Shaheen Caps Off Week of “Affordability Action Tour” Events with Visits to Affordable Housing Site, New England College

(Henniker, NH) – Today, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) capped off a week of events as part of her “Affordability Action Tour” to highlight the rising cost of energy, health care and housing in the Granite State by visiting an affordable housing development in West Lebanon to highlight the importance of accessible housing across New Hampshire as construction costs spike due to President Trump’s reckless tariffs and war in Iran. Shaheen also visited New England College to highlight federal funding she secured to bolster its program to produce more nurses. Photos from today’s events can be found HERE . In West Lebanon, Shaheen visited the Village at Crafts Hill (VCH) to underscore the importance of preserving New Hampshire’s housing supply and to discuss policy solutions to lower costs, including her Strategy and Investment in Rural Housing Preservation Act to protect rural housing, which recently passed the Senate. “Everywhere I go, I hear about how the cost of housing—both rental and ownership—has skyrocketed in New Hampshire and is making it harder for families to find a home they can afford. The Villages at Craft Hill is a great example of the kind of solutions we need to increase access to affordable housing in the rural parts of our state,” said Senator Shaheen . “The Senate recently passed a bipartisan housing package with multiple provisions I’ve sponsored, including a bill I led to preserve rental assistance for hundreds of thousands of affordable units nationally, and which was inspired by our work at Twin Pines.” Shaheen is helping to lead efforts in the Senate to lower housing costs and increase the supply of affordable units for families struggling to find a place to call home. Recently, three of Shaheen’s commonsense bills were passed in the Senate as part of a bipartisan housing package to address the high cost of housing and increase the supply of affordable units in the Granite State and across the country. In addition to the Strategy and Investment in Rural Housing Preservation Act , the 21st Century Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act included the Streamlining Rural Housing Act and the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative in Community Enhancement (PRICE) Act to make it easier and less expensive to build new housing and protect lower-income renters. Earlier this year, Shaheen visited the Normandin Square Apartments —a 60-unit apartment community where the majority of units are affordable—to tour ongoing renovation efforts with officials from the Laconia Housing Authority. Shaheen secured $750,000 in Congressionally Directed Spending for the renovation project in the bipartisan FY 2026 government funding legislation. Later in the day, Shaheen visited New England College (NEC) and met with NEC leadership, faculty and students to receive an update on the College’s revamped 3-year Bachelor of Science Nursing (BSN) program, which will help address a critical regional shortage of nursing professionals. “Robust training programs are critical to addressing the shortage of nursing professionals that we’re seeing across New Hampshire, and especially in the most rural parts of the state,” said Senator Shaheen. “That’s exactly what New England College’s revamped nursing program is working to tackle. It was great to be able to see firsthand how funding I helped the College secure is going to work to get more nurses out in the field so that Granite Staters in all parts of the state can get care.” Shaheen, a senior member of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, secured $2 million in Congressionally Directed Spending in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 appropriations bills to renovate nursing areas of NEC’s science facilities by expanding classrooms and purchasing state-of-the-art equipment. ###