Special Board of Aldermen 04-08-2021 Page 5
time homebuyers. We need these people to fulfill all of the amazing jobs that are open in the City and we
need housing options. Those two different age groups are competing for the exact same product; they
don’t want giant houses, they want smaller houses with accessibility, great locations. So that is making that
market incredibly tight.
Affordable rental units are desperately needed as well. The households making 30% of the area median
income, there’s only about half as many units as there are people who need those units. So you can see
here the darker blue shows the number of renter households and the lighter blue shows the number of
rental units affordable to those households and there’s a giant mismatch. What is unique to Nashua also is
the other end of the spectrum that we have a very large amount of people in the highest or the more
wealthy area median income over 120% that are renters and enjoy being renters. We have very little
product for them, which in turn squeezes our middle units, because they take up units that they can very,
very reasonably afford and it squeezes out and helps to rise increased rents on those who have more
trouble affording them.
Single family housing is still the dominant type in Nashua. You can see that over 60% of our land area is
dedicated to single family housing, all the yellow on the map. And it is also over 50% of all of the housing
unit type in Nashua. The red parcels which there aren’t that many of are 100 unit plus and those are
making up a greater percentage of our units but it is still a very small land area. And those are done in
areas with great infrastructure to support them, water, sewer, roads, accessibility and connections. As we
all know and the Mayor just talked about, rent is rising substantially; 20% on average over the 13 to 18
time period and it has gone up even more substantially through these last years of COVID. And, in
addition, housing sales and the cost of buying a home has gone up and very, very quickly; even more so in
the past couple of years. So these increases in pricing are well over 20% and if any of you have tried to
buy a house or sell a house recently knows, you are talking about days if you are lucky, you turn a house
around. So if you don’t know about one coming on the market, it is very, very difficult to get a house.
The last point | wanted to touch on is that Downtown Nashua is very different than the rest of Nashua and
we need to think about that when talking about affordable housing and how we are going to make this work
going forward. Renter households are much more prevalent Downtown than anywhere else in the City.
The darkest color on this map, here is Main Street here, here’s our beautiful Downtown Riverfront, is 75 to
95% renter which is not the case throughout the rest of the City. And so that’s important because we can
add density of housing there and this is where we have infrastructure, we have services to support. But we
also have the highest amounts of lower incomes in the Downtown and making sure that we are not
concentrating poverty going forward, that we are spreading affordable housing throughout the City and we
are balancing out our neighborhoods for the best outcomes for all of Nashuans, is a key part of why we
want to move forward with the Housing Trust Fund.
So starting the Trust Fund and the Legislation that is before you, includes the $30,000.00 initial deposit
from Nashua Housing Associates and an older agreement with Clock Tower based on federal grants that
they initially got as the Mayor just reviewed. And continuing the $10,000.00 a year annual payment until the
agreement ends in the future. The program initially will be managed by the Urban Programs Department.
And for the next steps as this is as woman very eloquently put it at the Imagine Nashua Meeting earlier this
week, this $30,000.00 is creating a tiny, little baby of a trust fund but to do what we need it to do, it has to
grow. So it is a very exciting starting point, but we know we have to be looking ahead from here. So next
steps would be to focus on identifying and developing additional revenue sources as outlined in the
Housing Study which may include inclusionary zoning policies, ways that development fees are paid into
the fund or partnerships; public/private partnerships in different ways.
A strong assessment to understanding to create a more detailed structure and administration for the
Housing Trust Fund over the next couple of years as additional dollars are going into the fund and we start
to see the long-term management of these properties that will be keeping affordable; it’s going to need to
be a longer term assessment on staffing and management and how all that works. But as we have just a
little baby right now, this is more than a sufficient structure to get started. So | am more than happy to
answer any questions and | will bring this down.
