Ending mandatory vehicle inspections would save Granite Staters tens of millions a year

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In a cost-cutting move, New Jersey ended its annual auto safety inspections in 2010. State officials cited a lack of evidence that inspections improved public safety. 

“If we’re going to invest millions of taxpayer dollars year after year in a program, then it is essential that we be able to justify the expense and effectiveness of said program,” then-Motor Vehicle Commission Chief Administrator Raymond Martinez said. “With a lack of conclusive data, and the current fiscal crisis, we cannot justify this expense.”

Eight years later, the journal Contemporary Economic Policy published a study on the effects of ending New Jersey’s inspections. It concluded that “discontinuing the law resulted in no significant increase in either fatalities due to car failure or the percentage of accidents due to car failure.”

The lead author, a professor of health economics, noted that technological advancements in the seven decades since the passage of New Jersey’s inspection law had produced enormous gains in auto reliability. With cars dramatically safer than in past decades, states have been rethinking their safety inspection requirements. 

New Hampshire is one of a dwindling number of states that requires an annual safety inspection, which makes New Hampshire’s law one of the most burdensome in the country. 

Lawmakers have tried for years to abolish the mandate, citing the cost burden on drivers and the shortage of evidence that inspections improve public safety. But in years past, auto dealers and independent mechanics have persuaded legislators to continue mandating what is a lucrative income stream for them. 

That could change this year. The House on Thursday approved by a wide margin (212-143) House Bill 649, which would lift the safety and emissions inspection mandates from state law. 

The rising quality of automobiles is reflected in vehicle fatality data. Motor vehicle fatalities per 100,000 people peaked in 1937, according to data compiled by the National Safety Council. By raw numbers, U.S. motor vehicle fatalities peaked in 1972. 

Research on the effectiveness of auto safety inspections is mixed but predominantly finds that inspections do not produce significant improvements in safety.

  • A study just last year of Danish auto inspections and crashes published in the journal Traffic Safety Research “found no association between periodic inspections and crash risk in separate analyses of each vehicle type. There were no specific effects of inspections of older vehicles aged 10 years or more.” It also noted that “based on previous research, the positive effects on crash risk are questionable.”
  • A 2021 Spanish study reviewed existing research on inspections and crashes, finding only one study producing “a significant association between road crashes and the absence of a valid vehicle inspection certificate,” while “the other studies showed either a small reduction in crash rates (around 9%), no association, or a higher crash rate in vehicles with more inspections.”
  • A 2015 Government Accountability Office report could find no causal relationship between safety inspections and accidents. “Despite the consensus among the state inspection program officials we interviewed that these programs improve vehicle condition, research remains inconclusive about the effect of safety inspection programs on crash rates. There is little recent empirical research on the relationship between vehicle safety inspection programs and whether these programs reduce crash rates. What is available has generally been unable to establish any causal relationship.”
  • North Carolina commissioned a study of its annual auto inspection program, and the 2008 report concluded that “no evidence exists showing the safety inspection program is effective” despite North Carolinians spending $141 million a year on inspections.
  • A 1999 study in the Southern Economic Journal “found no evidence that inspections significantly reduce fatality or injury rates.”
  • A 2023 study published in the Journal of Transportation Engineering did find 5.5% fewer highway fatalities in states that had safety inspections, but this result stands out as strikingly different from the norm. 

As many researchers have noted, cars today are very different from those made in the 1930s, ‘50s, ‘70s, or even ‘90s. Fifty years ago, it was common to see broken down cars along U.S. roadsides every day. In 2025, a disabled vehicle is a fairly uncommon sight. 

The massive advances in automobile reliability and safety have rendered state safety inspections difficult to justify. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration lists vehicles as the critical factor in just 2 percent of motor vehicle accidents. And even then it takes care to note that “none of these reasons implied a vehicle causing the crash.” 

There were 1,383,700 vehicles registered in New Hampshire in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, which collects vehicle data. At between $30-$50 per vehicle, inspections alone likely cost Granite Staters approximately $41.5 million to $69.2 million a year. That doesn’t count any repair work required to pass inspection.

All of this is to comply with a law that has not been shown with confidence to produce measurable improvements in motorist safety.  

Given the massive expenses imposed on motorists and the negligible gains, if any, ending mandatory inspections could be expected to generate a significant financial savings for New Hampshire motorists.  

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Addressing excessive residential lot size regulations

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Imagine that you’ve just graduated high school or college, you’ve landed an entry-level job, and you need a car. What’s on your car shopping list?

It’s your first job, so you’re probably looking for a cheap car, and smaller cars are cheaper to buy and maintain than larger ones.

So you start shopping. To your surprise, you find zero small cars for sale. It’s all full-size SUVs and pickups as far as the eye can see. You ask a salesman where to find the coups and sedan.  

Oh, he’d love to sell you a small car, he says, but he can’t. Every town in the area has a “minimum chassis size” ordinance. They require every vehicle to be at least 16 feet long by 6.5 feet wide. 

But you don’t want a Chevy Tahoe, you protest. You don’t need a big SUV. You don’t have a big family, or even a dog. You just want a small hatchback that’s good on gas. Why would the town make you buy a larger car than you need?

Oh, that’s easy, he says. Town character. 

It’s a family community. If the town let dealers sell small cars, why, young, single people might move there. The character of the town could change. People like the town just the way it was when they moved in. So, no small cars.  

Absurd, right?

Well, replace automobiles with housing in that tale, and you’ve got the status quo throughout New Hampshire. 

To quote the New Hampshire Zoning Atlas created by St. Anselm College, “it is hard to find land to build small homes or starter homes in an economically viable way.” Only 15.7% of the buildable area in New Hampshire allows homes to be built on less than one acre of land with less than 200 feet of frontage.

These mandated large lots are rarely directly related to public health or safety, which makes them legally suspect.

RSA 674:16 grants local governments the power to use zoning “for the purpose of promoting the health, safety, or the general welfare of the community….” 

“General welfare” is vague, but surely it doesn’t include raising the cost of buying a home in town.

When creating a minimum lot size mandate, there are two questions to ask.

  1. What public health, safety or welfare problem does this solve?
  2. How much land does a home require?

The answer to the first question most often is: none. This is especially true in municipalities served by water and sewer infrastructure. A tiny home on a tiny lot harms no one. Small house lots harm no one. 

Large lot size mandates do harm people. They raise the cost of land and homes, pricing many people out of the housing market.

The answer to the second question is: not much.

Two bills in the Legislature would fix lot size inflation by prohibiting local governments from mandating large lot sizes that aren’t directly connected to public health or safety metrics. House Bill 459 and Senate Bill 84 vary in the details, but both would tie minimum lot sizes to legally justifiable standards.

SB 84, facing a Senate vote this week, would cap minimum lot sizes at 1.5 acres in areas with no municipal water or sewer service, one acre in areas with municipal water, and 0.5 acres in areas with municipal sewer service. 

Minimum lot sizes that are larger than 0.5 acres for properties with water and sewer hookups, or larger than basic environmental standards for single-family homes based on soil conditions, serve only one purpose: to raise housing costs. And in that they are extraordinarily successful. 

Large minimum lot sizes have been shown to increase lot sizes, home sizes and home prices. And these government-created price increases spill over into neighboring jurisdictions. 

Tighter regulations spread through adjacent municipalities in a zoning arms race that reduces home construction and raises prices throughout states and regions. That’s a big reason why legislators are intervening. The cumulative effect of these local restrictions is a statewide housing shortage.

Maine has roughly the same population as New Hampshire (1.405 million vs. 1.409 million). Yet Maine has almost 106,000 more housing units than New Hampshire does. As a consequence, its median home value from 2019-2023 was $100,000 lower than New Hampshire’s. As of this January, the median sale price for a home in Maine was $412,200 vs. $493,800 in New Hampshire. 

The median size of a home in New Hampshire is 1,869 square feet, according to Federal Reserve data. The median size in Maine is 1,669 square feet. 

It shouldn’t be harder to buy a smaller, more affordable home in New Hampshire than in Maine. Ending the abuse of lot size ordinances would be an effective way to begin fixing this disparity. 

There is huge market demand for smaller homes on smaller lots. In places where these options are legal, developers have responded. Census data show a decline in new home sizes since 2022, as the chart below from real estate website Keeping Current Matters shows.

In 2013, 36% of new homes in the United States were built on a lot of 7,000 square feet or less. By 2023, it had risen to 46%, according to U.S. Census figures. 

The average size of a newly built home is slowly shrinking. It has fallen from 2,535 square feet in the second quarter of 2022 to 2,375 square feet in the second quarter of 2024. 

The demand for smaller homes is clear, and the market is trying to respond. But municipalities are slowing the transition, particularly in the Northeast. 

In the South, 53% of homes sold in 2023 were smaller than 2,400 square feet. In the West and Midwest it was 60%. In the Northeast it was just 46%. That’s not entirely caused by zoning, but zoning is a factor. 

Nationally, 26% of home buyers want a home less than1,600 square feet, but only 16% of single-family homes started in 2023 were that small, according to the National Association of Home Builders. 

There’s a mismatch between demand and supply, and that mismatch is driven in large part by minimum lot size requirements. Smaller legal lot sizes would facilitate the creation of the smaller homes that consumers demand. 

In many places, including most of New Hampshire, it’s literally illegal for builders to construct a home on a lot smaller than an acre.

Minimum lot sizes that exceed basic public health and safety standards artificially reduce the supply of housing, drive up home prices, separate families by forcing the elderly and young to move out of town, worsen sprawl and traffic congestion, and encourage overdevelopment by forcing builders to develop much larger footprints to house people who could live comfortably on smaller lots.

Smaller lots allow for smaller, more affordable homes. Municipalities have shown that if they have the power to use minimum lot sizes to prohibit small homes on small lots, they will. The abuse of this power has created numerous economic problems for New Hampshire and has helped to put the classic American starter home out of reach of young Granite Staters. 

If the state wants to prevent these abuses from continuing, the quickest option is to limit the power of local governments to commit them.

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Why NH might make limited social drinking legal in some public places

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The American Prohibition Museum is not in Chicago, but tucked into an old brick building in Savannah, Ga., just off Congress Street. A $29.91 ticket to the museum comes with a drink at the adjacent speakeasy. In most American cities, that would be a perfect finish to a trip through the Prohibition era. Not in Savannah. The garnish on the cocktail is what you can do with that drink after it’s poured. 

Old fashioned or martini in hand, you can legally step outside and stroll through the historic district. Not even Elliot Ness can stop you.

Savannah allows outdoor drinking in its historic district, provided the drinks are in 16-oz. plastic cups. The city promotes this social perk. It’s an attraction for tourists, including Granite Staters who can pop down on a cheap flight. 

Like the rest of the original 13 colonies, New Hampshire has plenty of historic districts and beautiful downtowns. But it doesn’t have a single social district where outdoor drinking is allowed. 

That could change this year. 

Since the pandemic, unreasonable alcohol regulations have been lifted in states across the country. The changes helped boost local economies and keep bars and restaurants open. These deregulation efforts were so popular that states have looked for other laws to relax. The hottest trend is to allow local governments the option of creating social districts where drinking in public is allowed under certain tightly regulated conditions. 

Rep. Bill Boyd, R-Merrimack, has introduced House Bill 467 to let local governments create social districts in New Hampshire. Boyd modeled his bill on legislation that North Carolina passed in 2021.

Before North Carolina adopted its social district law, the foothills city of Hickory was working to attract more business to its downtown core by legalizing outdoor drinking just in that zone. In 2019, the city applied for and got what was called a common area entertainment permit. It was not quite what city leaders had in mind.

The city had to get a state liquor license, which meant that city staff had to pass background checks and get fingerprinted. The city had to be the license holder. When the city hosted its own events, drinking was restricted to the roped-off footprint of the event space. 

This tiny alcohol containment zone reduced the economic benefits of the event. The whole point was to draw people downtown to patronize businesses. But because people couldn’t carry their drinks across the square, they’d often stay in the roped-off area the entire time, then go home, city Business Development Director Dave Leonetti said in an interview.  

After the social district law passed, Hickory created one for its downtown in 2023. Traffic to the downtown core is up 16.8 percent over the last three years, Leonetti said. The social district has helped turn downtown into a regional magnet for shoppers and diners. 

With the social district, people come downtown to hang out, not just to shop. Locals come just to sit outside and play cards or meet friends and pop into local shops and restaurants. The creation of the social district itself has changed the way people interact with the downtown area. It’s increased foot traffic, sociability and business. 

In fact, business activity is expanding beyond the old downtown district. Restaurants have opened in warehouse buildings just outside of the traditional business area, increasing economic activity and tax revenue for the city.

“It’s been a great boon for downtown,” Leonetti said.

And the city has seen no increase in trash or crime downtown since the district’s creation, according to Leonetti. 

A few hours up I-40, Raleigh’s nightlife and entertainment district attracts a lot of visitors. But city leaders wanted more foot traffic in its downtown core. So the city created a social district there, like Hickory did. 

The Raleigh Downtown Alliance did a survey to gauge the popularity of the social district. Rachel Bain, hospitality and nightlife planner for the City of Raleigh, said “it was the best survey response they’d ever received. It got a higher rating than the Christmas tree lighting.”

The social district has helped to increase in foot traffic and business to the downtown, but it’s led to no increase in crime, intoxication or littering, Bain said.

At least eight states have adopted statutes allowing municipalities to create districts where it’s legal to drink alcoholic beverages in public spaces. The laws typically restrict open containers to materials other than glass, usually plastic cups. Stickers or other labels are required, and drink limits are enforced. Drinks cannot be carried outside of social district boundaries, which are marked with prominent signs. Maps of the district boundaries are posted online, and businesses can decide whether they allow customers to enter with outside drinks. 

Concerns about trash and public intoxication have not materialized, Leonetti said, because the regulations discourage both and the crowd that is attracted to a social district is not the crowd that wants to stumble down Bourbon Street at 3 a.m. 

“Before the social district, it was illegal to brown bag your bottle of liquor, to throw everything in a Yeti cup, to be drunk in public,” he said. “All of those things that were illegal are still illegal. This just gives the people who want to follow the rules a way to do it.”

Among the rules that municipalities get to set are drinking hours. Raleigh sets hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. so they’re consistent every day and they cover Sunday brunch. Raleigh also excludes city parks from its district.

Michigan adopted a social district law in 2020. The Detroit News reported last August that municipalities have adopted 128 social districts, inducing 27 in Detroit alone. Detroit’s social districts were part of the appeal when the city hosted the NFL draft last year.

“Business owners inside several districts said they’ve seen nothing but positive effects, and it has encouraged new customers to come to their communities, serve patrons even when their dining rooms are full and encourage people to stay awhile,” the newspaper reported. “Some said these districts are even playing a role in revitalizing downtowns that may not have gotten as much foot traffic before.”

In Clawson, Michigan, officials credit the social district with reviving their downtown.

“Eight years ago, you might not see anybody walking downtown,” Joan Horton, director of Claswson’s downtown development authority, told the News. “People drove through Clawson to get somewhere else. But now we’re a drive-to destination. We really have become a dining mecca.”

HB 467 would enable New Hampshire municipalities to use social districts as targeted economic development tools. No New England state has a social district law. But Boston officials last year began discussing social districts for the city. 

That puts New Hampshire lawmakers in the position of deciding in coming weeks whether they want New Hampshire or Massachusetts to become the first New England state to notch another small win for personal and economic freedom by legalizing small districts where responsible adults can be trusted to drink and socialize like responsible adults. 

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Right-to-work facts vs. myths

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Most U.S. states (26) have a right-to-work law. They’ve proven effective at expanding worker freedom and improving state economies, which has made them popular across most of the country. But they have yet to expand into the Northeast, which now has lower economic growth than the South. If New Hampshire becomes the 27th state to adopt a right-to-work law, and the only one in the entire Northeast, the state instantly would become more attractive to manufacturers, many of whom won’t even consider opening a shop in a state without a right-to-work law. 

Though New Hampshire prides itself on being a pro-business, pro-growth state, especially relative to its neighbors, it has yet to adopt a right-to-work law. The biggest obstacle has long been a widespread belief in several myths about right-to-work laws. This briefing paper explains why those myths are untrue. 

Myth 1. Right-to-work laws are anti-freedom

Labor leaders claim that the existing legal framework governing organized labor is the organic outgrowth of the free market. The current rules represent freedom, and a right-to-work law, they say, equals “government interference in the private sector of the free market.”

This is Orwellian doublespeak. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which mandates that a certified labor union be the sole representative for all employees in a collective bargaining unit, is hardly the free market at work. It is by definition government interference in the private sector. Union leaders claim simultaneously that this arrangement equals “freedom” and that they are burdened by a federal mandate to represent all workers regardless of union membership. One of those could be true, or neither could be true. But both can’t be true. 

In reality, the NLRA imposes a legal framework that favors unions over workers by allowing labor contracts that compel non-members against their will to contribute financially to unions. The law used to allow contracts to force non-members to pay full union dues. Unions claimed that even their political spending was essential and therefore non-members should be forced to fund it. In Communication Workers of America v. Beck (1988), the Supreme Court held that compelling non-members to pay full union dues violated their First Amendment rights. Since then, private sector union contracts have been allowed to collect from non-members only the fees directly related to collective bargaining and representation. 

But this too is a violation of an individual’s First Amendment rights to free association and free speech. Unions negotiate benefits all the time that individual workers might not want, or that might even harm them. A contract that increases pension benefits at the expense of higher wages hurts young workers who don’t intend to spend a career at that employer. Non-members must pay for these negotiations, even if they disagree with the union position. That’s a plain First Amendment violation. 

If union leaders really wanted workplace contracts to be free from government intervention, they’d advocate abolishing the NLRA. They don’t because the NLRA is a government intervention that restricts worker freedom to the benefit of labor unions. 

Right-to-work laws are a corrective to this. They restore workers’ rights to not associate with an organization that they don’t want to support. In right-to-work states, unions cannot forcibly take money from non-members. To get that money, they have to persuade non-members to join. Persuasion is how free people exchange goods and services in a free economy. Coercion is the opposite.  

Myth 2. Right-to-work laws create freeloaders

We addressed this claim in January. Union leaders claim that their negotiations and representation are behaviors that only benefit non-member workers. This is demonstrably untrue. Union leaders negotiate contracts or take positions in labor disputes that do not always benefit their own members, much less non-members.

Giving up your right to bargain on your own behalf means sacrificing your autonomy as an employee. By handing those powers to union leadership, a worker trades independence for dependence. His compensation is no longer determined by his own individual performance, but by his status as a member of a larger group. That tradeoff can make one better off. Or it can backfire. 

Union contracts that favor seniority over merit disadvantage young, ambitious workers, for example. 

A 2024 Ford Motor Co. survey found that only 33% of American Baby Boomers would take a 20% pay cut in exchange for a better quality of life, but 60% of Millennials would. A young employee who would gladly exchange a lower wage for more flexible hours is made worse off by a union contract that makes the opposite trade. 

In 2009, Gov. John Lynch had to cut $25 million in labor costs from the state budget. He offered rotating furloughs to workers so no one would have to be fired. The State Employees Association said no, choosing layoffs instead. The governor laid off 250 state employees. They clearly were made worse off by the union leadership’s inept negotiations.

Far from creating freeloaders, right-to-work laws restore a measure of financial autonomy to workers. Unions in right-to-work states can no longer behave as monopoly providers, but must convince non-members to join. That changes their behavior and makes them more responsive to the needs and preferences of all members of a bargaining unit. Introducing this market incentive is the only way to improve the percentage of workers who will actually benefit from union representation.

Myth 3. Right-to-work laws would hurt the state economy

Union leaders claim that right-to-work laws are economically harmful. The exact opposite is true.

A 1997 University of Minnesota study found “a large, abrupt increase in manufacturing activity” associated with the adoption of right-to-work laws. “Manufacturing employment in the states without right-to-work laws is virtually the same today as it was in 1947,” the study found. “In the right-to-work states, manufacturing employment has increased 150 percent.”

A 2013 Mackinac Center for Public Policy study found that right-to-work laws increased average real personal income growth, average annual population growth and average annual employment growth. 

A 2023 Federal Reserve study found that right-to-work laws were associated with increases in job openings and employment. 

A 2021 Harvard University study found that right-to-work laws increased employment to population ratios (the percentage of the working-age population who are employed), increased manufacturing employment (by 28%), increased total employment, increased labor force participation, reduced poverty (especially childhood poverty), increased upward mobility and reduced long-term joblessness.

Were New Hampshire to become the only right-to-work state in the Northeast, the economic literature suggests that we would reap measurable economic benefits, including a significant increase in manufacturing employment.

Myth 4. Right-to-work laws are about “union busting”

Labor leaders claim that the real motive behind right-to-work laws is to destroy unions. But why would letting people choose where to spend their own money destroy the institution that currently takes their money involuntarily?

That could happen only if nearly everyone flees labor unions as soon as they get the chance. Why would they do this if those institutions offer the level of value that their proponents claim? Obviously, they wouldn’t. And we have plenty of evidence that this doesn’t happen.

Union membership has been shown to decline initially after adoption of a right-to-work law. This suggests that a lot of workers think that the benefits of membership aren’t worth the costs. Unions can address this by competing harder for members. 

The 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME made compulsory agency fees illegal in the public sector. With right-to-work implemented across all government workplaces in the country seven years ago, we have a national test case. Though public sector union membership declined, the unions have not disappeared. Some, including the State Employees Association of New Hampshire, have made changes to attract new members and have successfully negotiated large pay increases.

Neither the goal nor the effect of right-to-work laws is to destroy unions. The goal is to restore the individual worker’s constitutional right to free association and free expression. The effect, demonstrated through decades of research, is to create more employment, particularly in manufacturing, and generate more economic growth.

Myth 5. Right-to-work laws are unpopular

Labor leaders have a neat trick to make politicians think their anti-right-to-work position is popular. At public hearings on right-to-work bills, they pack the room with union members, giving the impression that the public opposes right-to-work. But when the issue is polled, a very different result emerges.

We polled this issue in 2021. We asked New Hampshire voters whether they would “be in favor of changing the law so that employees who don’t want to join a union could choose not to pay union fees.” More than 2/3 of voters (68%) said they favored a right-to-work law. Even among Democrats, more favored than opposed right-to-work (44%-41%). Republicans broke in favor of right-to-work by a margin of 88%-6%, and unaffiliated voters favored it by a margin of 73%-18%.

Right-to-work support in N.H.

All voters: 68% support, 22% oppose

Republicans: 88% support, 6% oppose

Democrats: 44% support, 41% oppose

Independents: 73% support, 18% oppose

Those are overwhelming numbers in favor of right-to-work. Nationally the figures are even better. Last year, the National Right to Work Foundation polled registered voters on this question: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Workers should never be forced to join a union or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.” Voters favored right-to-work by 82%-10%. Republicans favored it by 86%-8%, Independents by 80%-6%, and Democrats by 76%-14%. 

Right-to-work support nationally

All voters: 82% support, 10% oppose

Republicans: 86% support, 6% oppose

Democrats: 76% support, 14% oppose

Independents: 80% support, 6% oppose

Far from being a political liability, support for right-to-work legislation puts lawmakers on the side of supermajorities of voters.  

Conclusion

Right-to-work laws have been studied for decades. Research shows mixed results on some points, clear results on others. What’s become evident over the decades is that right-to-work laws are associated with statistically significant gains in employment, particularly manufacturing employment, job opportunities, population growth and economic growth. If New Hampshire adopts a right-to-work law, we would expect to see improvements in all of those areas, along with an improvement in state business tax revenues resulting from the additional business activity.

As for freedom vs. coercion, workers have First Amendment rights not to associate with or fund membership organizations that they choose not to join. If workers want to join unions, they should be free to do so. Preferably, they would have the option of joining more than one union (something that current federal law makes difficult). Right-to-work laws create freedom, not freeloaders. And for that reason, they are extremely popular, which is why they have been adopted in a majority of U.S. states. New Hampshire’s economy, and its workers, would benefit if the Granite State becomes the 27th state to protect workers’ First Amendment rights by adopting a right-to-work law.

Download this policy brief here: JBC Brief RTW Facts vs. Myths.

 

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The first four housing reform bills of 2025

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New Hampshire’s housing shortage, and the price spike that it created, has made housing the No. 1 problem facing the state, according to University of New Hampshire polling. Fixing the state’s housing shortage is such a priority for voters that a 2024 UNH poll found more than 1/3 of voters rating it as the top problem, with the No. 2 problem a full 29 points behind. In response, the state House of Representatives has created a standing Committee on Housing to deal with the issue. 

Of the 22 bills referred to the committee, four have been reported out and face a full House vote on Feb. 6. The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy will analyze all 22 bills during this legislative session. Below is our brief analysis of the first four bills to be released for House consideration.

  • House Bill 60, an act relative to the termination of tenancy at the expiration of the tenancy or lease term.

Under current state law (RSA 540:2), a landlord may not terminate a tenant’s lease, even at the lease’s expiration, without cause. The statute lists several causes, including non-payment of rent, substantial property damage, failure to comply with a material term of the lease, behavior that risks health or safety, refusal to vacate for lead paint abatement, or “other good cause.” 

In effect, RSA 540:2 nullifies the time limits on all residential rental contracts. Instead of a one-year lease, the law locks both parties into a permanent lease that can be broken only by bad behavior on the part of the tenant or some other “good cause” that exists outside the terms of the lease and that neither party can predict. 

A lease is a short-term contract in which both parties agree to abide by all stated provisions between the start and end dates. By nullifying the end date of residential leases, RSA 540:2 transfers the use of one person’s private property to another indefinitely, then creates a very limited set of conditions under which the owner can reclaim the use of that property.

This discourages the creation of additional rental housing, particularly duplexes and triplexes. Though the law is a problem for all owners of rental property, it’s particularly tough on individuals and families interested in investing in small-scale rental property. Owners and potential owners of smaller properties that could be put on the market to increase the state’s severely low rental supply are correctly wary of leasing their homes or small investment properties for fear of becoming locked into permanent leases. 

HB 60 fixes this problem simply by recognizing as legally binding the end dates of residential leases. This is a restoration of private property rights that encourage investment in additional rental units.  

  • House Bill 399, establishing a commission to study the New Hampshire zoning enabling act.

HB 399 is probably the most important housing reform legislation of 2025. It establishes “a commission to study the historical evolution of New Hampshire’s zoning enabling act, currently codified at RSA 674:16. The legislative intent is to study the evolution of the New Hampshire Zoning Enabling Act as it turns 100 this year. The goal is to see how the New Hampshire Zoning Enabling Act has changed over time and to consider and make recommendations for future legislation on the balance of zoning powers between the state and municipalities.”

Among the commission’s tasks is to determine whether “the listed powers are still appropriate and/or applicable today, and if any could be removed or if any not present should be added.”

It also would be charged with examining whether the listed purposes of statute that creates local zoning powers are still appropriate or whether any could be removed, and identifying any alternatives to the zoning enabling act.

The Standard State Zoning Enabling Act dates from 1925, and it’s clear that during the last half of its existence, at least, municipalities have used its powers for purposes not strictly aligned with its core purposes of protecting public health or safety and the general welfare. 

The web of regulations spawned by the act has throttled economic growth and left New Hampshire poorer and less vibrant than it would be if not for misguided government interventions, particularly in the housing market. 

The complexity of the problem is a big reason why so little progress has been made despite overwhelming public demand for change. Rather than continue to address each discrete issue one at a time, HB 399 would authorize a comprehensive review, one that is long overdue. A top-to-bottom study of how zoning contributed to the state’s housing crisis, along with recommendations for how to untangle the regulatory web, is likely the only way to achieve comprehensive reform. 

  • House Bill 444, an act relative to a tenant’s right to notification prior to the sale of a multi-family home.

HB 444 would forbid owners of restricted multi-family residential property from closing a final sale or transfer of the property without first giving “60 days’ notice and the opportunity to make an offer to each tenant in the same manner and according to the same procedures required of a manufactured housing park owner in RSA 205-A:21.” 

In short, owners of apartment buildings with five or more units, and owners of more than three single-family rental homes, would be prohibited from selling their rental properties without first giving every renter two months in which to make a purchase offer. 

Owners of mobile home parks face the same restriction under RSA 205-A:21. But there’s a huge difference between apartment renters and mobile home park residents. Mobile home park residents own their homes. They typically rent the land. And they often have associations through which they handle property rental issues. 

RSA 205-A:21 is designed to regulate property sales that involve multiple property owners. That’s not the case with apartment renters. Applying the regulations governing mobile home park sales to apartment building sales would only create confusion and delay. Unlike mobile home owners, renters do not have collective associations, do not have a long-term financial investment in the property, and typically do not have the financial resources to purchase even a small home, much less an apartment building.

HB 444 does not fix any of the regulatory problems that contribute to New Hampshire’s housing shortage, but instead would create another one. 

  • House Bill 623, relative to prohibiting corporations from purchasing single-family homes for a certain amount of time.

It’s not clear what problem HB 623 is trying to address. Institutional investors are not heavily engaged in the single-family home rental market in New Hampshire. In fact, a General Accounting Office study in 2023 found that institutional investors accounted for only 3% of the national single-family home rental market, predominantly in the South, Midwest and West. 

That study concluded that the huge and sudden increase in institutional investor purchases of single-family homes was driven by the 2007-09 financial crisis and federal policies that followed it.

Fannie Mae’s 2012 REO-to-Rental Initiative bulk auctioned thousands of single-family homes for the purpose of converting these homes to rentals. In 2017, “Fannie Mae backed a 10-year, $1 billion loan to Invitation Homes (one of the largest investors in single-family rental housing) to purchase and manage single-family rental homes,” the GAO report explained. “Freddie Mac subsequently launched a pilot program designed to provide liquidity and stability for mid-sized investors (generally those with 50–2,000 properties) and uniform credit standards on loans for single-family rental properties.”

Rather than emerging as a predator, institutional investors answered the federal government’s call to rapidly increase the supply of rental homes by buying and converting foreclosed properties. They later moved into building their own rental homes, expanding the nation’s supply of rental housing. 

The GAO report found that the rental homes run by institutional investors are concentrated in the South and Midwest, with some presence in the West, all areas hit hardest by large-scale home foreclosures following the financial crisis. Most New Hampshire homes owned by businesses “can be attributed to individuals or small investors using an LLC to buy the home,” according to the New Hampshire Association of Realtors. 

There simply isn’t a problem with institutional investors buying up homes in New Hampshire. So HB 623 offers a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Yet its passage could still harm New Hampshire. The bill prohibits the purchase of single-family homes by “non-natural persons” (businesses) “until the property has been on the market for 90 days.” It contains a few exceptions. The first allows the purchase of residential housing by businesses for the purpose of converting it to a non-residential use. This, perversely, would encourage businesses to remove existing stock from the state’s housing inventory. 

Like HB 444, not only does HB 623 address a non-existent problem, but it would create a real one. 

Download this policy brief here: First Four Housing Reform Bills 2025.

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The right-to-work freeloader fallacy

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Labor unions negotiate benefits on behalf of all employees of a collective bargaining unit, not just their own members, unions say. Since non-members receive the benefits, they should be compelled to pay the union for negotiating them. 

Because right-to-work laws forbid non-union employees from being compelled as a condition of employment to pay any portion of their wages to a labor union or a union’s third party affiliate, they turn non-members into freeloaders, unions say.

At a public hearing on Wednesday, opponents of House Bill 238, this year’s right-to-work bill, made liberal use of this freeloader fallacy.

The freeloader argument has three parts.

  1. Unions are required by federal law to represent non-members.
  2. Non-members benefit from union representation itself.
  3. Non-members benefit from the results of union representation.

Piling fallacy atop fallacy

Several speakers at Wednesday’s hearing used the American Automobile Association (AAA) as an analogy. 

Imagine that a driver who never joined AAA gets in an accident, then calls AAA for roadside assistance. AAA would rightly refuse the request. Right-to-work laws do the equivalent of making AAA provide assistance to non-members, they claimed.

In defending one fallacy, these speakers committed another, the false equivalence fallacy.

First, AAA is nothing like a union. If AAA worked like a union, instead of sending you a tow truck, it would send you a lawyer to negotiate with a towing company. 

Further, under federal law, if a majority of a bargaining unit’s employees vote to form a union, that union represents all employees. (Which is what unions want.)

AAA enjoys no such monopoly status. It sells memberships in the open marketplace. 

There are two ways the AAA analogy could work. 

AAA could make these five changes:

  1. Unionize licensed drivers.
  2. Obtain federal certification as the only provider allowed to negotiate benefits for all drivers.
  3. Secure agreements with a third party to provide those benefits.
  4. Let only members vote on the benefits packages the third party will offer.
  5. Obtain authorization to charge non-members for these negotiation services.

The other option is for unions to operate like AAA. They could do this in three steps:

  1. Forego federal certification, thus opening their workplaces to other unions.
  2. Provide benefits (such as insurance, paid leave, etc.) to their members, rather than negotiating for employers to provide them. 
  3. Compete against other unions on price and quality to attract more members.

Tellingly, unions do not want option two. 

Who benefits from the benefits?

Unions claim that right-to-work is unfair because all employees enjoy the benefits of union representation. 

These benefits fall into two categories: 1. The compensation packages unions negotiate, and 2. Union representation itself.

Representation

Putting your workplace negotiations in the hands of a third party involves a great deal of trust. It also means sacrificing your autonomy as an employee. Your compensation is no longer dependent on your performance, but on your group status.

That tradeoff can make one better off. Or it can backfire. Union representation isn’t always in the best interests of a union’s own members, much less non-members.

In 2009, Gov. John Lynch had to cut $25 million in labor costs from the state budget. He offered rotating furloughs to workers so no one would have to be fired. The State Employees Association said no, choosing layoffs instead. The governor laid off 250 state employees. They clearly were made worse off by the union leadership’s inept negotiations.

Union contracts that favor seniority over merit disadvantage young, ambitious workers, making it harder for them to advance up the career ladder.

Benefits

Even if workers don’t like the idea of being represented in this way, unions say they are made better off by the compensation packages negotiated on their behalf, so they still must pay for the representation they don’t want. But that argument also fails on closer examination.     

During Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Daniel LeClerc, D-Amherst, made the case that unions negotiate better benefits for employees. His own union benefits include no employee share for health insurance, he said. Because his employer covers the entire expense, he gets health insurance at no cost to him.

That might be a great deal for Rep. LeClerc. But of course he does pay for that insurance coverage. Instead of higher wages, he receives a larger portion of his compensation in the form of health insurance coverage. 

Health benefits aren’t bonus compensation. They’re a trade of cash for coverage. Employees pay for benefits by receiving lower wages than they otherwise would receive.

In the United States, private sector employees on average receive 70% of their compensation in wages and 30% in benefits, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In manufacturing, the breakdown is 66.5% wages and 35.5% benefits.

The government classifies all of this as compensation. So do employers.

Union-negotiated compensation packages are not “freebies” given to employees by a union. They are compensation packages negotiated between union representatives and employers. And those packages favor some employees over others. 

Benefits preferences vary by age, marital status, sex and other factors. Those preferences can be highly personal. 

A 2024 Ford Motor Co. survey found that only 33% of American Baby Boomers would take a 20% pay cut in exchange for a better quality of life, but 60% of Millennials would.

A young employee who would gladly exchange a lower wage for more flexible hours is made worse off by a union contract that makes the opposite trade. 

When union leaders, who tend to be older, negotiate a package heavy on pension contributions that require a decade to vest, younger workers who intend to stay for fewer than 10 years are harmed. 

Gen. Z Americans stay in a job for about 1/4 as long as Baby Boomers do. 

Because federal law gives a certified union monopoly status as the exclusive bargaining agent for employees, the individual employee is stuck with whatever package the union leadership negotiated.

Unions suggest that the choice is between benefits and no benefits. It’s not. It’s between one discrete package vs. any number of other possible packages. 

Many employees who give up their autonomy to a union might well be better off in the long run. But not all of them will be. In a free country, no one should be made to trade his workplace autonomy for collective representation.

Forced representation

That tradeoff is the issue. Unions claim that they make all workers better off. This is demonstrably untrue. Some workers are made worse off by losing their workplace autonomy. 

Unions say they are required by federal law to represent non-members. But they sought that law. And it applies only if they pursue and accept National Labor Relations Board certification as the exclusive collective bargaining representative for a bargaining unit. That is, only if they seek and accept government designation as a monopoly provider.

Unions could request decertification and represent only their members. They could further seek to change federal law if they see it as such a burden.

But that would put an end to collecting fees from non-members who would stop paying those fees if given the choice. 

Far from creating freeloaders, right-to-work laws restore a measure of financial autonomy to workers. Unions in right-to-work states can no longer behave as monopoly providers, but must convince non-members to join. That changes their behavior and makes them more responsive to the needs and preferences of all members of a bargaining unit.

Introducing this market incentive is the only way to improve the percentage of workers who will actually benefit from union representation.

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N.H. should prioritize deregulation in 2025

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New Hampshire is the freest state in the country and on the continent. But on some measures of economic freedom, we do poorly. Most Granite Staters would probably be surprised to learn that New Hampshire is in the top 20 most regulated states in the nation.

New Hampshire’s recent regulatory growth

Researchers at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have tracked the growth of state regulations since 2019. New Hampshire ranks as the 18th most heavily regulated state. We are more heavily regulated than every other New England state save Massachusetts, which ranks 9th. 

From 2019-2023, the number of state regulatory restrictions in New Hampshire grew by 14%, rising from 123,423 to 140,893, according to Mercatus’ tracking. 

Policy areas in which New Hampshire’s regulations exceed national averages include:

  • broadcasting
  • health services
  • environmental protection, public utilities and natural resources,
  • taxes and public finance

While state policymakers have focused in recent years on aiding economic growth by lowering business tax rates, the state’s regulatory burden has grown steadily, likely countering some of the positive tax cut effects.

Cutting regulations can stimulate growth. The Canadian province of British Columbia did it successfully, starting in 2001 with a reform requiring two regulations to be cut for every new one added. The regulatory cuts flipped the state’s economic growth rate from lower than the national average to higher, a Mercatus Center study has shown. 

Regulatory reform in other states

Several U.S. states offer ideas for how to reduce regulatory burdens:

Rejecting the Massachusetts model

Gov-elect Kelly Ayotte has promised to keep New Hampshire from becoming Massachusetts. In the area of government regulations, New Hampshire has been creeping in Massachusetts’ direction. Taking swift action to reverse this regulatory growth would reduce state interference in the private sector and improve economic freedom without requiring any new state spending. Reducing state rules might even have the effect of trimming state spending, as fewer rules could mean fewer bureaucrats.

Download this policy brief here: Policy Brief Regulatory Reductions 2025

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Baby, please don’t go banning “price gouging” of concert tickets

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The West’s top musical acts all play Los Angeles (population 3.8 million), one of the world’s great concert cities. Legendary singer Van Morrison scheduled his new U.S. tour to start there in October—two nights at the famous Orpheum Theater, Oct. 19th and 20th. But then some guys from New Hampshire called him.

Morrison’s tour schedule had him flying to L.A. from England, where he is set to perform at the 1,700-seat Brighton Dome on Sept. 27th and 28th. The enterprising team behind Jimmy’s on Congress, a hot young jazz club in Portsmouth and one of the best music venues on the Eastern Seaboard (really), spied an opportunity. According to New Hampshire Business Review (NHBR), they reached out to Van Morrison’s team to see if he could stop in Portsmouth for a pair of shows on his way to L.A.

This is a little like the Toledo Mud Hens asking the Los Angeles Dodgers to stop for a three-game series on their way to New York. Van Morrison plays in large theaters that seat thousands. Jimmy’s is a night club that seats 312, mostly at tables and the bar (where the cocktails are great).

It was a plan so crazy it just might work.

The booker at Jimmy’s told NHBR that Van Morrison’s team said he could do it on one condition, NHBR reported. The club had to make some tickets available through Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing system. 

The old-fashioned way of selling concert tickets is to use a fixed price. That’s the number that used to be printed on paper tickets (remember those?). Anyone who tried to get tickets to hot shows in the 1970s and ‘80s can tell you the problems with that system. You had to go wait in long lines at the venue (or try to get through on the phone), and the top shows would sell out quickly, with no way to find second-hand tickets other than answering a newspaper classified ad that you hoped was real, knowing a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy whose girlfriend couldn’t go that night, or traveling to the venue the night of the show in the hope that someone would sell you a ticket on the street. 

Today’s technology lets anyone anywhere have a chance at buying tickets online, which obviously has its own drawbacks, most notably quick sellouts and sabotage by bots. It also lets venues adjust ticket prices in real time, which is a feature not a bug.

Using dynamic pricing, the most valuable seats for a high-demand show will rise in price until they hit their market clearing value. People outraged by this system think the “actual price” or “true value” of a concert ticket is whatever number the venue decided to offer the tickets for the moment they went on sale. But that number doesn’t mean much.

As we discussed previously, a ticket’s printed price isn’t necessarily the actual market value. It’s usually set somewhat below market value to encourage a sellout. Venues make more money on concessions, so their incentive is to fill the seats. 

With dynamic pricing, tickets start at a certain price, but as in an auction the price can change if more people keep bidding for the same item.

Jimmy’s used dynamic pricing for some of its Van Morrison tickets. The top seats there went for $2,502.50 and $3,102.50 each, plus more than $500 in fees, according to NHBR.

After the show sold out, the predictable complaints about “price gouging” could be heard on local talk radio and on social media. People claimed that Van Morrison finally came to New Hampshire and they were denied tickets because the prices were so high.

Wrong.

Van Morrison came to New Hampshire only because the prices were so high. 

His October 19th show in L.A. sold out immediately. Tickets for the October 20th show range from $183.40 in the back row of the balcony to $344.85 for a restricted-view seat in the second row of the orchestra. Sorry, but you were never going to see him for $100 at a 312-seat club in Portsmouth. To make that small venue work, prices had to be many times higher than for one of his regular shows.

Dynamic pricing didn’t deny Granite Staters a chance to see Van Morrison. It gave Granite Staters a chance to see Van Morrison. Far from being “gouged,” fans were given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one of the greatest pop singers of the last 60 years at a small club in northern New England. Honestly, that’s amazing.

In the last legislative session, some legislators who don’t understand how prices work tried to ban “ticket scalping.” After this week, you can be sure someone will try to ban “gouging” as well as “scalping” next year. 

All such bans are really efforts to impose by law an economic misconception, which is that “price” is the same as “value.” It isn’t. 

A price set by a vendor might or might not be close to the actual amount of money consumers are willing to pay. When it isn’t, prices adjust up or down depending on the behavior of consumers. 

No one complains when vendors have to slash prices to clear inventory that they priced too high. But somehow it’s supposed to be immoral if vendors, either at the point of sale or in a secondary market, see that the initial price was too low and adjust the numbers up rather than down.

Calling this immoral is nonsense. Trying to ban it is harmful. Everyone would be better off if legislators stayed out of the way and let concert prices sort themselves out in an open and competitive marketplace. Consumers are best served when their preferences are expressed through the market rather than invalidated by government edict. 

Governments only ban what people would otherwise do voluntarily. If people would willingly pay thousands of dollars to have dinner eight feet away from Van Morrison in Portsmouth, as opposed to spending thousands to fly to England or California to see him in a large venue, the government has no business trying to stop them.  

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A few regulatory changes could make N.H. first in freedom for education entrepreneurs

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There’s more that can be done to make New Hampshire a freer state for education entrepreneurs looking to start small, decentralized, and unconventional educational environments, but so far the state is doing better than most.

That’s according to the Education Entrepreneur Freedom Index released by the yes. every kid. foundation. 

Of 10 possible points that a state could earn, only three states attained the high score of seven. New Hampshire finished with six points, one of only 10 states with at least six or more points in the Index.  

The Index measures the extent to which regulations affect education entrepreneurs in each state, the imagined environment of which is a small, non-religious educational setting with school-age learners from a group of families participating in educational activities for part of the week. 

The Index evaluates each state according to 10 questions that account for the following five regulatory areas: business registration, homeschool laws/regulations, nonpublic school laws/regulations, child care laws/regulations, and occupancy codes. The questions are:

  1. Can the educational environment operate without getting a state business license under state law?
  2. Does the state allow for unlicensed, unregistered, unaccredited, or unapproved non-religious, nonpublic schools?
  3. Does the state allow nonpublic schools to operate without imposing educational requirements on teachers?
  4. Does the state’s homeschool law support or facilitate the operation of the educational environment?
  5. Can the educational environment operate in accordance with the state’s homeschool law without registering?
  6. Does the state allow homeschool instruction without imposing educational requirements on instructors?
  7. Does the state allow child care facilities to operate without imposing educational or qualification requirements on administrators/supervisors/teachers?
  8. Do the state’s child care laws and regulations provide a clear exemption for “Drop In/Open Door” programs?
  9. Do the state’s child care laws and regulations provide a clear exemption for educational programs for school-age children?
  10. Does the state adapt the application of occupancy code requirements in recognition of the existence and needs of small learning environments?

States with more relaxed homeschool and nonpublic school laws/regulations score higher, as entrepreneurs have an easier time getting started in these states. 

Child care regulations represent a near ubiquitous obstacle to alternative learning environments, and occupancy codes are disproportionately burdensome to small learning environments, the authors noted in a presentation upon the study’s release.

Though New Hampshire lost a point for rules requiring state approval for nonpublic schools, the state could become much more friendly to education entrepreneurs, the study’s authors conclude, primarily by relaxing some child care rules and local regulations.

State laws setting strict education and professional qualifications on child care personnel and the absence of clear exemptions for drop-in/open-door programs cost the state two points in the Index. The lack of clear exemptions for small learning environments such as microschools is a problem in New Hampshire. 

Some states, such as Oklahoma, exempt programs consisting of school-age homeschoolers three years of age and older from its child care licensing laws and regulations. 

New Hampshire is marked down on question 10 because of the local zoning and occupancy codes that often represent onerous barriers for aspiring microschools. 

As the Index makes clear, local zoning laws and regulations have emerged as primary roadblocks to the proliferation of microschools across the country with the growing education freedom movement. And the Live Free or Die state, with its especially burdensome web of local exclusionary zoning rules, is no exception. 

One way New Hampshire could improve its score in the Index is to loosen these local zoning restrictions hindering small learning environments. 

While some towns are more lenient than others, often the most daunting hurdle to starting a microschool is finding a permissible location. This is especially true if the microschool founder doesn’t want to operate out of their own home. 

Although homeschooling is only lightly regulated in New Hampshire, those microschools that are more formalized than homeschool co-ops but less formalized than private, nonpublic schools are left in a legal gray area where they’re prohibited from many zoning districts throughout the state because they’re not a permitted use in those areas.

The main reason for that is because education is not allowed by right in New Hampshire.

Recent actions taken by state lawmakers in Utah can offer guidance to legislators in New Hampshire on how to reduce the Granite State’s zoning burden on microschools. 

With just a few words, Utah legislators struck a huge blow to local zoning ordinances impeding the establishment of microschools throughout the state. Senate Bill 13 states, in part, “A charter school, home-based microschool, or micro-education entity shall be considered a permitted use in all zoning districts within a municipality.” 

Signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, microschools are now recognized as businesses without any location restrictions in Utah. 

The bill defines a “home-based microschool” as “an individual or association of individuals that: (i) registers as a business entity in accordance with state and local laws; and (ii) for compensation, provides kindergarten through grade 12 education services to 16 or fewer students from an individual’s residential dwelling, accessory dwelling unit, or residential property.” 

Any alternative/unconventional educational environment that fits this definition could set up shop in any zoning district within any Utah municipality under SB 13. As such, the language in Utah’s bill essentially makes education allowable by right across that entire state. 

Such a path forward is a realistic option for New Hampshire to take to become an even freer haven for education entrepreneurship, and state lawmakers wouldn’t even need to define “microschool” in law to do so. 

Just this past legislative session, New Hampshire state lawmakers did essentially the same thing for home-based child care. House Bill 1567 requires local zoning and planning regulations to allow family or group child care programs as an accessory use (by right) to any primary residential use throughout the state.

The same thing could be done for education, as we recommended in March.

By providing that education is similarly allowed by right in all zoning districts within a municipality (and all nuisance laws still apply), New Hampshire could tear down all local exclusionary zoning laws prohibiting microschool usage across the state in one fell swoop. 



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Innovation means bulldozing places like Steeplegate Mall

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Steeplegate Mall in Concord is coming down. The city granted approval this month for the building’s demolition. 

Yes, the owners of a mostly vacant large building that has become a magnet for crime (181 police calls in the last two years) needed the government’s approval to take it down and replace it with infrastructure people will actually use, like homes and a Costco.

The mall’s been largely empty since 2022. The redevelopment proposal (mixed use, retail and residential) has been moving along relatively quickly, as these things go. There haven’t been the usual disruptive community meetings with protests and long delays to get multiple variances just to replace an eyesore with something the city actually needs and people actually want.

That’s because the city rezoned the mall property years ago. It sits in a Gateway Performance District, which allows multiple uses and is designed to attract development. That’s made all the difference.

The city loosened land use restrictions to encourage economic development, and guess what happened? Economic development. 

Concord officials anticipated that the land where a huge suburban shopping mall sat might one day be put to a different, better use if market conditions changed. Because they had that foresight, a mammoth commercial structure no longer in demand will be converted relatively easily into buildings that are in very high demand.

A lot of the news stories about the mall in the past two years have focused on what Concord is losing. An outdated movie theater, a pickleball club, a community theater. An NHPR story mused about what the evictions from the mall would mean for Concord’s arts scene. 

It takes a stupefying lack of imagination to see a defunct shopping mall and lament what is lost rather than celebrate the possibilities of its transformation. 

Humans, left to their own devices, will build. They’ll create vibrant communities in which entrepreneurs devise ingenious ways of making their fellow citizens happy. Unless government forbids it. 

Governments forbid behaviors for one reason. People would otherwise do the forbidden things.

Hurting people and taking people’s stuff ought to be forbidden. But building a residence beside (or on top of) a store? Building a tiny house on a half-acre lot? Placing your home 46 feet instead of 50 feet away from the curb? These are not behaviors that harm others. 

Yet governments all across New Hampshire ban perfectly reasonable property uses like these. Why? Because some people prefer them. Without a government prohibition, people would build the kinds of mixed-use residential and commercial properties the market demands. And that just can’t be allowed, even in the “live free or die” state.  

Tuscan Village in Salem was once a horse track. When Tuscan Village was proposed, it was illegal. Salem had to change its regulations to make it legal for an entrepreneur to turn an abandoned dog track into a beautiful mixed-use residential and retail village.  

If New Hampshire wants to live up to its motto, it must repeal or relax many of the regulations that make it illegal for entrepreneurs to unleash their creativity. Local governments have to stop worrying so much about preserving the past and let entrepreneurs imagine the future. Preservation has its place. But innovation does too. And right now too many of our development rules are focused on preservation at the expense of innovation.

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