Gov. Chris Sununu has asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to assistance the point out address its affordable housing shortage by letting federal income intended to support men and women pay their rent in the course of the pandemic to also be made use of to produce and construct new rental models.
In a letter to Yellen dated May possibly 4, the governor identified as the permissible takes advantage of for money distributed to states by means of the Emergency Rental Aid Method — approved at the conclude of 2020 — as “overly restrictive.” The dollars can be applied from hire, utility and electrical power expenses, as very well as “other housing-associated fees due immediate or indirectly to Covid-19,” which the Treasury Office takes to indicate prices of safety deposits, late costs and hotel stays.
“The problem of enabling people today (to) maintain their housing all through this pandemic is not just about rental aid,” Sununu wrote. “It’s about the lack of out there affordable housing.” Briefly paying out for lease and utilities, he likened to “little extra than a band-assist for a broken leg.”
The governor pointed out vacancy costs in rental marketplaces are “approaching zero.” Additionally, he said seasonal and 2nd-house homeowners, who he explained as “a key resource of rental models for yrs,” especially in the Lakes Area, White Mountains and Mount Washington Valley, have moved into their properties to escape the pandemic, more shrinking the restricted rental industry. And he pointed to the “dramatic inflow in migration of people from neighboring states relocating to New Hampshire throughout the pandemic.”
Sununu encouraged the capable utilizes of the funding delivered by the application be expanded to incorporate expenditure in development of very affordable housing to offset the effect of the pandemic on the stock of rental models, incentives for general public-non-public partnerships to develop inexpensive housing and measures to minimize the pitfalls to developers and creditors in undertaking tasks to provide “socially and economically deprived men and women.”
In 2019, Sununu supported a legislative initiative to tackle the mounting lack of cost-effective housing, but it was overtaken by the pandemic and stalled in the Legislature.
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