Can we please strike the word “crisis” from our vocabulary?
With everything becoming a crisis, nothing is a crisis.
Except that the temptation and even the demand to throw taxpayer money at the crisis is at the tip of every tongue.
This is one way governments spend us into oblivion.
It is time for saner minds (and tongues) to speak. It is time to bring rationality and economics into these conversations.
Limited Resources for a Nationwide Problem
The City has limited resources to meet a nationwide shortage of housing. We don’t know the dynamics of such a shortage.
But since the various programs that might respond to funding the construction of “workforce housing” are ultimately federal dollars, the potential demand for these units comes from across the country.
In other words, advocates for building workforce housing are asking the City to help pay for housing for people from California to Calais, Maine, and all points between.
The potential demand far outstrips the supply. A rational response must acknowledge that the City and its taxpayers cannot possibly fulfill all the need.
The Manor (and No Manners)
One speaker from the Public Comment section of the April 15, 2024, City Council raised a particularly poignant point for the City Council to consider.
Since Deaglan McEachern has been Mayor, sights have been set on building workforce housing at Sherburne School. Not before, only since. The City’s crosshairs have targeted this City property and the neighboring Pannaway Manor.
In 2023, the Mayor and City Council launched an offensive (and, yes, it was offensive) to inform Pannaway residents their neighborhood would be taken over by turning Sherburne School into a Portsmouth Housing Authority (PHA) project for workforce housing.
The City’s presentation was not a listening tour. Rather, it was a telling tour. And it engendered immediate and broad opposition from the residents, as you might expect. No one likes to be told what to do.
Maybe the City was taken aback at the anger and resentment, but the officials shouldn’t have been. The City’s arrogance and hubris is its hallmark and they got what they deserved. If they had approached the residents with deference, seeking input and wanting conversation, it might have gone differently. But the seeds were planted and the City has a crop full of mistrust and anger.
Walk Away
If the City and its Council had an ounce of wisdom, they would walk away from Sherburne School. Unfortunately, the PHA has not helped the communication due to its evasive and squirrely responses to questions.
Telegraphed between their comments is the impression that the PHA is well along in its application for federal monies (grants and loans) to build workforce housing at Sherburne School.
Besides putting the cart well before the horse, PHA has damaged whatever credibility it might have had prior to this mess.
In our opinion, PHA and the City should walk away from building workforce housing at Sherburne School.
From that same Public Comments section on April 15, we learned that the City has at least two other potential sites for building workforce housing, one at the Episcopal Church and one at the Service Credit Union site, both on Lafayette Road. Both will have access to utilities and transportation, just as Sherburne School has.
The City is being invited to pursue these options. Go where the resistance is less!
Sherburne School, City Hall and the Police Department
As other observers have noted, there are additional ways to make lemonade out of these lemons.
First, the City’s School Department could move out of City Hall and occupy Sherburne School.
Second, City Hall could then better accommodate a rebuilt and renovated Police Department, providing the expansion the police apparently need.
Third, the City could step back from what otherwise would be a contentious development of Sherburne School, smoothing the way around a painful and counterproductive path to a more positive route.
Fourth, it is our sense that these options might better control the costs the City wants to undertake so the hit to taxpayers might be more limited.
Opportunities
Taken as a whole, the City could actually turn a housing crisis into something more positive where outside offers are being made to help address a need for workforce housing.
The opportunities afforded the City by better utilizing its resources and assets would potentially better control the City’s costs going forward.
These outcomes might make so much better sense than stubbornly fighting for a goal where there is such well-entrenched resistance.
Source Featured Image: City of Portsmouth
