The Soapbox: We need to make New Hampshire hospitable to young people

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O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

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Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.


My wife and I recently put an offer on a beautiful, cozy house in Manchester after spending the last several years putting away everything we could. This should have been a joyous experience for us, but we were instead overwhelmed with anxiety and foreboding. As we left our tour that day, there was a line of people that extended into the street, all who were waiting to tour the same home. Many of these people were double our age and ready to pay well over the assessed value in cash.

If I told you that I’m shocked by how difficult this experience has been for us, I would be lying. I just turned 30 last year, and I know firsthand the obstacles our state puts up against the success of our young people. Like most of my friends, the importance of college was indoctrinated into me at an impressionable age. My parents gladly encouraged me to go to college, from which I graduated with my bachelor’s degree and $40,000 in debt (a small sum compared to many of my peers). After graduation, I struggled to pay my rent and loans while working a $10-an-hour food service job for two years and aggressively job hunting on the side.

I eventually decided to move back in with my parents and dedicated all of my energy to job hunting. I spent a year living in my parents’ basement while applying to hundreds of jobs until I finally landed a position as a news reporter. Still, I am grateful that I was able to return home to dedicate so much energy to finding my path. Many of my friends with college degrees are still working in food service or taking odd jobs to make ends meet. Over and over, our parents told us we needed a college degree to be successful. Instead, many of us are shut out of the economy, and we’re literally paying the consequences.

Now we’re being shut out of the housing market. Since 2000, the median price of a home in New Hampshire has increased more than 250 percent from $127,500 to $335,000, according to the New England Real Estate Network. Adjusted for inflation, that same house would be worth $200,000 today. Of course, this also doesn’t account for the fact that New Hampshire has among the highest property taxes in the country. At the same time, New Hampshire’s rental vacancy rate, about 1.8 percent, is well below the average for the Northeast (5.5 percent) and the country (6.6 percent), while rents are at an all-time high, averaging $1,413 for a 2-bedroom apartment.

New Hampshire could have seen this coming from a mile away: listings and building permits have continued to linger below half their peak levels before the Great Recession, and that was before the pandemic hit us. Yet state leadership continues to kick the can down the road instead of taking action to address this crisis. The state legislature had an opportunity to pass HB 586, an important bill that would have encouraged the construction of affordable housing, but they instead tabled it. I applaud Mayor Joyce Craig’s Affordable Housing Taskforce for laying out a plan that would incentive the private development of affordable housing and make it easier for homeowners to add accessory dwelling units, among other important measures.

We also need to reduce the cost of college in our state and support pathways for career technical education. New Hampshire again holds the embarrassing distinction of having the second-highest cost of tuition in the country at its public colleges and universities. It is certainly no coincidence that we’re also the second-highest exporter of students in the country, with 60 percent of our state’s college-bound graduates enrolling in out-of-state institutions. And our state’s public colleges are feeling the impact: “We’re entering into this crisis as the second most expensive public higher educational institution in the county,” Joe Morone, the Chair of the University System of New Hampshire Board, recently said. Morone acknowledged that with competition from other New England schools, tuition needs to be lowered, not raised.

The thing is, I know my story is not unique. Thousands of young, hard-working Granite Staters are struggling to find their place in our community. If New Hampshire really cares about making our state hospitable to its young people, then we need to act now to pass laws and enact policies that will make our state more accessible to my generation and the next. Young Granite Staters like me are tired of being pushed to the margins of our community. All we want are the same opportunities that generations before us have enjoyed — and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and work with everyone to make this state work for our generation and subsequent generations.


Derek EdryDerek Edry is a communications professional from Manchester.

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