Special Board of Aldermen 10-27-2020 Page 11
And then just quickly on the last side, around leveraging and expanding partnerships, you know, in the
housing world, the ability to expand the City’s capacity for funding, programming, and education | think is
critical. The City likely can’t do all of this alone and finding those partner organizations like banks, or
employers, philanthropy, community development corporations and others | think would really help expand
capacity in many respects. We also recommend continuing that strong partnership with the housing
authority and also working with them to look for more opportunities to expand the offering of affordable
housing where possible.
Two other longer-term considerations — the first is what we refer to as a “Right of first refusal policy” where
the City could potentially require sales or deed restricted use or buildings that are coming up for sale or
maybe even unsubsidized rental units to provide advance notification of the sale to the City and maybe any
of their housing partners. The City or maybe another non-profit entity could then make an offer to purchase
that property, you’d probably have to match the highest offer to secure that sale. But there are varying
levels of intervention that the City could take. But! think beginning with notification for at least all
subsidized properties ones that are subsidized by other entities, as well as those that receive subsidy from
the City would be a really good start. The ones that are already subsidized, those are the ones you don’t
want to lose to market rate conversion.
Lastly, recognizing you have hospitals in the City who employ a lot of people. | think talking to them about a
potential partnership to understand the housing need, to see how sort of city resources can be coupled with
employer resources and then leverage those together to provide housing or housing options to employees
could be beneficial to both parties, but that’s likely a longer term strategy, | think there’s other things that
you would want to focus on in the shorter term.
So that is my overview, hopefully it didn’t go too, too long, in time for questions?
President Wilshire
Are you looking to take questions, Mr. Halverson?
Mr. Halverson
I'd be happy to, yeah whatever you all would like to do.
President Wilshire
Ok, does anyone have any questions? Alderman Klee?
Alderman Klee
Madam President, | have just a quick question. Thank you so much. Mr. Halverson, in all of this
information and so on, and | don’t know if you can even answer this. But how do we align with like
communities in New Hampshire/New England. Is there any kind of a comparison? Are we kind of on track
with it? | mean you talked about our low market in other words we didn’t have a whole lot of inventory and
that middle of the road group, it seemed like the high income/low income were kind of purchasing those
types of housing.
Mr. Halvorsen
Great question. | will just talk sort of in generalities, | think the things that | found really interesting and
potentially unique about Nashua. Nashua is a growing City and it’s growing quite a bit and has been
growing quite a bit. | think that makes it unique. | think its position on the Massachusetts border is very
unique versus a city that might be further up in New England.
