Shaheen Tours the Dover Cottages Innovative, Energy-Efficient Affordable Housing Project
(Dover, NH) – Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) visited the Cottages at Back River Road in Dover, New Hampshire, to learn more about its innovative, energy-efficient housing project. The 44-unit affordable housing development is part of an effort to address New Hampshire’s ongoing housing shortage and ensure those who work in New Hampshire can find affordable housing for themselves and their families. Photos from today’s event can be found here.
“Addressing New Hampshire’s affordable housing crisis requires all of us working together—federal, state and local officials—to come up with innovative solutions to this complicated problem,” said Senator Shaheen. “It was great to tour the Cottages at Back River Road today because this project is a great example of what affordable and energy-efficient housing can look like in our communities if we just think outside the box.”
Shaheen is a leader in the Senate on efforts to tackle the housing affordability crisis, including by helping to ensure Granite Staters have the resources they need to thrive. Shaheen recently applauded more than $12 million in federal grants for New Hampshire organizations that provide housing assistance and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care Program.
In January, a Shaheen-led bipartisan bill to increase access to rural housing passed in the Senate. Shaheen has also helped introduced the Fighting Homelessness Through Services and Housing Act to help local governments reduce homelessness as well as a bicameral bill that would protect the rights of residents of manufactured housing communities.
Shaheen has also championed efforts to lower the cost of housing through modernizing building energy codes, and recently wrote an op-ed in the Union Leader urging the State of New Hampshire to adopt the latest building energy codes and access federal funding that she helped secure in the Inflation Reduction Act.
As a senior member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee and Chair of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee, Shaheen worked to include key provisions from her Strategy and Investment in Rural Housing Preservation Act in the FY24 Agriculture and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Shaheen’s standalone legislation would ensure that hundreds of thousands of low-income tenants in rural areas are able to maintain access to safe and affordable housing. Shaheen also secured over $22 million in Congressionally Directed Spending in the FY24 government funding bills to address New Hampshire’s housing, transportation and urban development needs.
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