Recent studies completed by New Hampshire Housing and the New Hampshire Regional Planning Commissions have found that New Hampshire is facing a shortage of housing across typologies in communities throughout the state. As municipal officials and other local stakeholders in New Hampshire seek to address the housing needs of their communities, the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs (BEA) engaged ESI to conduct a state-wide fiscal analysis of housing development. Through this engagement, ESI developed an interactive tool to assist officials and members of the public in understanding the resulting fiscal impact of different housing types, including multifamily, middle density, and single-family housing.
To develop representative estimates of fiscal impact scenarios, ESI worked with the Department to define both municipal housing typologies. Municipal typologies were created based on local characteristics such as population density, municipal service provision and available municipal infrastructure which helped to define localized assessed value and municipal expenditure estimates associated with the development of new housing and addition of new population.
Development typologies defined various types of potential housing, including single-family, middle density and multifamily, as well as specialized sub-types such as workforce housing or senior, age-restricted housing. Using these typologies, a fiscal analysis was performed by community typology and by housing typology to estimate typical ratios of new revenues and costs associated with housing development in different contexts.
From this analysis, ESI developed an online, interactive tool that balances estimated fiscal impacts and other relevant municipal characteristics in an accessible user interface. The tool allows users – whether they are members of the public or local officials – to better understand the associated fiscal impacts of potential development options in their communities.
