Jennifer Koirala owns Unique Brows, a busy brow salon on Manchester’s South Willow Street. She loves her line of business so much that even her license plate says "brows." She says it was a learning curve to be a good brow technician.
“I used to do it on my feet because when you are new nobody wants to give you your brows to do it,” she said. Now she has a loyal clientele.
Koirala, who's from Nepal, grew up in a refugee camp in Bhutan. She says the most difficult part was having six family members sleeping in a tiny room where having electricity was rare.
“But the good thing when we were at the refugee camp was the neighbor next to us, we will treat them as family,” she said. “That is how we [were] raised.”
That sense of community makes Koirala think about her neighbors. Her shop is located in the most commercial part of Manchester. Next to it are restaurants, storage units, laundries and other businesses. But she says taxes and real estate are high, and she thinks that may deter people from starting a business there.
Since the start of the pandemic, she has seen more clients moving in from New York and Massachusetts. State demographers say New Hampshire has gained more residents than it’s lost in recent yeas. Of the more than 100,000 people who have moved to the state in the last two years, more than 44% are from the Bay State.
Koirala worries if all those newcomers will find a place to live they can afford.
“I remember in 2013 I used to pay $700 for a three bedroom apartment, but now it's $2,100,” Koirala said.
In 2023, someone would have to make $70,600 a year to afford the median monthly rent of $1,764 including utilities,according to New Hampshire Housing.
She wants to see rents go down in the city and also more public transportation. When Koirala first arrived in New Hampshire in 2008, public buses allowed her to go to her job since she didn’t have a car. She says it is a basic service that can benefit a lot of people, especially immigrants.
Koirala says she would like to see more police patrolling at night when women come out of their jobs. For her, the next mayor must also promote programs that give women of color more opportunities to open their own business
“I encourage [women of color] to be more strong and independent,” she said.
But she says the number one problem the city has is homelessness. She hopes whoever leads the next local government can come up with ideas that help people and not only push them around the city.
Koirala says she’ll be at the polls on Tuesday, although not because she’s enthusiastic about either Jay Ruais or Kevin Cavanaguh.
“Everybody says, 'We can change this, this, this,' and nothing happens at the end, that is the reason I don’t get excited, but as a citizen I have to do my duty so I’ll definitely vote.”
On the opposite side of the city, Thom Lavoie lives on a quiet street in the North End, one of the wealthiest Manchester’s neighborhoods. He often walks around the block with her daughter's labrador. He enjoys how green it's everywhere and the dog also enjoys the closeness to rivers and trails.
Lavoie is especially proud of the efforts the city is doing to become a biofabrication cluster of manufacturing organs, cells, and tissue. But he also loves the new restaurants and bars.
He says when his children, who now live in Massachusetts, come back to town they are surprised to see a reinvigorated downtown with restaurants and bars, where it used to be a place just for businesses.
But he says there is one side his children don’t have to experience every day.
“[I tell them] come at 8 am when I come into my office and have to walk up in needles and pass homeless people,” he said. “That’s real, it’s really there and it’s really sad.”
Lavoie says the next mayor should work along with the state to fix the problem humanely instead of prohibiting people to camp on the streets even if there is no shelter available for them, as Jay Ruais has proposed.
For Lavoie the most important thing the next local government should work on is creating a sense of pride to belong to Manchester's community.
A few blocks from downtown lives 15-year-old Christopher Lemus and his mother Yuri Franco. He has two siblings and there is also Hunter, an enormous and hungry Rottweiler. He doesn’t vote, but he has opinions on what he would like to see in Manchester, especially in his neighborhood.
He says there’s one street where shootings have happened. Still,he likes living there because it's a walkable neighborhood. But he would also like to ride his bike safely, as people do in more affluent neighborhoods, like the North End where there are bike lanes.
“When I ride my bike it is usually on the sidewalk,” he said. “I try not to cause an accident or annoy the people that are driving a car.”
He goes to West High School and says he loves how inclusive it is to people with immigrant backgrounds. But since the recent mass shooting in Maine, he is worried and asks the next mayor to put metal detectors at the entrances.
Franco, Christopher’s mother, is usually busy running around the house chasing after her youngest son. She is from El Salvador. For her, having a proper park where to spend good time with her young family is important. She says some need a facelift.
“I see the swings are broken, there are parts missing,” she said. “I think they should fix them.”
Franco says she just wants to see someone in charge who cares about the details that would make daily life better in Manchester.
