Like any project, the proposed 34-unit complex on a three-acre parcel on Union Street in Peterborough deserves scrutiny.

One issue the project will have to address is the 30-foot vegetated buffer required under West Peterborough District regulations. Another is the potential impact on traffic that 34 new housing units will produce.

But if those and other issues that arise at the Peterborough Planning Board’s next meeting Sept. 12 can be addressed, the Halliday Properties proposal would benefit the town and should go forward. Peterborough needs housing, particularly affordable housing, and this project includes seven units designated as workforce housing.

Finding housing in New Hampshire is getting harder all the time, unless someone has enough money to afford the median $400,000 price for a home or $1,498 monthly rent for a two-bedroom unit. And even if someone can afford the rent, good luck finding a place, as the vacancy rate in New Hampshire is less than 1 percent.

Peterborough Planning Board member Andrew Dunbar is correct when he says seven units won’t solve the workforce housing problem by itself. However, his colleague Sara Steinberg Heller is also correct when she notes that the seven units mean seven families would be able to both work and live in the area because they found housing they could afford.

To make real headway, Peterborough and other towns need to add workforce housing in chunks larger than the seven in the Halliday Properties project or the 15 in the Old Stone Barn project in Peterborough. But there are obstacles, including zoning regulations that limit density, residents who support workforce housing if it’s somewhere else – or as now-former Peterborough Planning Board member Ivy Vann put it, “but just not now” – and financial implications for developers that limit workforce housing to a smaller percentage of a larger project.

The state can help, but the “community toolbox” workplace housing bill signed by Gov. Chris Sununu in June stripped out potentially valuable provisions such as tax breaks similar to those provided for commercial development or requirements to put workforce housing on a par with senior housing.

Towns need to figure out ways to add more workforce housing, and the Halliday Properties proposal is a start.