The Freedom Project--New Hampshire

[iris lily]

Anyone here who lives in New Hampshire?

DH and I are having a little discussion about moving to NH in a few years. The Freedom project and all, don't ya know. It's about getting 20,000
conservative (libertarians) to move there. I love this city and I didn't think that anyone could blast me out of it, but I tire of the blue demographic. And I've always been attracted to New England. Even though I awalys thought that if I moved to a coast, I'd be moving to Oregon. That is prime iris 'n lily growing grounds. Iris doesn't fare as well in NH.

[artist]

I live in Southern NH. My city is in the MA. Border. Dh and I moved her almost 11 years ago and I love it here.
I do have Iris in my garden btw. Blooms are short lived, but you can grow them.

[Miss Cellane]

I live in southern NH as well. I like it because it is close enough to Boston to do a day trip there, and yet we avoid the high taxes in MA. A lot of people are moving to southern NH and commuting to work in MA, sometimes over an hour and an half each way. This is changing the demographics of the lower part of the state--northern NH is not the same as southern NH. For one thing, it's colder in the winter.

NH only has 18 miles of coastline, by the way and the water can be chilly most of the summer.

Iris may not do well, but we have lovely lilacs (it's the state flower and you see them everywhere in the spring) and great maple syrup and blueberries.

Do you have any specific questions? Would you want to live in a city or a more rural area? How close do you need to be to restaurants/museums/concerts/etc.?

I live in a small city near the coast and love it. My cousin lives a three hour drive away in the mountains with his nearest neighbor a mile away, with a 40 minute drive to the nearest supermarket, but he can ski every day there's snow, all winter long.

[Spartana]

I don't live in NH but have spent a lot of time there (stationed in both in Portland, maine and Boston, Ma) mostly around the Portsmouth area. I absolutely love it there myself. Vermont and Maine as well but as Miss Cellane points out, tax rates in those states (as well as MA - especially MA) are high. I think NH is also free of state income taxes but property taxes may be high to off set that. Portsmouth is a town I think you'd like a lot. Old brick townhomes and storefronts downtown, lovely colonials and capes (many from the 1700's) and georgian revevial homes just outside of the downtown area. And Strawberry Banke (?) is a historic area just out side of (and walking distance) from town and very charming. Then there is the old Wentworth Hotel that was closed back when I was in that area (but now opened as a Marriott spa resort).It's originally an old 1800's hotel (haunted??) with a lot of history. Google Portsmouth, NH images to see lots of drool-able photos. Just remember one very very important thing. If you do move there, make sure and get an extras bedroom for me :-)!

[Miss Cellane]

Yep, no state income tax and no sales tax. We have property taxes, and the "sin" taxes, alcohol, tobacco and restaurant meals.

The Portsmouth area, and the general area around Great Bay, which was the first part of NH to be settled (back in the 1620s), has some lovely older cities--Portsmouth, Dover--the state university in Durham, lots of historical sites--Strawberry Banke is a smaller version of Sturbridge Village in MA--and theaters and concert halls and some really good restaurants. Easy to get to MA and ME. The ocean is right there, skiing is about 2 hours away.

Other large metropolitan areas are Manchester, Concord and Nashua. They are all in the southern part of the state.

This whole area has been undergoing a change in the past 20 or so years. More people moving up from MA, and more young people staying around instead of moving out of state. It's getting built up a bit. The city where I live is facing the fact that we need more traffic lights--taking a left turn on to Main Street isn't the easy thing it was 20 years ago. And some of the incomers from other states expect more social services than NH communities are used to providing--that has caused a bit of conflict here and there.

Housing is an interesting mix of new McMansion-type houses in small developments and the older houses that have been here forever. My house was built in 1900 and it isn't really considered all that old in a town where there are houses from 1780 that are still being lived in. The town cemetery was founded in the 1730s and is still in use today, thanks to a couple of expansions. It's a fascinating place to wander and read the old headstones.

There are problems with this, though. Retrofitting the City Hall and Library with elevators and other ADA required adaptations was expensive, because it took a lot of time and money to figure out how to do this without ripping out major portions of the buildings. Streets in the older part of town are narrow and sometimes one-way. There's no on-street parking at night during the winter, to allow the plows to do their thing in snow storms. And we do get the odd hurricane.

[iris lily]

Portsmouth is far too expensive, average house prices are $450,00. But the rest of it--I was pleased at how affordable houses are in the southern area. I'd always heard that New England was so expensive. Well, not NH. I've seen several ranch and Cape Cod style houses in the range of $150,000 to $200,00 with a bit of land, say, ,half an acre (flat) and these places seem to be in town. That's what we would want.

This is just a pipe dream, anyway. I do love the city I'm in now and would have a hard time leaving.

[artist]

Portsmouth is far too expensive, average house prices are $450,00. But the rest of it--I was pleased at how affordable houses are in the southern area. I'd always heard that New England was so expensive. Well, not NH. I've seen several ranch and Cape Cod style houses in the range of $150,000 to $200,00 with a bit of land, say, ,half an acre (flat) and these places seem to be in town. That's what we would want.

This is just a pipe dream, anyway. I do love the city I'm in now and would have a hard time leaving.

That is what we have. A small ranch house in 1/4 acre (flat). We are in Nashua. About a mile from the downtown area, 1/8 of a mile from the state park (325 acres of wooded hiking and biking trails) and about 1/2 mile from the HWY. It's an hour to Boston, an Hour to the coast. 15 mins to MA. 1 1/2 hours to the lakes region North, 1 1/2 hours to the mountains West and 2+ hours to the mountains North.

[dado potato]

I totally loved my fall foliage visit to NH a couple years ago.

Some friends (now resident in PA) moved to NH from Georgia (bless their hearts.) They swear that as "outsiders" they never could be accepted as equal members of the community they lived in. As they described it, unless all you grandparents were born there, you really don't belong. They said their status as outsiders raised the costs of work they had done, and was a barrier to selling their merchandise, which was farm equipment.

These comments seemed terribly bitter and sad to me, because when I was among the residents of NH, I observed no particular malice toward strangers. (No naïve trust, either.) Just people minding their own business.