On top of that, the $1,400-a-month rent started to climb above her budget once Rogers factored in a few hundred dollars per month for heat and other utilities in the winter.
“I really wanted to cry,” said Rogers, whose search was complicated by her two miniature Pinschers, Mika and Velvet.
Throughout the Upper Valley, Rogers’ experience is becoming increasingly common as the demand for rentals grows and the stock of available apartments continues to dwindle.
It recently completed a yearlong renovation of the 100-unit Village at Crafts Hill housing complex in West Lebanon, which Twin Pines said will provide “much needed affordable housing” for families in the area.
“On a scale of zero to impossible, it’s nearly impossible” to find rental housing, Moe said.
Winter said over the last year, many people have moved from cities like New York and Boston to Vermont and New Hampshire, buying homes and further straining the market.
Elissa Margolin, the director of the advocacy group Housing Action New Hampshire, also pointed to the number of people moving from out of state to the area as part of the issue.
And as the demand for apartment units grows, the ability to build those new units has slowed, Winter said.
Winter pointed to a four-unit project his organization is working on in Woodstock which is delayed because crews have to wait 20 weeks for vinyl-clad windows.
In New Hampshire, the statewide eviction moratorium comes to an end on July 1, according to Alex Fries, communications director for the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief & Recovery.
Moe said he’s concerned about what the end of the moratorium in Vermont will bring as well.
During the pandemic, the state expanded criteria for its long-standing motel voucher program, which gave Vermonters in need of shelter a chance to stay in motels rather than homeless shelters for social distancing purposes.
The criteria is narrowing starting July 1, he said, but would still aim to serve people who need housing in the pandemic.
Still, experts in the Upper Valley say the narrower criteria, and the number of motels opting out of the program in recent months, will likely have a detrimental impact on hundreds of people.
Moe said the majority of people he works with to find housing have spent the past few months — or in some cases, up to a year — living in motels around the state.
“Some folks will be going to find family and friends to couch surf with.
Three Upper Valley planning commissions this spring published a Keys to the Valley report, which says that the region needs around 10,000 new housing units by 2030 in order to meet the growing demand.
Part of the solution, Winter said, comes with looking for “new sources for capital,” to secure additional funding for affordable and workforce housing.
“The answer isn’t one thing, the answer is many things.
But, she added, a large part of tackling the Twin States’ rental crisis comes from making a “cultural shift” in how Vermont and New Hampshire residents think of new construction.
As for Rogers, the DHMC nurse, she has since found a small room in an apartment in Wilder, rented by a woman whose son is away at college, and will move there in August.