By Granite State Report
If you are struggling to find housing in New Hampshire—if your rent keeps rising, if your commute keeps getting longer, if your employer cannot hire, or if your adult children have already left the state—House Bill 1619 should tell you exactly where certain lawmakers stand.
They do not stand with you.
HB 1619 weakens municipal land-use regulation and repeals the state’s workforce housing program. It is sold as a defense of property rights. In reality, it is a declaration that the housing crisis is not this legislature’s problem—and certainly not these Republicans’.
The sponsors—Reps. Julius Soti, Mark Warden, Cyril Aures, Tom Mannion, Matt Sabourin, John Sellers, Kristin Noble, Jordan Ulery, Yury Polozov, Jeremy Slottje, and Sen. Keith Murphy—are not confused about the state of housing in New Hampshire. They know it is scarce. They know it is expensive. They know it is driving workers out and choking economic growth.
They just don’t care enough to act.
The workforce housing program existed for a simple reason: the market alone is not solving this problem. Employers need workers. Workers need places to live. Municipalities routinely block new housing through zoning and procedural delay, while benefiting from the labor force housed elsewhere. The state stepped in—not with mandates, but with incentives—to push towns toward reality.
HB 1619 eliminates that pressure.
Repealing workforce housing while loosening land-use rules in the name of “property rights” is not reform. It is a gift to exclusionary interests that already dominate local politics. It tells towns that want to say “no” forever that the state will no longer ask questions—or expect solutions.
And let’s be honest about the priorities on display.
This legislature has found time to regulate classroom speech, police identity, ban imaginary medical procedures in schools, argue about ferrets, and mandate weapons policies on college campuses. But when it comes to housing—actual, measurable, life-altering housing—suddenly the answer is repeal, retreat, and shrug.
That is not limited government. It is selective government.
HB 1619 does nothing to increase supply. It does nothing to lower costs. It does nothing to help teachers, nurses, tradespeople, or service workers live near their jobs. What it does do is make it easier for lawmakers to claim they defended “property rights” while doing nothing about the consequences.
Those consequences are real.
Young families are priced out. Seniors cannot downsize. Employers cannot expand. Communities hollow out. The workforce housing program was not radical. It was modest. And even that was apparently too much responsibility for this legislature to tolerate.
The moral failure here is not subtle. When elected officials knowingly dismantle one of the few tools aimed at alleviating a crisis, they are making a choice. HB 1619 chooses the comfort of ideological purity over the discomfort of governing.
New Hampshire does not have a housing shortage because of renters, workers, or young people. It has a housing shortage because people in power keep protecting the right to exclude while refusing to lead.
HB 1619 is not about property rights. It is about absolving the state of responsibility for a problem it helped create and now refuses to solve.
If you cannot afford to live here, this bill explains why.
https://gc.nh.gov/bill_status/legacy/bs2016/billText.aspx?sy=2026&id=1794&txtFormat=html
