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No-Lychee3965 t1_j8fb0d7 wrote

I'm going to be honest, my wife is a big fan of the whole concept of tiny living, and even watches a whole bunch of the reality shows about people searching for tiny houses to move into, and she enjoys seeing how Nifty they look and how people get creative and versatile with the amount of space that they have...

But the honest truth is, I'm not a big fan of this idea that the only way to find affordable housing is for us Working Class People to start looking for smaller and smaller living spaces to squeeze ourselves in our families into. They can try to glamorize it and glorify it however they want, and make all of the reality TV shows about it that they want, but every time I see these people buying houses that are 300 Square ft to 900 square feet in Total Living size, the only thing that I'm reminded of is the depictions of "slave quarters" that I used to see in history textbooks back when I was in school.

This is basically what they're doing to us now. And a lot of us are too blind to actually seem to notice it. They try to make it seem fun, and quirky, and exciting and adventurous to squeeze a family of four or five people into a 300 square foot living space, while all the decent sized, three and four bedroom houses in New Hampshire's current housing market are horribly overpriced compared to basically every other state housing market in the country.

If you look down in pennsylvania, you can find a four or five bedroom house going for 85,000 to $100,000 in the housing market, compared to New Hampshire where a two bedroom or three bedroom home will run you anywhere from $250,000 to $400,000. In New Hampshire today, the only way that you can own your own home is to either buy something that's under a thousand square feet, or to have a median income of over $80,000 to $90,000 a year.

I've lived in this state my entire life, and it utterly sucks that working class citizens are getting priced out of the area; we're either forced to live in cramped, overpriced apartments, or have at least 3 to 4 different incomes to help afford all of the expenses of owning your own home, and neither of those is conducive to what the "American Dream," is supposed to be.

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vexingsilence t1_j8fdk5c wrote

>I've lived in this state my entire life, and it utterly sucks that working class citizens are getting priced out of the area; we're either forced to live in cramped, overpriced apartments, or have at least 3 to 4 different incomes to help afford all of the expenses of owning your own home, and neither of those is conducive to what the "American Dream," is supposed to be.

I can see only two other options.. make the state undesirable so people leave or embrace sprawl into towns that are underbuilt.

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megagem t1_j8fxomz wrote

Or take the obvious and sensible option of simply allowing our already built spaces to increase in density. NH is full of urban areas that could easily add huge amounts of new housing by simply removing the regulations that prevent it and de-prioritizing car infrastructure.

The sprawl is being driven by the fact that it's the only viable option to add housing in most of the state. Developers fell an acre of trees to drop in a shitty looking car dependent house because just building an extra floor and some stairs anywhere is illegal.

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pornplz22526 t1_j8lt6fq wrote

Ironically, New Hampshire is only desirable because it isn't population dense.

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vexingsilence t1_j8gbhy7 wrote

Why do urban areas want to increase density? What are the more distant areas doing to compensate the urban areas for their sacrifice? Dense living isn't better living. Maybe for some folks, but not for many. That's not a house and a yard and a family and all that. You may look down upon "car dependent" living, but it led to people being able to have that house and yard. It's not a coincidence that people fled the cities once cars became readily available. People didn't want to live that way.

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No-Lychee3965 t1_j8felpt wrote

I've lived in Greenland, Dover, Barrington, Rochester and even Hampton for a short period. The problem is that the "sprawl into underdeveloped towns" is so sought after now, that any new housing developments are over-priced even before being constructed.

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vexingsilence t1_j8ffsmh wrote

That sprawl could be accelerated. Not proposing it as a solution, but the ability for someone to achieve the dream of home ownership in NH is only going to become more challenging over time so long as the population increases and the desirability of NH living doesn't decrease. Even sprawling out only works for so long.

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Neighborhood_Lesbian t1_j8ft9jv wrote

Or option three, of building more apartments

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vexingsilence t1_j8fu1c3 wrote

That was covered..

"we're either forced to live in cramped, overpriced apartments, or have at least 3 to 4 different incomes to help afford all of the expenses of owning your own home"

I haven't yet seen a floorplan for new apartments that I'd call underpriced or spacious. Although I guess you could argue that cramped is kind of a defining attribute of an apartment.

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Neighborhood_Lesbian t1_j8fuhky wrote

Just curious, what do you consider cramped for a single person? Not looking at families here. I've gone through a range of apartments (from 400 to 1200sqft). The 400 was a bit small but my current 700 is fine

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Visible-Education-98 t1_j8huo7z wrote

“Make the state undesirable so people leave”. This is exactly what WILL happen in due time and it’ll be done by the very people who left their own crappy states for better quality of life. NH is changing rapidly and not for the better. IMO

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Azr431 t1_j8za6az wrote

I mean there is another really good option other than moving to BFE Nebraska. Shit can capitalism and everyone other than the 1% will have tremendously better lives.

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