Several Upper Valley residents who have experienced homelessness spoke on the shortage of affordable housing in the region Wednesday evening in Tindle Lounge, shedding light on a problem that seems remote for many Dartmouth students.
Tina Paquin, who lived out of a camping tent before finding housing in Templeton, said the stigma of being homeless was hurtful not only to her, but to her children, who were objects of taunts and abuse at school.
While "most people think that to be homeless, you have to be a drug addict or a drunk," she said, many more are the victims of a dearth of low-income housing throughout the Upper Valley.
In 2001, Paquin said, over 700 people -- including more than 300 children -- were turned down for low-income housing in the region, with the number continuing to increase each year.
Tom Cagle, another speaker, said the current lack of affordable housing can be traced in large part to the phenomenon of "NIMBY," or "not in my backyard," in which residents are reluctant to approve of any form of housing that might depress the property value of their homes.
Until the 1970s, speaker Janice Stevenson said, the states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine built adequate amounts of low-income housing.
Since the economy was weak at the time, and there was net emigration from the region, a housing shortage was averted, she said. Now, with New Hampshire's economy booming and people moving in, towns have steadfastly refused to allow the construction of additional low-income housing.
"Most upper-class neighborhoods are going to go berserk" when such new housing goes up next door, Stevenson said, while town zoning laws that govern new construction are often designed to "keep certain people out."
Stevenson said that such zoning laws are purportedly intended "to maintain the pastoral qualities of the town," while in fact serving as a means to control the makeup of the population.
To bring about legislative change, Stevenson said, "you have to be your own best advocate" by writing directly to representatives rather than appealing to advocates for the homeless.
Paquin also warned against "looking at people who are homeless as different. The only difference is that they got unlucky."
Nor is the lack of housing a problem only for the unemployed.
Cagle said that a graduate armed with an education degree who comes to teach at a New Hampshire public school will likely be unable to afford nearby housing.
Addressing the problem of unequal access to homes, Cagle, who is disabled, emphasized the need for newly-built houses to contain wheelchair-accessible entrances and doorways.
The event, which was held before a crowd of around 30 students -- many of them volunteers for the Tucker Foundation -- was sponsored in part by Dartmouth Habitat for Humanity. The organization, which works to provide affordable housing, is currently constructing a house by Lake Mascoma.
Event organizer and Habitat Advocacy Chair Kiva Wilson '04 said the event was intended to give students a sense "of the problems we're dealing with" in fighting poverty in the region.
"The purpose is to create awareness and to give people a sense of what is outside this Dartmouth bubble."
