Sending it back “means basically ... you guys screwed up, try and make it right this time around, so we’re kicking it back to you to fix your mess,” ZBA Chairman David Hennessey said at Monday’s meeting.

The issue was not resolved that night. It was postponed for another month.

Builders and housing advocates are nearly universal in citing the difficulty of getting projects approved — and in a timely manner — as a major impediment to putting a dent in an acute housing shortage that presents wide-ranging difficulties for hiring and growth in the state.

On Friday, the New Hampshire Association of Realtors said New Hampshire home buyers in 2021 faced the worst affordability conditions in at least 15 years.

A case for regional

Some wonder whether the time has come to establish regional planning boards.

Without naming any particular communities, Manchester attorney John Cronin said residents in some places attempt to lobby local officials or get members elected to boards who “have an anti-development goal and then they’re solicited and lobbied by other members of the community.”

“If you had a regional planning board where you didn’t have a conflict in living in that town, I think you’d get better results,” said Cronin, one of the attorneys in the Pelham case.

Portsmouth attorney John Bosen, who recently got a 95-unit workforce housing development approved in that Seacoast city, said he could see the usefulness.

“I think for some of these larger projects, a regional planning board makes a lot of sense, especially for workforce housing,” said Bosen, who noted Portsmouth is welcoming to such projects.

“I just think you will take the local politics out of the discussion,” he said. “If we really want to make an effort to establish workforce housing, I think you would be more successful on a regional basis.”

Jay Minkarah, executive director of the Nashua Regional Planning Commission, said that would require changes in state law. There is “a real question mark” whether that would make the process more efficient, he said.

Delays in Pelham

On one of winter’s coldest nights, more than 30 turned out for the Pelham zoning board meeting.

“I think people are really confused, including me, as to what exactly is the jurisdiction of the housing court,” Hennessey said.

“Nonetheless, the housing court was spectacularly clear on what they said was wrong with our denial of this application,” he said.

The Housing Appeals Board said the zoning board failed to focus on the need for a higher housing density to make a workforce housing project financially viable.

After receiving the favorable Sept. 16 decision from the Housing Appeals Board, property owners Patrick and Kim Gendron paid a consultant to assemble economic data to bolster their argument that it would suffer an “unnecessary hardship” if it did not get a variance to build housing on 30 acres of a 44-acre parcel at 579 Bridge St. Approving a variance involves a five-pronged test, including showing an unnecessary hardship.

Cronin brought the consultant to last week’s meeting, hoping to convince the zoning board “to look on this favorably.”

But needing three votes to approve the variance, the Gendrons decided to wait for all five members to attend the board’s next meeting — on Valentine’s Day. Only four were present at Monday’s meeting.

The Gendrons could have skipped the Housing Appeals Board and taken the initial denial of their variance to Superior Court, where the case still might not be decided.

“I think compared to the process before the Housing Appeals Board came into effect, they’re actually ahead of the game,” Elizabeth Fischer, the appeals board’s new chair, said in an interview.

“At least there is something on the table that gives the community some guidance and the applicant some guidance,” she said of the appeal board’s decision.

If the Gendrons ultimately receive the variance, they will still need project approval from the Pelham Planning Board.

A question of necessity

Last week, a legislative committee heard testimony from the public on House Bill 1216, which would kill off the Housing Appeals Board. Sentiment about the board was more negative.

“My feeling is they created an extra level of bureaucracy that is meant to supersede what the intent was of a local land-use board, period,” Rep. Bill Boyd, R-Merrimack, a prime sponsor, said in an interview.

He would like to establish a land court for applicants who want to appeal a local board’s ruling.

“There needs to be a judge or judges that are trained in land and housing issues that are better equipped to deal with this than, dare I say, another level of bureaucracy,” said Boyd, a former member of his town’s planning board.

According to state law, the Housing Appeals Board’s three members “shall individually and collectively be learned and experienced in questions of land use law or housing development or both.” At least one must be a licensed attorney and at least one must be either a professional engineer or land surveyor.

Manchester developer Dick Anagnost, who suggested the idea of a housing appeals board to Gov. Chris Sununu about five years ago, said the board should stay.

“I think it’s operating great,” Anagnost said.

The board has attracted 32 cases, with more than half already decided, since the first case was submitted in February 2021.

The New Hampshire Municipal Association, which last year said it had heard some concerns about decisions, didn’t return a phone message left last week.

Workforce housing debate

Pelham’s ZBA chair said at that Monday meeting that the board’s mission was to narrowly review whether the project met the legal requirements.

“We are not here to debate whether workforce housing is good for Pelham,” he said.

But when the planning and zoning boards held a joint meeting on the project last February, they conducted a lengthy discussion.

Both the Gendrons’ representatives and board members traded stats trying to illustrate whether the town of 14,000 residents already had a sufficient supply of workforce housing.

Planning Board member Roger Montbleau “stated that in his mind that Pelham meets the spirit and intent of workforce housing,” according to official minutes of the meeting.

Voters rescinded a town workforce housing ordinance several years ago.

“He stated that just because they do not have the words ‘workforce housing’ in an ordinance, the developer wanted to try to beat the town up to get this plan through. He stated that this was just his opinion and that it did not sit well with him,” the minutes said.

Attorney David Groff accused the town of not abiding by a state law requiring communities to provide for a reasonable opportunity to develop workforce housing projects, which typically require greater density to make a project economically feasible.

The meeting minutes later were revised to include a verbatim section.

After an alternate planning board member asked why the developer didn’t price all the units — rather than 20% of them — at workforce housing levels, Groff asked: “Are you a socialist or a Republican?” according to the meeting minutes.

He also was quoted as saying, “It is not our job to fix Pelham’s problem.”

State law said communities “shall provide reasonable and realistic opportunities for the development of workforce housing.” The law also could be satisfied if a town’s existing housing stock is sufficient to handle its fair share of the current and reasonably foreseeable regional need for such housing.

Some local officials tried to show enough housing stock already existed.

The law defines workforce housing using a region’s median annual income for a four-person household spending a maximum 30% of its gross income on housing. Figures are calculated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

For the Portsmouth-Rochester area, housing up to $423,000 was considered workforce for a family of four in 2021. That would require a household income of $106,600, according to New Hampshire Housing.

The Manchester area had a limit up to $356,500, requiring a household income of $89,300 for 2021.

Portsmouth construction

In Portsmouth, Torrington Properties recently received approval to build a 95-unit workforce housing project that will will replace the shuttered Cinemagic movie theater on Lafayette Road.

“We (in Portsmouth) have an ordinance already that encourages workforce housing and… making it as easy as possible for developers,” Bosen said.

Nineteen of the 95 units are deemed workforce — meaning they will sell for no more than $423,000, a number that changes every year.

Portsmouth is a “very professional city, and to attract and retain talented workers you need to have housing, and I think it’s a problem for the state,” Bosen said.

“We target this to the missing middle,” Bosen said. “Not everybody can afford a million-dollar condo.”

In Lebanon, Anagnost is working on a project with another developer to build 204 apartment units that all will be considered workforce housing and rent for between $900 and $1,200 a month.

He is looking to tap New Hampshire Housing for a tax-free bond and low-income tax credits to help fund the $45 million-to-$50 million project on Mount Support Road not far from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, said Anagnost, who also favors regional planning boards deciding projects.

He expects teachers, police officers, firefighters and hospital workers will be among his renters once the first apartments are ready in March 2023.

“Lebanon right now is working with me because they’re so desperate for that type of housing,” Anagnost said.

Need for density

Towns allowing more housing units per acre than in the past are a key to building more workforce housing.

“Greater densities are certainly necessary to provide a significant number” of affordable units, the Nashua planning board’s Minkarah said, but “that doesn’t mean that housing of that nature is what is appropriate for every community.”

Minkarah, whose regional planning commission includes Pelham, said land use regulations are a factor in building workforce housing. But so are the availability of land and infrastructure.

“It’s not surprising you see more housing that is defined as workforce housing built in communities that have public water and sewer,” Minkarah said.

In his region, that means Nashua, Merrimack and Hudson.

In areas without town sewer, “you see very little,” Minkarah said.

“I think you have a lot of communities that are resistant to developing higher density, multi-family units,” he said.