New Hampshire has the oldest workforce in the nation, with roughly 28% of employees age 55 or older.

For employers, that makes retaining experienced workers while attracting the next generation increasingly important to our economic future. Businesses routinely hear from prospective and current employees that the availability of housing they want and can afford is a factor in deciding whether to take a job, change employers or remain in New Hampshire.

The housing needs of those workers are not all the same. Someone just leaving home may want an apartment. A young worker who has established a career and wants to put down roots may want a modest single-family home. An empty nester or senior may be looking for something smaller than the home where they raised their family, but still want the privacy, stability, and independence that comes with owning a home.

New Hampshire policymakers have made several meaningful reforms to increase the supply and address the affordability of housing, but more action is needed. We need to make it possible for the market to produce housing at every stage of life, notably the modest single-family homes that have traditionally been an important part of the American dream.

Unfortunately, too many of those homes are difficult or impossible to build under today’s regulatory landscape.

The latest Saint Anselm College statewide survey makes clear that New Hampshire voters understand the problem. Seventy-four percent support having parts of every town where single-family homes can be built on smaller lots, a 15-point increase from the previous year. Sixty-three percent believe towns and cities should change local planning and zoning regulations to allow more housing, while 62% believe the state should do more to encourage municipalities to remove barriers to housing development. Seventy-three percent say their community needs more affordable housing.

Those numbers should give state policymakers confidence that New Hampshire voters are ready for a more practical conversation about housing supply. They are telling us that they want more options, and they recognize that regulations can determine whether those options ever reach the market.

One of the most significant barriers is also one of the simplest: lot size. New Hampshire’s zoning data show that zoning on most of the state’s buildable land requires a lot of at least two acres for a single-family home. That matters because land cost is a significant driver of housing costs and rents. Research from the American Enterprise Institute has quantified the relationship. Its analysis found that for every 10% reduction in lot size, the cost of a home decreases by approximately 3.2%.

Applied to the price of a new single-family home in today’s market, that finding suggests that halving the required lot size could save buyers close to $100,000. More significant reductions, mirroring the actions of other states, could produce larger savings. For a young worker trying to purchase a first home, that can make the difference between being able to buy and continuing to rent. For an empty nester looking to downsize, it can make the difference between finding an appropriate home in the community they love or staying locked into a larger home simply because there are few alternatives.

The development community and many planning professionals increasingly recognize that density of this kind is one of the most effective ways to reduce the cost of new housing and ongoing infrastructure maintenance costs. When fewer homes can be built on a piece of land, the costs of road maintenance and municipal services must be spread across fewer homes, resulting in higher costs for every homeowner.

This is where state policy can make a difference. State legislators do not need to determine exactly what every community should look like. They can establish a framework that allows communities to respond to housing demand rather than continue to uphold regulations that automatically decide that every new single-family home needs a large lot.

That framework should preserve essential protections for water, septic capacity, roads, emergency access and the environment while opening a practical path for smaller detached homes where local conditions can support them. If a community permits single-family housing, its land-use rules should not make a modest home needlessly expensive simply by requiring more land than health, safety or infrastructure demands.

New Hampshire employers need a housing market that helps people build careers, raise families and remain in the state through retirement. Enabling more small single-family homes would expand attainable homeownership, give older residents better options to downsize, and free existing homes for the next generation. For lawmakers seeking to strengthen the workforce and sustain economic growth, removing unnecessary barriers to these homes is a practical place to start.

Natch Greyes serves as vice president of public policy for the Business & Industry Association of New Hampshire. Visit BIAofNH.com.