KEENE, NH – The City of Keene Ad Hoc Housing Stability Committee has release their final report and made recommendations to provide support for the city’s homeless community.

Assistant City Manager Rebecca Landry explained the report to City Council’s Planning, Licenses, and Development Committee Wednesday evening.

The committee outlined three desired outcomes they’d like to see achieved; homeless support and transition to permanent housing, increase in available housing and regional engagement in collaborative solutions. The committee then made numerous recommendations on how to best achieve those goals.

Housing Development

The City has already begun work on some of the recommendations of the committee on housing development, in the form on the Housing Resilience survey. The survey was released earlier this week by the city Community Development Department. Senior City Planner Mari Brunner explained the survey earlier this week on WKBK’s Open Mic program. The full discussion is available here. A link to the survey is available here.

The committee also recommended more multi family housing and accessory dwelling unit development, a review of zoning restrictions, and development incentives.

 Shelter Services

The committee recommends that there should be improvements to the city’s ongoing case management services. One example the committee provides is the difficulties a homeless person might have in providing documents such as a birth certificate or social security card.

Among others, the committee also recommended amending the residency as it pertains to housing, shelter, and other municipal responsibilities to make it more clear, tracking services, assistance to transition to permanent housing, homeless outreach services with trained professionals, support for those experiencing homelessness released from the hospital or jail, a safe parking program for those living in their cars, updating city code to allow the use of campers as transitional housing, and the installation of safe needle disposal containers.

Regional Coordination Opportunities

While the committee was meant to identify support that the city can provide to improve housing stability, it did come up with numerous recommendations for ways that the Monadnock Region can come together to find solutions.

Those recommendations include, in part, creating a regional housing development funds, further collaboration with the Southwestern Community Service Homeless Coalition group, and expanding opportunities for public transportation.

The PLD committee and Keene City Manager Elizabeth Dragon took some time to discuss the report, but were not making any amendments on the report. The committee also accepted public comment, most of which was from thankful members of the community. The issue of the minumum lot size in the rural district was brought up as it was one of the committee’s previous recommendations, with one resident in attendance speaking out in opposition. That matter is still being discussed in joint committee meetings with the planning board.

Some residents who spoke and Councilor Mike Giacomo brought up concerns about affordable housing actually being affordable for low-income families.

Councilor Raleigh Ormerod pointed out that he was expecting to see a section specifically outlining recommendations for pregnant women and children, and said he hopes to see that added at some point.

The report was accepted as informational. The full report is available in the meeting’s agenda.