up having to what we call
“buy down”, they are probably buying houses that are in the 80% of the AMI range and 100% of AMI range.
And what happens a lot of times when we see a big gap at the 120% of AMI and above, is that those
households have a really strong ability to compete in the housing market. They have more income they
have the ability to generate a higher down payment; they could potentially pay cash for a house. They
have better credit oftentimes, all the things that create competition in the middle of the market end up
driving prices up bringing the vacancy level down and creating a lot of times ends up creating bidding wars.
Now | don’t want anybody to walk away from this presentation and say, “Eric said we should go out and
build a whole bunch of $800,000.00 or $900,000.00 houses to satisfy people at the top of the market”. But |
do think it is important to recognize that there are segments in the market that may not be potentially
served to the level that they could be and sort of the impact that might be having on the housing market.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P7

Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P8

By dnadmin on Sun, 11/06/2022 - 22:54
Document Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Meeting Description
Board Of Aldermen
Document Type
Minutes
Meeting Date
Tue, 10/27/2020 - 00:00
Page Number
8
Image URL
https://nashuameetingsstorage.blob.core.windows.net/nm-docs-pages/boa_m__102720…

Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 8

So on the rental side, we see a similar gap on those households over 120% of AMI, again because they
can afford to pay a lot more than what the market probably has out there in terms of rental units at the top.
But we also see a substantial gap for households that are at or below 30% of AMI and that’s very typical in
most places that we work. This housing tends to be provided by the Housing Authority or other deed
restricted units that maybe the city creates in partnership with other entities. The gap here is close to 3,000
units which means many of these households are likely renting units priced above what they should
technically be paying, which creates a lot of challenges for those households because they are already very
income strapped, so if they have to pay more for housing, that means that they have less money to spend
on healthcare, education, childcare, transportation, family services, all those other services that they need
to live their lives.

Much of Nashua’s housing stock is priced, on the renter’s side, is priced between that 50% and 80% of AMI
band. So there’s a lot of units that are likely not being sold by households in those two bands and are being
sold by households at the 30% level and then those who are probably at or above 100%. Again sort of
everybody converging and meeting in the middle of the rental market. And then, as | mentioned earlier, so
much of the household change can be tied back to older households, particularly those with earnings above
$100,000.00 a year. Over the last five years alone, close to 1,000 new households were those who were
headed by a person or persons over the age of 65 earning over $100,000.00 a year. Interestingly, those
new households were actually split 55% owner and 45% renter. Honestly, | kind of expected the owner
percentage to be a bit higher than it was. So it’s interesting to see that those older households are actually
renting almost as much as they are purchasing.

| think the big take-away here is for older residents there seems to be demand on both the renter side as
well as the ownership side. So lastly, we wanted to take a closer look at the Downtown are to see the
population, the housing and the development dynamics. So we define Downtown and this was sort of
RKG’s definition of downtown and we talked with city staff about it and sort of explained why we picked this
particular definition and boundary. But we defined it generally as the block groups that are going from
Route 3 to the west to the Merrimack River to the east down to Lake Street to the south and so basically to
Lock Street to the north. So the map here on the right shows the different types of housing units that are
located on each parcel in downtown and this only shows residential, it doesn’t show commercial or other —
most of the neighborhoods sort of surrounding what | would call the core of Main Street, those
neighborhoods that are surrounding them having mostly one, two, three unit structures. And the closer you
get to that kind of core of the Main Street, the more dense the development patterns become, very typical
of most downtown environments, | don’t think Nashua is different from a lot of places, that we’ve worked
from that perspective.

We also wanted to look at some of the other dynamics to the downtown. So this map shows the percentage
of renter households in those block groups in downtown, just to get a sense of what types of units people
are living in today, renter versus owner. The large majority of the block groups are dominated by renter
households. And even as you push out a little further from the core into the surrounding neighborhoods,
the block groups rarely have less than 50% of the units as rental. As was mentioned before, this also
correlates to lower median incomes with downtown having several block groups with median incomes
regularly below $44,000.00 on average, compared with the City’s median of about $73,000.00. So from our
perspective this places pressure on households to afford those rising housing prices, but also trying to seek
out naturally occurring and deed restricted affordable housing that might be located in the downtown area
end up playing a really important role here for those households.

What we see when we look at the housing stock and the age of the housing stock is an older typically
investor owned building stock in the downtown that is providing that more affordable housing stock and the
units may not be as well maintained, they may not be kept updated as new rental units that are coming on
the market. They’ve got all the amenities; they’ve got all the bells and whistles; these older units tend not
to have those. And that ends up keeping rent a little bit lower and a little bit more affordable for those
households.

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Board Of Aldermen - Minutes - 10/27/2020 - P8

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