Why Isn't NH Population Booming? (Atkinson, Benton: colleges, income, income tax)
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To answer OP's question -- Overall many small towns have their maximum carrying capacity (density) constrained by geography (mostly due to hills and shallow bedrock), which helps drive the lack of town services like water mains, sewers, town trash pickup, etc.
My town has minimal traffic, and zero traffic lights. Helps keep taxes down.
We'd literally need to tear down much of what makes the town unique and desirable in order to be able to accommodate higher population density. For example the roads are constrained by existing housing stock, first step would be to condemn those homes (some dating to colonial era) to widen the main roads.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KCZ
Yup. We got a Grade of F for gun law strictness, but the gun death rate is well below the national average. So we're unsafe. Out-of-staters often don't understand that people in northern New England hunt and fish to put food on the table.
Like many towns, the town police station turns out the lights at 4:30pm and yet if you look at town-level homicide data the rate here is listed as "0*" with a footnote of "too low to calculate"
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Originally Posted by jdhpa
Make annual gun training a requirement to hold a NH driver's license.
Not just driver's license -- make it a condition of resident ID and a prerequisite for voter registration.
Also acceptable would be a recently checked-in deer or turkey tag.
You're asking the wrong question. The question is how can we keep it from growing and transforming our state into another Masspit or New Jersey? We don't need people that ruined other states to come up here and ruin ours. More people translate into more development (less beauty), more taxes, and less freedom.
If NH merely tries to prolong its current state as long as possible it will fall. And isn't that already happening. The Live Free or Die State voted for Biden if I'm not mistaken. Why is it that Republicans/Conservatives can't come up with a positive vision for the future?
I agree that more development means less beauty. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Throughout history, development often meant building something more beautiful. Why is this so hard to imagine, and carry out, today?
One could argue with more people you can start to build interesting town centers where people can walk. This would make the town more quaint, not less. Instead of having people speed up country roads, you can have a nice little town center where families walk about and walk to their home. If it's done respectful to citizens, you don't need traffic lights, because cars will go slow, there will be stop signs, and people can walk about as they please.
So am I understanding this right that the population doesn't increase more because NH purposefully makes development of land and property and real estate onerous to stop it from happening?
If NH merely tries to prolong its current state as long as possible it will fall. And isn't that already happening. The Live Free or Die State voted for Biden if I'm not mistaken. Why is it that Republicans/Conservatives can't come up with a positive vision for the future?
I agree that more development means less beauty. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Throughout history, development often meant building something more beautiful. Why is this so hard to imagine, and carry out, today?
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebruiser500
One could argue with more people you can start to build interesting town centers where people can walk. This would make the town more quaint, not less. Instead of having people speed up country roads, you can have a nice little town center where families walk about and walk to their home. If it's done respectful to citizens, you don't need traffic lights, because cars will go slow, there will be stop signs, and people can walk about as they please.
NH didn't vote for Biden. The people that moved here from elsewhere voted for Biden.
How often in the past 75 years has development produced more beauty? It's pretty damn rare that actually happens. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and people here have their own visions for the future. The problem seems to be that people from elsewhere want to impose their visions for the future to achieve their idea of quaintness or beauty or safety or modernization or whatever, which always results in higher tax bills for current residents. Just because people from MA or NY or wherever would like to change a town so it has a center where they can walk, it doesn't mean current residents can pay for that. A third thing that most out-of-staters don't understand is rural poverty.
geography makes town water mains impractical, and where would the town magically get this water from?
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebruiser500
So am I understanding this right that the population doesn't increase more because NH purposefully makes development of land and property and real estate onerous to stop it from happening?
Each town is allowed to set their own zoning, within certain state-mandated constraints. Some towns (or their residents) choose growth, others do not.
Many towns are constrained by other factors which make it difficult to "develop". Building more houses or dense "workforce housing" in my town would not just ruin character, but also ruin the aquifer and drive away residents when their deep wells fail and they are forced to spend big bucks on water delivery service.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebruiser500
isn't that already happening. The Live Free or Die State voted for Biden if I'm not mistaken.
For sleepy joe, or against angry don?
Looking at a less personality-driven race, progressive Dan Feltes harvested barely a third of the votes cast despite running on the same ballot as Biden.
Well there ya go. It's this nasty attitude. It's off-putting and not conducive to population growth. And it's rampant in NH.
<snip>
It may be rampant but it works.
New Hampshire's motto is "Live free or die!"
That "nasty attitude" is keeping New Hampshire free.
No sales tax.
No income tax.
No restrictive knife laws.
Fireworks are legal here.
Car insurance not required.
No restrictive firearms laws.
Hunting permitted on Sundays.
Hunting with suppressors permitted.
"Live free or die!" is not just a slogan, its a lifestyle.
That "nasty attitude" is keeping New Hampshire free.
No sales tax.
No income tax.
No restrictive knife laws.
Fireworks are legal here.
Car insurance not required.
No restrictive firearms laws.
Hunting permitted on Sundays.
Hunting with suppressors permitted.
"Live free or die!" is not just a slogan, its a lifestyle.
The zoning New Hampshire uses, which people are talking about in this thread, that is used to stop development and control what people do with their land, is arguably more invasive, and a clearer case of central planning, than anything listed above. Probably only with the exception of strong gun rights which are awesome.
Last edited by thebruiser500; 04-27-2022 at 09:42 PM..
Back to the original question - why isn't NH population booming?
Deaths in NH now outnumber births.
NH relies on in-migration in order to grow population.
NH is about 90% white and those families tend to be smaller.
The population growth is mainly in the area between the Seacoast, 101, and Rt. 3.
Lack of high paying jobs state wide creating a reliance on MA for jobs.
Weather - it's not easy living too far north.
Lack of infrastructure to fuel growth.
On the other side, NH may see greater population growth with more remote workers but that comes with issues such as school population growth in Waterville Valley, Conway as more people moved to their vacation homes full time.
The zoning New Hampshire uses, which people are talking about in this thread, that is used to stop development and control what people do with their land, is arguably more invasive, and a clearer case of central planning, than anything listed above. Probably only with the exception of strong gun rights which are awesome.
NH gives tax breaks to those with more than 11 acres of land in "current use". A landowner gets a significant tax break for not developing their land. Yes, it stops development but that's what "current use" is supposed to do. It's not about "control" it's about freedom by CHOICE. There are many places within NH which have relaxed, permissive zoning regulations.
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geography makes town water mains impractical, and where would the town magically get this water from?
