Category: Q&A

New Hampshire Housing helps Granite Staters find their home

New Hampshire Housing was established by statute in 1981 and is, according to its website, a self-supporting public corporation that promotes, finances and supports housing solutions for the people of New Hampshire. It operates rental and homeownership programs to help those with low or moderate incomes obtain affordable housing. It has assisted 55,000 families in the purchase of homes and helped finance the “creation of more than 16,000 multifamily housing units,” while receiving no operating funds from the state government. Etienne LaFond, the Director of Communications and Marketing for New Hampshire Housing, spoke to the Hippo about what New Hampshire Housing does. Visit nhhfa.org.

Can you give a brief overview of what New Hampshire Housing does?

New Hampshire Housing is a housing authority for the state of New Hampshire. We are a public company with a board that is appointed by the governor. We help administer rental assistance programs. We work with our partners in multi-family development in order to fund and execute on the construction of various developments throughout the state of New Hampshire and we also have a home ownership division which helps people get affordable single-family home loans, down payment assistance and various other programs.

What is rental assistance and what sorts of services do you provide for people looking to rent in the state?

We provide direct assistance to very low-income households. We help them maintain decent and affordable housing through HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program. This program, it’s always pretty much been set up to help prevent homelessness and offers stable housing for thousands of Granite State residents. Through that program a qualified household pays a portion of their income toward rent and utilities, and New Hampshire Housing will pay the balance directly to the landlord … [also] emergency housing resources, we provide a lot of those to renters. Normally, setting up the voucher and wait list program, we’re mainly administering that program. HUD also supports the program in which the voucher can also be used for home ownership mortgage assistance, which is actually one of our favorite programs here. It kind of gives the ability to take these people who, home ownership is just never in the cards, but it’s possible to kind of convert that voucher to sort of help with mortgage payment assistance. This has helped hundreds of participants purchase their own homes.

Can you expand on the home ownership aspect of New Hampshire Housing?

We work statewide with a larger network of lenders and real estate professionals, so Realtors, etc., to offer single-family mortgage programs. These also can include purchasing your home yourself, refinancing, or even a purchase slash rehabilitation. It’s primarily used by moderate-income buyers, but we have low down payment options. We have various programs where people can get up to $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 in cash down payment assistance. We also provide programs that have closing costs assistance, discount mortgage insurance and rehab options.

Can you talk about the work you all do with lead removal?

We have a Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Programs program (NHH LHCHHP) that helps to basically eliminate childhood lead poisoning. We provide educational tools, resources and funding. We get those through federal grants but also state loans, and that’s to assist homeowners, property owners of rental apartments, and even child care facilities so they can be lead-safe certified. That grant funding comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. So that’s been a pretty big thing for people to apply for that grant. We prioritize a property where there’s a poisoned child under 6 years of age with an elevated blood level of lead…. It’s something we’re pretty active with. Those are actually federal grants, so it’s not a loan….

Do you all have any events or new programs coming up?

We often send out, like TEFRA, notices of public hearing for certain places where we’re developing. I know that we had one in the rail yard. We also have an upcoming home ownership conference, which is coming in three weeks. That is going to be talking to Realtors and professionals and the bank industry about the current state of single-family home ownership and what tools are at their disposal in order to make home ownership possible, especially in an area of high demand but low supply. One thing that I think that has been really of note is that there’s a new Opioid Use Disorder Supportive Housing Capital Program. We launched this new initiative to provide stable housing for people who have been impacted by opioid use disorder. So there’s a notice of funding opportunity. We still have applications all the way until March 11.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention about New Hampshire Housing that I haven’t asked you about?

One of the other things that is lesser-known in our various divisions is from our research and advocacy wing. We look into the way that local municipalities and citizens can find ways to tackle housing challenges. So most recently on Feb. 7 we released a case study. We had a housing opportunity planning program where we gave grants to a lot of local municipal communities and we had case studies about people who had used those funds, Bethlehem, Berlin, Canterbury, Keene, Plymouth, there’s quite a few. It shows how they’re addressing housing challenges through changes to their zoning, their planning ideas, and actually updating their master plans to deal with innovative housing solutions. That report is actually currently up and available on our website. It’s pretty awesome to see some of the innovative ways people have done things. For example, Keene, they created a cottage court overlay district, which is encouraging more pedestrian-friendly housing downtown. Canterbury, for example, made a farmstead design alternative for more flexibility through a view process about what’s required in a property and offered design incentives to protect the towns for people who have often been worried about the rural character or something like the open space. Perhaps there’s other ways to figure out the actual design of housing to not lose the character but still provide it for a population that increasingly has to move out in order to find new opportunities. —Zachary Lewis

Queen City Black Market offers art, oddities, hot dogs

Queen City Black Market is an event focused on the alternative, antique and oddity culture in New Hampshire. The market is being put on by Janelle Havens, who runs and operates Lustshroom, Etc. with a focus on “unique footwear for unique people,” according to its website. Havens spoke to the Hippo about the event. Visit lustshroometc.square.site for more information on the event and business.

What is the Queen City Black Market?

The idea is that we get a bunch of weird vendors, right, taxidermy or like weird art, prints and designs. They’re from all over New England, but we get them all together under one roof in Manchester and we have a night where it’s free to enter. People can come in, obviously meet some cool people, buy some cool stuff, and then be on their merry way. We’ll have an after party afterward at the Shaskeen, which is more of that typical, informal, everyone gets together at a bar.

How did this all get started?

It’s the first year. Hopefully, if all goes according to plan, it will be an annual thing. I had started my own business a little over a year ago at this point so I was traveling all over New England doing markets and shows and conventions. I was doing a lot of tattoo conventions and then I ended up going to the Worcester Punk Rock Flea Market in Massachusetts and I was so inspired … I was like, ‘Wow, I wish I had something like that in my backyard, this stuff doesn’t happen in New Hampshire,’ and I feel like a lot of people that I meet say the same thing, but it can be in New Hampshire, we just have to do it.

What is your business Lustshrooms, Etc. and what do you do?

My business is selling platform shoes, so the typical big goth boots type of deal. I also sell oddities. I’ll take animal teeth, mount them, frame them, for a nice wall decoration. Also just like weird stuff that I might come across. So like a Last Rites kit I’ve come across a couple of times, so I’ll sell that but basically weird stuff and then also platform shoes. My partner tattoos and so we were at a tattoo convention for his work and I was just sitting around looking and I was like, ‘You know, everyone here either wears platform shoes or would buy a pair, right, and I had my own experience with buying them, you can really only buy them online. There’s no store that sells them other than like in Salem, Massachusetts, which can be a hike and can be prohibitively expensive for people. Well, why not have a pop-up business where you can go to these places where this clientele would be, they get to go, they get to try it on in person, they can see if they like it, they know who’s selling it to them …

Is weird just something that’s not normal or how would you characterize that?

I would say it’s just really not mainstream. It’s not your typical stuff that you might find at Marshall’s. … The first reaction is, ‘Oh, that’s really weird,’ but then it’s ‘Oh, but that’s cool, though.’ It’s so weird, it’s cool. … [T]he idea that this is somewhere that my dad would probably be at, and he’s a 50-year-old dude that listens to Guns N’ Roses. He doesn’t necessarily fit that stereotypical goth or punk or whatever, but he would still go and have a good time. I will have a good time as someone that might be more stereotypical punk, right? It is also all ages, so, you know, if a 12-year-old kid is kind of in their angsty phase, that’s a great spot for them. … it’s just really anyone that would find it cool.

What are some of the logistics of the event and after party ?

It’s Saturday, Feb. 1, 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., all ages, free at the door. There will be a food truck, it’ll be Teenie Wienies food truck …Right after the market, 8 p.m. is when doors open at the Shaskeen for the after party. That will be Cytokine, Ratblood, and Graveborn playing that, all three local hardcore bands. That’s 21-plus $10 at the door.

So what types of vendors or stalls will be there?

We have quite a range. We have Vericatures, who is a woman from Boston who does caricatures. … We’ll have Hallowed Harvest Oddities, which is someone down in Connecticut… and they do bug pinning and taxidermy and that kind of wet specimens stuff … Then we have a couple local artists like Ghost Ship Art and Emily V. Arts. We’ll also have Karen Jerzyk, She’ll be there selling prints of her photography. It’ll be a lot of Manchester-based people because obviously that’s also the point. We have Evol-Eye Co. … and they do clothing, pins, beanies, stuff like that and it’s traditional tattoo streetwear-type designs but it’s all centered around mental health awareness and recovery. There’ll be a whole lot of fun people and weird stuff. We also have Crown Street Grillz. She’s based in Nashua and she does teeth grills, like the gold teeth and silver teeth. She does all kinds of funky designs with it, which is pretty uncommon around here. So she’ll be in person fitting people and making those, which would be fun and different. That’s just the five that I thought of off the top of my head.

Queen City Black Market
When: Saturday, Feb. 1, from 1 to 8 p.m.
Where: Henry J. Sweeney American Legion Post #2, 251 Maple St., Manchester
Admission: free, all ages welcome
More: lustshroometc.square.site

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Janelle Havens. Courtesy photo.

Middle and high school students show their skills

The New Hampshire Science and Engineering Exposition Association will be putting on its first middle school science fair in May, in addition to its high school science fair in March. Both fairs will be held at NHTI. Deb Schuh is the president of the organization and her husband, Dana Schuh, is the treasurer. They both spoke to the Hippo about the upcoming science fairs.

How did the science fair come about?

Deb: So, many years ago, actually it was around early 2000 to 2003, there were … some science teachers. One of them in Milford who was really into life sciences and bio sciences got together with another couple of teachers and people who were interested in doing a competition. I think someone had a connection to Manchester Community College, they had Manchester Community College run a fair back in 2003. It was mostly Milford and I think Seacoast Technology that played in it. That was sort of the first fair. So it started from then, and it’s changed over the years … it kind of just got started because science teachers wanted to get more involved.

Dana: The name of our organization is, all spelled out, New Hampshire Science and Engineering Exposition Association. The Association is really the group that runs the fair, but the fair is known as Expo….

Why did you all decide to branch out from high school to middle school students as well?

Deb: We have for years been attending the New Hampshire Science Teachers Association conferences, usually twice a year, and we hear a lot from middle school teachers. … we clearly hear that there’s an excitement at that age group for kids to start to participate in science, the teachers have looked for it. We want kids to have gotten into the sciences when they’re a little bit younger and it’s a cool thing to do … Get that pipeline going a little earlier when the kids think it’s fun and interesting. There’s a lot of excitement at that age.

What sorts of projects or experiments do you expect to see in the middle school science fair as well as the high school one?

Deb: We went to one a couple years ago, I guess it was last year…. They had one that was fifth- and sixth-graders and they’re doing things that play with gravity or play with growing something or how things move in general. It can be a little bit physics-oriented, like what you can do with water or what you can do with falling water and how things in the world react. So those, they’re a little simpler, but they’re sort of fun. … When you get to high school, we have a complete range. We have plenty of projects that if you’re not a judge and qualified in that area, you can’t even understand it. So it’s very high level. There are high school students that are producing college-level projects. They are looking at photosynthesis and how that can help purify water, that kind of thing. They’re looking at environmental studies. They’re looking at biotech. …

Dana: Well, I was just going to say, one of the things that’s sort of reinforcing that it’s fun is we have many judges that have been coming for over a decade, year after year, because they enjoy the event so much. These are judges from the schools, these are judges from industry, these are just people that love seeing the young kids showing their stuff with enthusiasm and nervousness.

Why is it important for younger kids to get involved in the STEM field?

Deb: It’s kind of the same when you think about the big push for robotics. We need more high-tech skilled kids. … So, the younger you can get them attracted to those kinds of things and the more fun they have with it, the more they’re likely to stick with it. We want more schools. We sort of average anywhere between 11 and 18 schools a year. It goes up and down. … You want it to be more students. You want more energy around those fields. Mostly we need a workforce on biology, on biotech, on everything with life sciences, on everything with environmental sciences, right? We don’t have enough of the … even engineering and computers. We don’t have enough of that skill set and we need more.

Does a student need their school to be a part of the fair to apply?

Deb: A lot of the students come in individually without school sponsorship, and then there’s a bunch of kids that do come with school sponsorship. So it’s a mix. We also can get home-school kids. —Zachary Lewis

2025 New Hampshire Science and Engineering Expo

High School
When: Thursday, March 20
Where: NHTI Concord’s Community College, Dr. Goldie Crocker Wellness center, 19-23 Institute Drive, Concord
Registration deadline for participants is Sunday, Feb. 9

Middle School
When: Thursday, May 22
Where: NHTI Concord’s Community College, Concord
Registration deadline for participants is Tuesday, April 15, with final forms due by Sunday, April 27.

More: nhsee.org

—Zachary Lewis

Featured image: Courtesy photo.