Conservation and housing clash in Newfields project
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Andrea Bulfinch
Portsmouth Herald
NEWFIELDS — While the conservation of the Piscassic Greenway was a celebrated accomplishment for the town of Newfields and others involved, it leaves in its shadow the issue of affordable housing.
The 327-acre greenway, which was to be converted into an 89-unit housing development, was secured as protected land in April 2006 with the help of U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the Rockingham Land Trust, the Trust for Public Land and the Town of Newfields. The land is now secured for wildlife habitat, water protection and public recreational use.
This parcel of land is just one in the area that is no longer eligible for use to build affordable housing.
According to Peter Francese, director of demographic forecasts for the New England Economic Partnership, this poses a great problem.
“It’s going to be a sad day when they close the elementary school,” he said.
Francese’s concern stems from the declining number of children in the town, he said. A decline that, without affordable housing available to those who need it, will continue.
Francese said the idea of building 89 homes on more than 300 acres of land was “insanity,” and that it was not good for the environment. In this case, he said, preserving the land was a good thing, but that a better idea would have been to use only part of the land for homes and conserve as much as possible. This scenario, he said, is a “colossal waste of land.”
He gave the example of using 45 acres of the land for cluster housing, building as many homes as would have been on the full parcel of land, and preserving the rest, creating affordable housing and a park at the same time.
Cliff Sinott, executive director for the Rockingham Planning Commission, said the land preserved at the Piscassic Greenway would not have been a location for affordable housing to be built, due to the high cost of the land.
But land conservation and affordable housing do not have to compete with one another, according to Sinott.
What would help, he said, is not building houses on such expensive land, but establishing a downtown village, or “density” area.
But as far as conservation wiping out any needed land for creating affordable housing, Sinott said development can only be adjusted up to a certain point.
“You can’t remove all the development potential,” he said.