City council passes zoning change to spark affordable housing

LACONIA — Councilors approved an amendment to the zoning ordinance, reworking an overlay district aimed at providing incentives to developers to build affordable housing in the city. 

The existing housing redevelopment overlay district has never been used since its creation, and city planners say that’s likely because it gave developers no incentive to do so. The rewritten formula includes those incentives, like provisions for increased density with strings attached, which may provide a tangible benefit to those hoping to redevelop older, smaller lots in residential areas. 

“The HROD is to try to find a tool that people can use to build affordable housing,” Planning Director Rob Mora said last week at the city council meeting. “We used an innovative land use control — similar to what we did with performance zoning — to add that tool to the HROD in hopes that we would spur some affordable housing units.”

Innovative land use controls were created with the passage of a state law, RSA 674:21, and are intended to provide communities with options to tailor land development to reflect the visions of their master plans, allowing for greater flexibility in zoning.

The amendment to the zoning ordinance was tabled at the city council meeting on Sept. 22, and councilors requested Mora collect data to present to them during their meeting on Oct. 14.

“We looked at the entire residential general [RG] district because that’s kind of where we’re proposing it to be, as the RG district really meets the definition of what we’re trying to accomplish with HROD,” he said. 

Almost half of the housing in the residential district are single-family homes, 28% are duplexes, and the remaining 27% are multi-family structures, Mora said, noting the district contains a mix of housing types, which is how the district makeup is intended. 

“The HROD is really intended to utilize or redevelop some of the small lots, or smaller lots that really can’t be developed any further than what they are, because they were built in a time that predated zoning,” Mora said. 

In the residential district, Mora said on Oct. 14, the upper limit of potential new affordable housing units — as far as they’ve identified — is about 700. 

“There are a few outliers, there’s I think 17 parcels that are larger than an acre in the entirety of the RG district, so there’s really not a whole lot. And of those, they’re a school or a cemetery or some larger lots that have just never been developed,” Mora said. 

Individuals interested in redeveloping a relevant lot could use the tool to garner a greater density on the lot, though it's dependent on approval from the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. Another benefit of the change is to the city, reducing the number of utility connections on a given street, in turn reducing costs, and could help improve drainage issues.

“There’s a lot of benefits to the city just for providing the tool for a developer to add a couple of workforce housing units,” Mora said. 

“What I see from the results of this is it increases the inventory of affordable housing. So naturally when you have a higher inventory, hopefully the overall cost comes down to the people who are renting,” Ward 2 Councilor Robert Soucy said. 

Ward 5 Councilor Steven Bogert offered an amendment to the motion in order to remove any areas of his ward from the district, but that amendment garnered no support from other councilors. His was the lone dissenting vote. 

“As long as there’s still a public hearing process for things that are being built in people’s neighborhoods and a chance for people to come and voice their concerns about things that are proposed, then I think this is a good idea,” Ward 3 Councilor Eric Hoffman said.