Housing

The North Country of New Hampshire had fairly cheap housing for quite a few years. Basically, the lack of good jobs limited how much someone could pay. Pay still ain’t great, but house prices and rents took a huge price jump. 

A good friend of mine has only a few months left to move out of his apartment. He’s been looking for a house for months now. The problem is that many of them have been in the Air B&B market. They are more like bunk houses than places you’d want to live in. Quite a few places were bought out by ATV riders who get together and purchase a house where they keep their machines. Very few of these places end up being bought by locals. 

Apartments have tripled in price in the last few years. Frankly, it’s cheaper for me to live at my cottage on the lake than in a small apartment in town. That’s just nuts. One woman I know of stayed in a deeply unhappy marriage for a year because she couldn’t find a decent apartment at any price. She finally got one. The previous renter had been shot and killed. 

My local area is just a small snapshot of a greater problem across the nation. No wonder homelessness is so bad. 

-Sixbears