Mitchell Scacchi is a Policy Analyst at the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy. He earned his M.A. and B.A. in political science from the University of New Hampshire. Email: [email protected].
School choice in New Hampshire has become increasingly popular, with more and more Granite State families accessing Education Tax Credit (ETC) scholarships and Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) to shop the best learning environments for their children in the state’s growing educational marketplace. But as the program becomes more popular, the governmental instinct to impose controls […]
The NH Coalition to End Homelessness (NHCEH) recently released The State of Homelessness in New Hampshire Annual Report 2022, and the results are understandably concerning. According to annual Point-in-Time (PIT) counts, statewide homelessness grew from 1,382 people in 2019 to 1,605 in 2022, a 16% increase. While sheltered homelessness (people living in shelters) increased by […]
Editor’s note: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, educational entrepreneurship has boomed nationwide. New Hampshire has experienced significant growth in the number of entrepreneurs and innovators willing to take on the daunting challenge of building a new educational ecosystem. This year, we’re highlighting some of the people and organizations that have begun expanding the education marketplace in […]
Most of New England has some work to do to keep up with New Hampshire’s status as the nation’s freest state. In the latest edition of the Cato Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States report, while New Hampshire finishes first in overall freedom (an index of personal and economic freedom), the other five New England […]
Shopping in tax-free New Hampshire this Thanksgiving weekend would save New Englanders between $31–$40, based on projected spending during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to an annual survey conducted by Deloitte Consulting LLP, consumers plan to spend an average of $567 over the course of Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year. That’s a […]
The Merrimack County Superior Court this week dismissed a lawsuit brought by Deb Howes, president of the American Federation of Teachers-New Hampshire (AFT-NH), challenging the constitutionality of New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account (EFA) program, the state’s largest school choice program. Howes challenged the EFA program on three grounds: (1) The EFA program violates Part II, […]
As New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) gain popularity, confusion about how the money is spent continues to cloud public discussion. Contrary to some of the rhetoric used to describe the program, EFA funds are not exclusively reserved for covering tuition costs at private schools. A breakdown of authorized EFA spending in the last fiscal […]
It seems like it’s every week that there’s some new concerning statistic about the New Hampshire housing market. This time it comes from CoreLogic’s U.S. Home Price Insights. At 9.4%, New Hampshire saw the highest home price growth in the country from August 2022 to August 2023. The top 10 states with the highest year-over-year […]
Just five days after we published our review of what happens when states ban or levy high taxes on tobacco products, reporting out of California confirms what we already knew: Bans and high taxes fuel black markets. California banned the sale of menthol cigarettes in 2021. And needless to say, it hasn’t gone according to […]
Manchester is often seen as the center of multifamily housing in the state, while smaller cities and surrounding towns are viewed as less hospitable. But Manchester’s land-use regulations are unusually hostile to one relatively popular form of multifamily housing: duplexes. Two-family housing is permitted on only 18% of Manchester’s buildable area, according to the New […]