Property rights need more consideration in approving housing: Realtors group CEO
Mar. 28—BEDFORD — Towns should give more consideration to individual property rights, permitting people to build more housing on private property rather than invoking local control, according to the head of a Realtors group.
Local boards and lawmakers often cite their local control authority in opposing future housing on private property.
"Maybe, it's time to kind of flip that discussion a little bit instead, maybe to reframe it into a discussion about what rationale does local government, this government, have in taking away individual private property rights and use their property as they best see it for the highest and best purpose," said Robert Quinn, CEO of the New Hampshire Realtors, which lobbies legislators.
"Right now, we feel that government regulations are maybe just a little too much on that side of the scale and we need to look at somehow trying to rebalance that," Quinn told a crowd at the annual breakfast for NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire.
Robert Tourigny, executive director of the NeighborWorks group, said his pet peeve is the term "local control."
"It's probably taboo as somebody in the Granite State to talk about anything negative about local control, but I personally feel that the term is way overused and most people when they throw that term around really don't understand the meaning behind local control," he said at the event at the Manchester Country Club.
"I think that people need to think about what local control means ... and the impact it has on housing affordability," he said.
Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association, said local land-management boards consider the specific property owner and the neighborhood and community as a whole when making decisions.
"When we talk about zoning and property rights, zoning at its core is a balancing of community benefit and individual rights," Byrnes said in a phone interview.
Most communities have had their residents adopt zoning ordinances and amendments that local officials enforce, said Byrnes, whose group represents the state's 234 cities and towns.
It "can be easy to blame local officials" for projects not approved, she said.
At the breakfast, Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais said housing is on the minds of most of the people he meets.
"Every business I talk to, every college that I speak with, every nonprofit that I talk to, we talk about workforce housing and development and how are we planning for a city of Manchester in five, 10, 15 years," Ruais said.
Realtor Quinn said people opposed to new housing often say it would attract more school-age children, which would drive up taxes, and ruin an area's rural character.
The Realtors association hired an economist to research the effect that building more housing has on property taxes.
"There is no correlation between the two," he said. "It's a false assumption that a lot of communities are utilizing" to block new housing.
Allowing more housing units on a given property lot would be beneficial.
"If you build more density, you're going to be able to preserve a lot more land," he said.
Quinn said a local board considering a new manufacturing facility can scrutinize legitimate health and safety considerations under state law.
"That's where government has a very legitimate reason to step in ... for health and safety reasons," Quinn said.
At town meetings, people vote their self-interests on issues, including limiting the amount of available housing.
"There's an incentive for property owners in a lot of these communities to vote against housing," Quinn said. "It increases their own equity."
