Newport clerk seeks fix for vehicle registration without stable addresses

In Newport, a car registration problem can quickly become a job problem, a medical problem or a court problem if a resident cannot renew on time or gets stopped without proper paperwork. Town clerk Liselle Dufort has been working on a practical fix for people who are unhoused or otherwise do not have a stable mailing address, turning a routine clerk’s office task into a test of whether local government can stay reachable when life is not orderly.

The issue surfaced in a town where about 6,500 people live and where Newport serves as the county seat of Sullivan County. The town is run through town meeting, an elected five-member Selectboard and an appointed town manager, a structure that places a lot of day-to-day contact with residents in the clerk’s office. Dufort told the Selectboard she could count on one hand the number of times in 15 years that someone without a permanent address had asked to register a vehicle, underscoring how uncommon the problem has been locally and how easily it can be overlooked.

New Hampshire law already gives towns a path to handle the problem. RSA 261:52-c allows a resident who is homeless and does not have a permanent street address to register or re-register a vehicle by certifying in writing that the person is currently a resident of the town or city and by providing a letter from a qualified social-service organization authorizing use of that organization’s mailing address for department contact. State DMV guidance says vehicle registration generally begins at the town or city clerk in the municipality where the owner resides, which makes Newport’s clerk office the first hurdle for anyone trying to stay legal on the road.

Dufort’s office is at 15 Sunapee St. in Newport, and the town’s renewal options already include a drop box in the back parking lot for submitting renewal materials. That detail matters because residents without stable housing often have the least reliable transportation and the hardest time reaching a municipal office during business hours. A system that accepts alternate mailing arrangements and off-hours drop-off can reduce the chance that a missing address turns into a suspended ability to drive.

For Newport, the question is whether a small town can turn a narrow state provision into a usable local process. If the clerk’s office can do that cleanly, the town could offer a model for other New Hampshire communities where the hidden barrier is not the vehicle itself but the address attached to it.