NH Support Grows for Changing Zoning to Build Housing, Unless it’s in ‘My Neighborhood’

MANCHESTER, NH – Support to change zoning to help fix the housing crisis in New Hampshire has increased dramatically, but where affordable housing should be built and who will pay for it is a tougher nut to crack.

Saint Anselm’s Annual Statewide Survey of Voter Attitudes on Affordable Housing found that attitudes in the past year on whether single-family homes can be built on small lots is way up. Even more dramatic is the increase since 2020 in support of changing zoning to allow more housing.

Those surveyed also continue to agree that their own community needs more affordable housing to be built.

But when it comes to building it in their own neighborhood, agreement is lukewarm. It’s even less enthusiastic among the homeowners responding.

And agreement that public money should be used to build housing has dropped significantly since last year.

One massive attitude change since the first survey in 2020 is agreement with the statement, “NH towns and cities should change their zoning in order to allow more housing to be built.”

In 2020, only 29% of survey respondents agreed with this statement, with 42% disagreeing and 29% unsure. Disagreement grew the following year, to 52%, but so did agreement, to 39% as the “unsures” faded to 9%.

This year, agreement was 63%, with disagreement down to 32%.

The big pendulum swing was in 2022, when 52% agreed. That rose to 60% in 2023, and 61% in 2024 and 2025.

The change likely has much to do with the increase in discussion around zoning and how it affects the housing crisis. In 2022, the year of the big swing to agreement, 144 towns and cities out of 226 in the state that have zoning updated ordinances or made other changes, according to the state Office of Land use and Development. The following year, the New Hampshire Zoning Atlas was unveiled, a collaborative effort to make the big picture, as well as the details, of zoning regulations across the state more accessible to developers and the public.

Agreement on a specific zoning aspect – every town having an area where people can build single family homes on smaller lots – surged from last year, to 74% compared to 59% last year. The change also reflects more awareness, with the amount of people who were unsure shrinking for 11% to 5%. Disagreement was 21% this year and 30% last year.

Housing in ‘my community, neighborhood’

While support for the general questions of changing zoning and allowing homes on smaller lots is growing, survey respondents are more conflicted when their backyard is involved.

Some 73% agreed this year that “my community needs more affordable housing to be built,” an increase from 63% in 2020, the first year of the survey, but down from 78% last year.

When “my community” is changed to “my neighborhood,” there’s less support. This year, 61% of voters surveyed agreed that their own neighborhood needs more affordable housing to be built, similar to last year’s 62%.

But when that response was narrowed down to homeowners in the survey, agreement dropped to 58%. That’s one of the lowest percentages in support of housing being built in the survey, though it’s up from 52% in 2023, to 57% in 2024 and 2025.

The lowest percentage of support is in answer to whether the state budget should include more public investment to build affordable housing – 57.4% agreed, down from 64% last year. Disagreement was 38.6% this year, up from 33% last year.

Respondents age 65 and older were slightly more supportive of using public money to build affordable housing, with 65% agreeing and 31% disagreeing.

Other survey results were:

• Allow surplus state-owned land that is no longer needed for government purposes and is not designated for conservation or recreation to be used for housing development: 79% agree, 16% disagree, 3% unsure.
• Allow people to convert large single-family housing into four apartments if they have water and sewer service: 66% support, 31% oppose, 3% unsure.
• Allow nonprofits and churches to build affordable housing on their property as part of their nonprofit mission: 66% support, 29% oppose, 5% unsure.
• The state should do more to encourage municipalities to remove barriers to housing development: 62% agree 32% disagree, 6% unsure.
• New Hampshire should do more to prevent housing development and keep the state the way it is: 36% agree, 60% disagree, 4% unsure. In 2020, fewer respondents agreed with this statement – 31%, with 46% disagreeing and 23% unsure.

Saint Anselm didn’t provide comparisons for all years, or breakdowns of different voter sectors for all categories. St. Anselm College’s Survey Center polled 1,293 registered New Hampshire voters from Aug. 25 to 28. The survey has an overall margin of sampling error of +/- 2.7% with a confidence interval of 95%, the college said.