Jim Shuff [04/08/2009]

To the editor: I read the op-ed piece by Keith Osmun in the Saturday, March 28, paper. I do feel that I have to expound on his sentiments.First, in defense of landlords, I have to say that through my experience as a real estate agent and a property manager that I, unfortunately, had a high rate of experiences where the young tenant absolutely trashed the rental. The damage deposit was not even close to covering the mess. Trying to get repayment though small claims court is an absolute joke! I was able to collect on one claim only because the fellow, eventually, wanted to buy a house in the valley and it showed up on his credit report. I was asked to give him a break so he could buy the house by another agent in my office. I told him that I had given him numerous breaks and I would settle for the money owed, which I did get. I did have to laugh at the comment that one person had been here for three years and had seen the good and the bad! Sweetie, try 40 years in the valley and go through no snow for two years in a row and not a mountain with snowmaking. Gas rationing when people could only get gas in their home state when the last number on their license plate determined the day they could buy gasoline. While we had an over-abundance of it here due to it being doled out by the amount the area used the year before! Try 20 percent interest rates when Jimmie Carter was president! The real estate collapse in the late 80s, when a lot of good hardworking people lost all that they had invested in the valley and the banks were pulling everyone's credit lines in the spring when business would normally stock up for the summer season. I had tongue-in-cheekly said that Conway had fenced off Cathedral Ledge in order to keep the business people from jumping like during the Depression. You ain't seen nothin' in those three years!Now, as far as the rest of the piece is concerned: I could not agree more with what Keith had to say. I have heard from numerous retirees here in Freedom that they do not want any families moving into town to add to the cost of our great little school. I have responded to them that with our class sizes of seven, eight and nine, and the current anomaly of 17, we could just about double the number of our students without much, if any, impact on our school budget unless we had an influx of special needs students. I was on our school board for eight years and had a reasonably good idea as to what the cost of more students could add, we are the fourth most costly school in the state now, based on our per pupil cost, adding more students would just drop that ratio. Freedom was just forced to revamp our snob zoning in order to allow work force housing as the state mandates you have to provide availability for all of your town's people. Of course, the areas that it is now allowed in are mostly developed and would have a very slim chance of anyone trying to put the housing in there. I have told these same folks that it should not be a crime to be a family as this is what a town is based around. I had said, in a previous letter to The Conway Daily Sun, that these people do not have an "investment" in the area. I am not talking about an expensive piece of property that they are paying taxes on, but children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews who have gone, or are going, to our schools. Or have relatives who are trying to live in this fantastic area. When my five children were going through the school systems, someone whose kids had graduated, or maybe didn't even have any youngsters, paid their taxes that covered the school system. My wife and I are now paying taxes that insure the current school-age youngsters are getting the same fine education that our kids have gotten.The Manchester Union Leader did two articles, a year or so ago, that focused on this very problem. In one article, the woman who was in charge of the N.H. Housing blamed the high cost of "workforce" housing on the planning boards in their attempt to keep families out. By insisting on large lots, underground utilities, paved roads, not allowing cluster housing or multiple units. These all put the cost of housing out of the reach of the young family! Sound familiar to anyone? In the other article they made the point that the prices of homes was being driven up by the folks from "away" selling their property for large prices being attracted to our quality of life here and finding the prices in New Hampshire very affordable and, yes, the overall low taxes. This, also, caused the young to move to North and South Carolina and areas where they could afford the American Dream because the prices on a home here was being driven out of their reach. Granted we have some issues with drugs, etc., but compared to what I have heard from friends yes I do have some, and family living in other states our problems are a lot less than what is happening in their towns. One pot head is too many as far as I am concerned! I would not have wanted to raise my five kids anywhere else than here in northern New Hampshire. My family has been in New Hampshire since the 1770s and, unfortunately, it is not the same self-reliant state that it was just a few years ago but it still is better than the other 49! It was mentioned in Keith's article that unless you were making more than $28,000 a year that you were a burden. It was true that years ago you could live on less in New Hampshire and do just as well as our counterparts elsewhere. That is not the case any longer. With all of the folks moving in and paying those exorbitant prices on a lot of questionably built homes, the cost to live here has skyrocketed and the property taxes along with them. The price of services had to raise to enable the proprietor to pay his people, his taxes and make a profit. Unfortunately, there are those who "remember the old days when they first came to the area" and are appalled at the prices they are being charged. We need the young families to provide our workforce and our small businesses. In that last Union Leader article, it stated that at the rate of older folks moving in and the young moving out, New Hampshire would be the oldest per capita state in country surpassing Florida in as few as five years. Not good, folks. I really would like to feel that by the time I hit the "home," we will have a young, educated workforce who are able to read my charts and give me the right pills! Something needs to be done to keep our young folks here!