See the full length film, “Communities & Consequences,” The Unbalancing of New Hampshire’s Human Ecology, & What We Can Do About It.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008
5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Recital Hall, Redfern Arts Center
Keene State College, Keene, NH

5:30 p.m. – 5:55 p.m. - Registration and refreshments
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. - “Communities & Consequences” film.
7:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Audience questions, answers and discussion session with expert panelists, facilitated by a moderator.
Panelists:
Peter Francese, Demographer, Author
Dick Couch, CEO Hypertherm
Curt Hiebert, CEO, Keene Housing Authority
Katie Cassidy-Sutherland, Architect, Daniel V. Scully Architects
Ryan Owens, Director, Monadnock Conservancy
Moderator: Steve Chase, Director of Environmental Advocacy Program, Antioch Univer., New England

Seating is Limited.
Please RSVP
352-1303 or info@keenechamber.com

NORMA LOVE and Sarah Palermo
Associated Press and Sentinel Staff

CONCORD - Towns are using delaying tactics to prevent developers from building moderate-priced housing for workers, witnesses told a Senate committee this week.

And one local housing advocate says the high price of land and overly restrictive planning and zoning laws in the Monadnock Region dissuade developers from even starting the process here.

Workforce housing - often a euphemism for low- to moderate-income housing - has the unearned reputation of degrading the appearance of its neighborhood, said Susan R. Thielen of the Keene-based Heading for Home Coalition on Wednesday.

“It’s a difficult term for most people to understand. … The sentiment is often ‘we don’t want those people,’ but they are … normal working people with families,” she said.

The coalition, run by local members of the business community, is trying to increase affordable work-force housing in the region.

On Tuesday, Senate President Sylvia Larsen testified “firefighters, bank tellers, any number of contributing workers … are having difficulty finding housing.”

Larsen acknowledged housing prices have dropped recently, but said workers still are having trouble finding places to live near their jobs.

She spoke for two bills that would create an expedited appeals process and take away some local discretion over development of multifamily structures.

Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, the prime sponsor of both bills, asked the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee to amend both to add definitions of “affordable” based on household income. She said she wanted the law to focus on making units available for families, not those age 55 and older.

“We are trying to make sure that everyone who lives here has a chance for decent housing,” she said.

Other witnesses said a 1991 state Supreme Court decision requires towns to provide reasonable opportunities for construction of so-called “work-force housing” but some communities set up so many hurdles that developers can’t afford lengthy court battles to go ahead with the projects. They said the delays increase the projects’ costs so they no longer would be affordable.

Michael LaFontaine of the N.H. Community Loan Fund and N.H. Nonprofit Housing Network said builders bypass those towns rather than waste money in court.

“If we want affordable housing, the option of allowing communities to say, ‘No, we don’t want it here,’ has to be taken off the table,” LaFontaine told the committee.

Obtaining money to build the projects isn’t as hard as finding suitable sites, LaFontaine said. The federal government, which provides much of their construction money, balks when problems arise with sites, he said.

“We simply don’t build in those towns,” he said.

According to Thielen of the local work-force housing coalition, many towns in the Monadnock Region are being bypassed in just such a way.

Because of the high price of land in the area, developers cannot build housing and sell it at a low enough price to be considered work-force housing - between $134,000 and $225,000 a unit, according to Thielen.

“If you look at the real estate ads around here, there is very little available in that level. … The housing market has dropped, but that doesn’t solve the problem. The prices don’t drop enough, and rents are very high here, too,” she said.

Even if developers were interested in building work-force housing in the area, planning and zoning regulations in many Monadnock Region towns are very restrictive and would allow residents and towns to delay the process, she said.

“If I decided I didn’t want work-force housing in my neighborhood, I could keep going back to my planning board with questions and issues,” Thielen said.

She added questions “should be raised - when they are relevant - but many times they are used as a weapon to keep work-force housing out of the neighborhood.”

Towns obeying the spirit of the law then question why builders concentrate on them, LaFontaine said.

Larsen said delays can cost builders the option to buy the land.

Ignatius MacLellan of the New England Housing Investment Fund said developers have to take into account the risk of a project. By expediting the appeals process, they have a fairer chance of breaking through local roadblocks, he said.

Elliott Berry said in his 32 years at N.H. Legal Assistance there have been three lawsuits over the issue. He said the small number is because the cost makes the projects unaffordable.

“If a town doesn’t want to host work-force housing, there is no reason in the world for them not to say, ‘Go ahead, sue us,’” Berry said.

Judy Silva of the N.H. Municipal Association said association members support the 1991 court ruling and putting its guidelines clearly in law. But she questioned whether the Senate bills go beyond that ruling.

Locally, current regulations seem to run against the grain of the original development of the region, Thielen said.

“This isn’t just about the fact that these people can’t afford a house: If we can’t have housing that’s affordable, we’re not going to have the medical people we need, and companies like Markem will not stay because they can’t find suitable housing for their people,” she said.

“If you tried to recreate a small town village, like Westmoreland or Chesterfield,” she said, “the laws we have on the books right now would not permit those uses. You couldn’t do it.”

Sarah Palermo can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or spalermo@keenesentinel.com.

Manchester – Foreclosures on home loans, led by troubled subprime mortgages, will dog the state for another 24 to 30 months, according to a new report by the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.

An average of 300 new subprime loan foreclosures a month will continue through next fall, according to the study, principal author of which, Dan Smith, is a senior research analyst with the housing agency.

During the two-year period beginning April 2007, the study estimated 6,700 subprime loans will go into foreclosure.

“It’s likely to get a little worse before it starts getting a little better,” Dean J. Christon, NHHFA executive director, said yesterday.

However, the study to be released today, http://www.nhhfa.org/rl_subprime.cfm, found that New Hampshire’s foreclosure rate is slightly better than the average for New England, the U.S. and the other New England states except Vermont.

The study found that during the April through June quarter this year, a subprime adjustable rate loan was more than 25 times more likely to enter foreclosure than a prime, fixed-rate loan.

“While subprime loan products account for only 12 percent of conventional mortgage loans, they account for 65 percent of foreclosure initiations,” the study says.

One such foreclosure will take place later this week, when the Goffstown home owned for 15 years by Ben and Kathleen Watson is scheduled for auction.

Kathleen Watson said the family refinanced in 2001 to a subprime loan, shortly after a workplace accident disabled her husband. The mortgage company has been helpful and recently converted the adjustable-rate loan to a 30-year fixed loan, she said.

But the family just can’t make the $2,200 monthly payment, said Watson, who recently was diagnosed with cancer. The subprime market has dried up, so the Watsons can’t refinance with easier terms. And prices have dropped so much that she can’t sell their 200-year-old colonial — along with its custom-made cabinets, windowseats, trim and floors — for the $300,000 that’s owed on the mortgage.

Her husband only recently returned to work.

“We have nowhere to go,” she said.

Subprime loans

To put the subprime loan issue into perspective, subprime loans represent about 36,000 loans out of a total of about 293,000 properties with loans in the state.

Although foreclosure will be a huge problems for individuals affected, their number is too small to have a significant effect on the overall marketplace, Christon said.

Prime loans still represent the vast majority of home loans in the state, more than four out of five, at 84.2 percent, in the second quarter this year. In the study, prime loans are broadly defined as those to borrowers with good credit, verifiable income, assets and liabilities, a down payment, occupying the home being purchased or refinanced, and where the loan amount is no more than $417,000.

Subprime borrowers are those with poor credit, large loan amounts and high debt-to-income ratios.

The growth in subprime loans came as median New Hampshire home prices rose 75 percent between 2000 and 2005, pushing affordability through a conventional mortgage out of reach for many.

The study showed the median home price ranged from 2 to 2.7 times median family income between 1992 and 2000 but shot up to 3.25 times median family income in 2003 and 3.7 times by 2005, when median family income was $68,000.

To meet the needs of subprime borrowers, mortgage companies began offering adjustable-rate mortgages with initially low rates, low documentation loans, 100 percent financing and negative amortization loans.

Subprime loans grew from 2 percent of New Hampshire mortgage loans in 1998 to 12 percent by the middle of this year. About half have adjustable rates.

“Between 2004 and 2007, the delinquency rate for prime fixed rate mortgages increases only slightly, while the delinquency rate for subprime adjustable rate loans more than doubled,” the study said.

The study projects the number of subprime loans will fall steadily, dropping from 36,300 in the second quarter of 2007 to about 17,900 in the second quarter of 2009.

The study showed home prices in New Hampshire fell 2.5 percent in mid-2007 from their peak in 2006. “Adding more properties to the inventory on the market will continue the downward pressure on prices,” the study said.

The pace of sales is down by more than 25 percent since the peak in 2004 and 2005 and housing inventory is now in excess of 13 months, the study said.

That weakening of the market means many folks who run into difficulty paying their mortgage can’t sell their way out as they might have two years ago.

Who’s hurt, who’s not

New Hampshire banks have been largely unscathed by subprime foreclosures, Gerald H. Little, president of New Hampshire Bankers Association.

Little said the new study confirmed the findings of a report on foreclosures prepared for the association by Brian Gottlob and released in August.

“New Hampshire banks did not participate generally in the subprime lending market so as far as their customers and portfolios, we’re not seeing any increase in foreclosures driven by those issues,” Little said. “In fact, most of the banks that I’ve been speaking with are telling me their foreclosure rates tend to be quite normal.”

“That has a lot to do with the fact that they tended to stick with very strong and traditional underwriting guidelines in the loans that they were originating; by and large they were underwriting loans to fairly predictable Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac secondary market standards.”

The new housing finance agency report showed there has been a slight uptick in foreclosures for traditional mortgages. However, only two out of every 100 prime fixed rate loans were delinquent in the second quarter of 2007.

Besides causing many homeowners to lose their homes, the wave of subprime defaults this year has taken down lenders like Atlanta-based SouthStar Funding LLC, which ceased mortgage lending operations in April, and caused major Wall Street institutions like Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers to write down billions of dollars in bad debt.

Stricter standards

New Hampshire Housing Finance Agency has stricter lending standards than many of the subprime lenders, limiting its ability to help those facing foreclosures on subprime loans.

“It’s difficult to structure a rescue product because many of these people are in way over their heads,” Christon said. “We continue to look at that, but we don’t have a product ready.”

He said it’s too early to gauge how successful a voluntary program announced by President Bush last week will be.

Christon urged borrowers to seek counseling at the first sign they are having trouble paying. “The earlier, the better,” he said.

Last week, New Hampshire Banking Department set up a mortgage hotline for consumers, 1-800-437-5991.

The department also continues Consumer Outreach sessions to review mortgage documents and answer questions.
Union Leader reporter Mark Hayward contributed to this report.

Vice-Mayor Scott Overton may seem like an unlikely advocate for affordable housing.

Since he joined the council last year, the local contractor has repeatedly raised concerns about the creation of a city-run housing land trust, supporting market-driven solutions to the affordable housing crisis.

But Overton says a recent proposal to adopt a set of mandatory energy-efficient building codes will push home prices further out of the grasp of the average homebuyer.

On the other hand, Councilmember Al White, who supports the energy codes, says the costs will be relatively minimal and are outweighed by the long-term benefits.

The proposed regulations are part of the 2006 international energy conservation codes that set standards for energy efficiency in buildings.

Overton and White disagree about a subset of the proposals written specifically for the Flagstaff region.

City staffers have proposed insulated garage doors, rainwater harvesting systems and dual waste plumbing systems.

Overton contends the building industry has already gone green, rattling off a long list of changes, from pressure-treated wood to insulated water heaters. He then stops mid-sentence and wonders whether he could buy single-pane window glass if he wanted to (which he doesn’t).

Using his own home he built five years ago as an example, Overton says it would have cost $15,000 more under the proposed energy codes. He doubts he’d recoup the cost of installing rain barrels and an insulated garage door, even if he lived in the house for 30 years.

White disagrees, saying the green codes must be weighed not only in terms of energy savings but for the overall sustainability of the community.

White was moved by the Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and says that measuring a cost only in dollars and cents is short-sighted. He sees fossil fuels as finite resources and predicts energy costs will continue to climb in the coming years.

“Look at the price of energy now — is it where it was five years ago?” White asked.

White said he is concerned that if portions of the energy code are made voluntarily, builders will continue to use cheaper, less-efficient materials.

He equates the codes under consideration to the decision to require selt belts to be installed in cars in the 1960s. They added a small cost to the price of the car, but they resulted in huge and lasting benefits because of the thousands of lives saved by wearing a seat belt.

The two-term councilmember pushed last year for the city to adopt the U.S. Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement, a pledge for the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Overton says he will push for portions of the code to be voluntary, especially the installation of water heaters no more than 30 feet away from kitchens and bathrooms.

“If a builder wants to do it, that’s great. But don’t force me to do it for every project I build,” says Overton.

He suggests builders will find ways to circumvent the new codes if they are too draconian. Some homebuilders might just install two water heaters in larger homes to comply with the proposed 30 foot limit rather than redesign existing home plans.

He said if the new code was applied to both new construction and remodeling jobs, centrally relocating a water heater from its existing spot in a garage would become a nightmare. He favors voluntary compliance with the new energy code for all remodels.

While White says the current proposal has room for compromise, he says most of the suggestions are practical and unlikely to add tens of thousands of dollars to the price of a new home.

When asked what would be too much for a new homeowner to pay for to support sustainability, White couldn’t offer a figure.

“It is like the description of obscenity,” says White. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

The council is expected to review the energy codes in the next 30 days.

Elizabeth Farrell
Keene Sentinel Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON — A N.H. congressman is working to make the financial services industry more green — not with greenbacks, but with green policy.

A House Financial Services Committee task force, headed by Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., and Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., is drafting legislation that would provide incentives to promote green policy to all of the industries under the committee’s jurisdiction — the banking, securities and insurance industries and much of federal housing.

“One of the things that will be the most important lasting benefit,” Hodes said, “is that we have started a conversation specifically targeted at the financial services community which wasn’t there before in a coordinated way.”

A major problem that arises is the upfront cost of loans and technologies as people move to build energy-efficient structures or attempt to update existing buildings with “green” technology. The goal of the task force is to create federal financial support by means of tax incentives and other measures that would not only reduce the cost of loans but also entice people to go “green.”

Dick Henry, director of the Jordan Institute in New Hampshire, a nonprofit organization focused on climate change issues, is working with Hodes and Perlmutter specifically on making buildings more energy efficient by reducing their fossil fuel emissions.

“Energy efficiency technologies are very well understood,” Henry said. “We know how to do this.

“Most people believe in saving money,” Henry said, and they can do that by becoming more energy efficient.

In New Hampshire, he said, almost 60 percent of homes and 41 percent of commercial buildings are heated with oil produced overseas.

If oil consumption becomes significantly reduced through “green” technologies such as better building insulation and solar power, Henry said, money would filter into local economies and America’s dependence on foreign oil suppliers may decrease.

“We can make significant progress in our use of fossil fuels and hopefully slow down climate change,” he said.

In a series of meetings, Hodes said, the task force gathered a “diverse group of players in the financial services community to give us their ideas, ranging from the banking associations, the insurance associations, the home builders associations, people in the construction business (and) people in the mortgage business; we covered the waterfront.”

The committee task force also is looking into energy efficiency and conservation in public housing and multi-family housing.

Hodes said he hopes the efforts of the task force and the resulting legislation, which isn’t expected until next year, will be felt at the local levels.

Barry Emerson, a mortgage loan officer at the Savings Bank of Walpole in Keene, said the bank had no consumer demand for “green” mortgages and therefore does not provide them, and it may be that people don’t know that much about “green” building.

“We’d always be open to considering something like that if the demand is there,” he said.

With legislation, that may change, Emerson said.

Elizabeth Farrell is a reporter in Boston University’s Washington news service.

Freeman Klopott
Keene Sentinel Staff

Ashuelot River Park in Keene is going to have a new neighbor — 83 condominiums.

After more than two years of back and forth between the Keene Planning Board and the developer, the Boston-based Mayo Group, the planning board gave the project a green light Monday night in a 6-3 vote.

The development has met stiff opposition from Ashuelot River Park officials and residents in the surrounding neighborhood, who have said the 75-unit, 52-foot-tall, T-shaped building that will sit as close as 60 feet from the park’s edge is too big for a neighborhood with mostly single-family homes, and will cast a dark shadow on its surroundings.

The plan also calls for four separate two-unit townhouses on the 3.5-acre lot that currently serves as an overflow parking area for Colony Mill Marketplace and as access to Ashuelot River Park.

The Mayo Group owns Colony Mill and The Center at Keene.

When the project was first presented to the planning board in June 2005, the board instructed the developer to find alternative parking spaces to meet a city ordinance requiring a minimum number of parking spots for each square foot of office, residential and commercial space.

It took the group 18 months to track down enough parking to replace the spaces on Ashuelot Street, and it has signed a lease with Public Service Co. of New Hampshire for a parking area south of the marketplace, the Mayo Group’s attorney, Thomas R. Hanna of Keene, said last month.

At their last meeting in August, planning board members indicated they would support the project if it was scaled down, but Monday night, the developer presented the plans without any changes.

And although most board members continued to say the building was too big for the neighborhood, the majority voted in favor of the plan because, board members said, it meets the city’s 19 building standards — covering everything from drainage to wetlands protection to landscaping — they must rely on when reviewing a project.

“Between the last meeting and this one, I hoped for a smaller footprint, it’s too large,” said board member Louise Zerba.

“Unfortunately, it meets the standards and as much as I’d like to not support this, I have to,” she said.

Mayor Michael E.J. Blastos — who sits on the planning board — and members Robert L. Mallat 3rd and Vicky Morton voted against the project.

“The massive wall is going to obliterate the beauty of Ashuelot Park and I think we have to take into consideration that Ashuelot Park is a natural gem,” Blastos said.

Board Chairman Peter D. Bradshaw said he understood the arguments against the project, but had to disregard the emotional appeals when casting his vote.

“I do have concerns about this (project), but as to the standards, I have to support it … I don’t like it,” Bradshaw said.

Also Monday night, the public hearing on the Marriott TownePlace Suites hotel proposed at the Valley Green Motel site on West Street was continued to the board’s next meeting on Oct. 22.

Sarah Palermo
Sentinel Staff

WINCHESTER — Though the Boston and Maine Railroad tracks by Franklin Mountain have been silent for some time, the property next door has been generating noise in recent months.

Rindge developer Robert Van Dyke has plans for what could be Winchester’s first planned residential development, on the property, and will appear before the planning board Monday night for a continuation of a public hearing.

The project, off Route 10 just south of Westport Road, could create 32 new condominium units and a community center run by a homeowner’s association.

Plans show the units clustered on roughly 17 acres of the property. The remaining land, about 28 acres, would be protected in a conservation easement.

Van Dyke’s proposal has met with opposition at previous public hearings, and some concerned residents have been trying to gather more support for Monday.

Cope T. Homan and Michael Towne own properties adjacent to the proposed development, and have been involved with circulating petitions and fliers around town, hoping to limit the size of the development.

“I’m really not the type of guy that says ‘Don’t develop any of your land,’ but I do not believe, with the buffers and wells and all, that there is enough buildable land for this,” Homan said.

Van Dyke could not be reached for comment.

The developer recently faced lawsuits from a group including residents in Jaffrey, the towns of Dublin and Marlborough and the Society for the Protection of N.H. Forests, for a development proposed near Mount Monadnock.

Margaret A. Sharra, Winchester planning board chairman, said the board was “not pleased” with delays in a five-lot subdivision project Van Dyke started on Route 119. The lots have been vacant, after most trees and brush were removed, for several months.

“We didn’t know at that time the things we could require in terms of vegetation to be left in place, or time limits on when it would have to be done,” she said.

“We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

More accustomed to working with smaller subdivisions, the planning board has hired a consultant from Stevens and Associates Engineering in Brattleboro, at Van Dyke’s expense, according to Sharra, to help members understand various surveys and studies of the property.

Sharra said the planning board has given the proposal serious consideration.

“This isn’t a two-lot subdivision and the board has been very careful, taking it slowly,” she said.

“We’re going to put in every reasonable protection for the town known to man.”

The Winchester Planning Board meets Monday at 7 p.m. at Winchester Town Hall on Richmond Road.

David Crary and RACHEL KONRAD
Associated Press

STAMFORD, Conn. — This isn’t how Simon and Jennifer Morris envisioned married life — sharing a charity-subsidized suite with four other hard-up families, abiding by a curfew and other rules that make them feel they are back in high school.

But for a working-class couple with two small children, trying to stick it out in their pricey hometown, housing options are few.

They abandoned their previous one-bedroom apartment when the rent rose from $1,200 to $1,425. Public housing has long waiting lists, so they moved into a shelter for dislocated families in a converted YMCA. The goal: Save enough money to move south and buy a home where costs are lower.

Around them, southwestern Connecticut’s Fairfield County is booming, due partly to an influx of investment banks. New housing projects routinely cater to the affluent.

“But everybody forgets the poor guy — the one who pumps your gas, who builds your hotel, who bags your groceries,” said Simon Morris, a 35-year-old carpenter. “The cost of living is driving us out.”

On both coasts of the United States, and many cities in between, hundreds of thousands of renters face comparable plights. The home mortgage crisis has received far more notice, but experts say the ranks of renters with dire housing problems are growing faster than the ranks of defaulting homeowners.

The Center for Housing Policy reports that the number of working-family renters paying more than half their income for housing has soared from 1 million to 2.1 million since 1997. Overall, advocacy groups say there are 9 million low-income renter households and only 6.2 million units they can reasonably afford.

“These people spend huge portions of their income on their housing,” said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “They don’t do things that we all would like to do — save money to buy a house, or for college or retirement. It’s a very day-to-day existence.”

In the Stamford area, a breadwinner needs to earn more than $30 an hour to afford the rent of a typical two-bedroom apartment, the highest figure in the nation. San Francisco ranks a close second — placing immense burdens on residents such as retiree Jose Morales.

Jose Morales, now 78, moved into a modest Victorian house in San Francisco’s working-class Mission District in 1965, shortly after emigrating from Peru. The rent was $80 a month, and he used leftover earnings to travel, buy nice clothes and eat well.

The rent is now $864 — a bargain by local standards but an unmanageable fortune for Morales. A former tennis instructor, he hurt his back last year and now relies entirely on a Social Security payment of $900 per month.

After paying the rent, he has $36 a month for expenses, including food and medications. He eats at city-sponsored senior centers, which charge $1.50 per meal, buys cut-rate produce from local bodegas and takes freebies from friends.

He never travels. He doesn’t own a television or radio. Among his few new clothes are tennis sweat shirts that pro shops sell him at a discount.

“I’m skin and bones — it’s a miracle I’m still here,” said Morales, who’s lost 20 pounds since last year and developed osteoporosis.

Stooped but sinewy, with wavy white hair and vintage Wilson sneakers, Morales has received numerous eviction notices from a landlord hoping to convert the two-unit flat into a luxury house. Morales refuses to leave; a court showdown is imminent.

“If more people don’t try to fight for their rights, then only rich people would live in this city,” he says.

Morales’ apartment is ramshackle. Door frames lean at improbable angles. Paint peels from walls, and a gaping crack splits the kitchen ceiling.

But the beautifully restored Victorian next door has golden cornices and fresh paint, and other nearby homes are getting high-end renovations. The neighborhood is rife with homeless people and illegal immigrants, but white-collar workers are moving in to commute to lucrative jobs in Silicon Valley or downtown.

Morales knows he might live better in Peru, where relatives could help and the cost of living is a fraction of California’s. But that would end his quest for American citizenship.

“I came here because the U.S. was a great country,” Morales said. “But housing has become a big injustice. … The story of my apartment is the story of my block and the story of my city and the story of all of California and the United States. You have to fight for it, and that’s what I will do — all the way to the end.”

Back in Stamford, Simon and Jennifer Morris have seen the city’s economic boom firsthand but, like many working-class families, haven’t shared its fruits.

Simon has irregular earnings as a carpenter; he can make $1,000 in a good week but often has no work at all. Jennifer, 27, worked in the past at local pet stores, but took time off this year following the birth of Layla, who’s now 7 months old. Their other child, Ethan, is 3.

Since February, they’ve been living in a “family emergency” shelter on the edge of downtown, part of a multipurpose social-service center run by St. Luke’s LifeWorks.

They have two bedrooms of their own, but share bathrooms and a combination kitchen-common room with four other families in a setup resembling a college dorm. There’s an 11 p.m. curfew on weeknights, no drinking or smoking in the unit, and a rotation of chores for each family.

“After living on your own, where you can come and go, you can feel a little claustrophobic,” Jennifer said. “You’ve got to coexist with everyone. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in high school.”

For Simon, the biggest downside is lack of privacy.

“There’s good days and bad days,” he said. “People notice when I’m grumpy, and sometimes I just want to be left alone.”

But overall, the Morrises are grateful. They can stay up to two years at the shelter, far longer than at many similar facilities, and they expect to be able to save money — for the first time in their married life — due to a cost-sharing formula which leaves them paying St. Luke’s about $250 a month.

If the savings materialize, they plan to head south, seeking a community where homes are within reach of a family like theirs.

“Stamford forgot about the poor people,” said Simon, who, like his wife, grew up here. “All these new apartments are great for the city, but some of the one-bedrooms are $3,000 a month. … It’s a businessman’s town now.”

The executive director of St. Luke’s LifeWorks, Rev. Dick Schuster, says Stamford and boomtowns like it should tackle the housing crisis out of self-interest.

“The people who are working in your restaurants, your fire and police departments, are all of a sudden finding they can no longer afford to live in the community where they work,” he said. “And those who do choose to live in the community become the true working poor, hanging on by their thumbs.”

USDA, Rural Development’s Direct Home Loan program is available to income eligible households to purchase an existing home, a site on which construct a dwelling, or a condominium in rural areas.

Rural Development will hold a workshop on the program on Wednesday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to noon at Keene Housing Authority, 831 Court St., Keene.

Laura Gibson, a Rural Development specialist, will answer questions about home buying and the USDA’s home-loan program.

For reservations or information, call Rural Development at 802-257-7878 extension 108.