New Hampshire has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country. But a new national analysis says a growing piece of that poverty comes down to one thing builders deal with every day: the cost of housing.
The Pew Charitable Trusts published the analysis Sept. 29. University of Oxford professor Zachary Parolin examined 2023 housing costs and identified the states where the largest share of poverty is due to high rent. New Hampshire ranked 10th, behind Hawaii, California, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut and New York.
The New Hampshire numbers
Pew's full report uses the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for local living costs. By that measure, New Hampshire's poverty rate was 8.7% in 2022-2023, well below the 12.6% national average. Take out the adjustment for housing costs and the rate falls to 7.3%. That means about 16% of the state's measured poverty traces to housing costs rather than low incomes. For child poverty, the share is about 22%.
The report found real incomes for New Hampshire's lowest earners, those at the 10th percentile, grew just 12% from 1985 to 2023, the third-slowest rate of any state. Real fair market rents grew 34% over the same period, nearly three times as fast. The state's housing stock grew 65% between 1980 and 2020, near the national pace, Pew said. Meanwhile, real incomes at the 90th percentile grew 102%, the fifth-fastest rate in the country. Pew also found that housing-driven increases in the poverty threshold absorbed roughly 68% of the growth in federal SNAP food aid to New Hampshire from 1989 to 2023.
A 20% drop in local rents would lower the average New Hampshire poverty threshold by $3,143 per person and by $3,908 for families with children, according to the report. Overall poverty would fall from 8.7% to 7.1%, and child poverty from 7.5% to 5.9%. The report says the state's cost pressure is concentrated in the southern tier near the Massachusetts border.
New Hampshire Public Radio's Jackie Harris reported Oct. 7 on what that looks like locally. Jeremy Lamb, who works at the Cross Roads House shelter in Portsmouth, told NHPR he gets daily calls from people looking for a bed.
"I'm noticing more and more that there are a lot of younger and a lot of older folks [calling to get on the shelter waitlist]," Lamb said.
Lamb recently worked with a client who became homeless at 83 after falling behind on rent. Stacy Zemon, 66, of Peterborough spent three months in a Keene shelter in 2026 while sending out housing applications before finding a rent-subsidized apartment she could afford on Social Security, NHPR reported.
NHPR noted New Hampshire Housing's estimate that renters need to earn $80,440 a year to afford the statewide median rent of $2,011 a month.
Nick Taylor, director of Housing Action NH, traced the shortage back to the Great Recession.
"A lot of builders [left] the workforce, and we never picked back up," Taylor told NHPR. "So you saw demand increase without supply increasing."
Taylor said that even though construction has picked back up in recent years, decades of under-building still keep housing out of reach for many people. "If folks can't leave the rental market and want to, that just keeps that pressure on the rental market," he said.
Pew's analysis offers solutions, NHPR reported, including making zoning less restrictive for multifamily and single-family homes, revising permitting processes and providing more financing for housing developments. Researchers wrote that new supply combined with public assistance can ease the crisis.
Why it matters for Contractors
Pew's argument rests on supply, which puts the building trades at the center of the conversation. The analysis says removing regulatory barriers increases supply and lowers rents, and it points to Austin, Texas, and Minneapolis, where inflation-adjusted rents fell about 20% after reforms.
For New Hampshire contractors, Taylor's point lands close to home: builders who left the industry after 2008 never fully came back, and the shortage followed. The recommended fixes, looser zoning for multifamily and single-family homes, faster permitting and more financing, are the same changes that would open up more jobs for builders and the subcontractors who work with them.
Taylor's comments also make workforce part of the housing story, not just zoning and financing. Contractors who are recruiting and training new workers will be better able to take on added work if those policy changes move forward.