Portsmouth has a chronic shortage of affordable housing. We all know this. The city has undertaken some initiatives to address this. Fewer of us know what they are. Almost a year ago, the mayor formed a Blue Ribbon Housing Committee, but you can count on two hands the number of citizens who have attended their meetings. The city also has a web page dedicated to housing; it has some useful resources, but it’s thin gruel. The city has a housing navigator, a competent experienced contractor tasked with guiding the city to take action. But what Portsmouth does not have is a formal housing plan.
We need one. Residents need reassurance that the city will move to address this critical issue faster than business-as-usual tempo. After restaurant owners mobilized during the early days of COVID and demanded a task force, the city implemented outdoor dining in just a few weeks. When a section of Interstate 95 collapsed in Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro got the road open again in 12 days. When it wants to, government can pull out all the stops. Such rapid responses usually share a couple of factors: 1) normally lengthy processes are streamlined and fast-tracked and 2) people find creative solutions and innovate.
Gerald Duffy
Portsmouth residents are watching the explosion of North End development and some resent it. Some of them see it as the unwelcome transformation of a Portsmouth they feel, rightly or wrongly, is being ruined. Some of them note the apparent disconnect between so much new revenue-producing development and the rising property taxes on their homes. To my earlier point, what residents do not see is a housing plan that frames all development in a larger perspective. The creation of new market-rate homes is obvious to everyone; what is not obvious is how the city plans to balance the housing stock with more housing for those many people who cannot afford market-rate houses, condos, and rentals. Renters, who make up half the city’s population, are especially affected. They have not benefited at all from the recent astronomic rise in home values and their rents and living expenses just keep going up.
Through Progress Portsmouth, I regularly send out housing update newsletters to several hundred residents. These are self-identified people who want to educate themselves and follow events more closely. I include details of key city meetings where housing-related decisions are made by both City Council and our various land use boards. Also included are related media stories, details of specific projects — planned, in the pipeline, or under construction. What I would dearly like to send out, but cannot, is a reference to a comprehensive city housing plan. It could include:
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Citywide housing goals with specific targets.
For example, see how Kirkland, Washington, provides residents with an easy-to-use Housing Dashboard (https://tinyurl.com/36cxzjmr). We already have the data for something similar.
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Simple matrix cross-referencing people’s needs with different housing types.
Identify the target groups, such as elderly on fixed income, service workers, young professionals, young families. List the alternative types of housing, including one-, two-, and three-bedroom rentals, micro units, cottages, townhouses, and so on. Every single new project and every action the city takes would fit on that matrix somewhere. As a simple infographic, it would quickly show busy residents the big picture.
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Identify known obstacles.
All over the United States, communities have identified the same kinds of zoning restrictions as major barriers to creating workforce housing. We know what to do.
How we get from here to there and how long we expect it to take.
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Regular review of housing plan by city and public.
Examine missed targets. Analyze successes and failures and update the plan accordingly.
What we don’t need is a long request-for-proposal process to produce a plan. It took over two years to produce a final climate action plan. We can’t afford the luxury of that kind of time. As our mayor likes to say: don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if we are able to streamline the process, construction still takes time. So how would it happen? Our Housing Committee could recommend to the City Council the creation of a decision-making task force made up of key stakeholders with relevant skills. They would include members from land use boards, citizens with pertinent experience, potential beneficiaries of workforce housing, workforce housing advocates, developers, and city staff. The product, created as quickly as possible, would be an ideal document to hand off to the groups who will be designing our new master plan this year. It could save a lot of time during the conversation about housing.
A clear plan is transparent and with transparency comes accountability. Residents get a clear view of the big picture, see the targets, see the progress or lack of it, and can respond immediately, or later at election time. Some residents might well continue to be unhappy about new development in the North End, but at least they would know the city has a comprehensive plan to try and level the housing playing field. We’ll know that is working when, for example, our first responders can afford to live in the city they serve. The same for teachers, medical workers, and all the employees that make our businesses and restaurants run.
The year-old Housing Committee, which is advisory, has a couple of feathers in its cap. It recommended a developer for the Sherburne School workforce housing project to the council. It also helped with the creation of the newly created Gateway Neighborhood Overlay District, a zoning change that will allow more housing with greater density along Commerce Way, and in the process possibly acquire some land for another affordable housing project. But the impression from a housing advocate’s point of view is that the committee has taken its foot off the gas. The Sherburne project could easily have been low-hanging fruit and started a year ago. The more than 150 residents who participated in the 2024 Portsmouth Listens housing dialogue sessions a year ago (many of whom are following closely) had a simple message for the council and members of the land-use boards: act now.
Sometimes, local government appears to be afraid of its own public. The irony is that if it’s too cautious, local government can end up hindering rather than helping city efforts to solve a community-wide problem. When agitated residents dominate public comment sessions, it must seem from behind the dais that the whole city is opposed to whatever the project is. But in reality what they see is a distortion of public sentiment. Further, social media is demonstrably useless as a measure of broad public opinions; its algorithms are designed to fan flames, not facilitate informed dialogue. I can understand why it can be hard for city staff, land-use board members and councilors to remind themselves that the slice of the public they see is not necessarily at all representative of the broader community. I know from a variety of sources that the great sweep of Portsmouth residents re-elected the current council to just get housing done.
If you’d like to receive our housing updates please contact Progress Portsmouth at progressportsmouth@gmail.com or follow this link to register (https://tinyurl.com/3sjxrvkv). You may find there is a way, no matter how small, that you can help get us affordable housing.
Gerald Duffy is a Portsmouth resident and a founder of Progress Portsmouth.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Duffy: Portsmouth, we need a housing plan