Chester Tests 34-Unit Tiny Home Rental Village for Local Workers

Chester’s first test of its new workforce-housing ordinance is a 34-unit rental village planned for 20 acres of former farmland at 611 Haverhill Road, and the Planning Board hearing that was supposed to launch review was postponed after a large, loud, hostile crowd made the original room unusable. The proposal, called the Village at Buxton Woods, would bring small detached homes to a town long defined by two-acre lots and horse farms.

The current hearing notice names David Haddad of DJ Construction, 107 Windham Road in Derry, as the applicant and owner. It calls for 34 single-family detached fair market rental units on a private drive, with the homes split evenly between 17 one-bedroom units at 504 square feet and 17 two-bedroom units at 612 square feet. Chester had scheduled the hearing for April 22, 2026, at 7:05 p.m. at the Municipal Office Building on Chester Street, and the session was meant to be the first step toward a conditional use permit and site plan approval before the board.

What makes the proposal unusual is not just the unit count, but the ordinance behind it. Chester’s Article 7B was adopted under New Hampshire RSA 674:16 and 674:21 as an innovative land-use control, and town zoning materials say it was intended to address a shortage of affordable and reasonably priced housing. The ordinance grew out of the town’s 2017-2018 Age-Friendly Community Initiative with the Tufts Foundation and AARP, and it was designed for seniors who want to downsize, young adults trying to live independently, and residents with disabilities.

The structure is also a direct challenge to Chester’s old land-use habits. Planning materials say the town historically required two-acre lots for single-family homes and 25-acre tracts or larger for open-space developments, which makes a 34-unit rental cluster on 20 acres a sharp break from the norm. Under the Fair Market Rental Housing Subdivision model, the project stays under one owner, the homes cannot be sold separately, and rents must track HUD fair-market rent parameters for the area. That is the real stress test here: whether Chester can turn zoning language into actual rental supply for local workers without turning the project into a one-off exception.

The public reaction was immediate. The April 22 hearing was postponed to May 13 after the crowd in the room overwhelmed the setup, and board chair Brian Sullivan said he had never seen such an attitude since joining the board. Chester’s project documents are available at the Town Clerk’s Office, the Planning Board Office, and online, with meetings broadcast on Comcast Channel 6 and cablecast.tv. At the state level, the town is also an outlier: the NH Municipal Association said Chester was one of only two communities in 2024 to add a workforce housing definition or adopt a workforce housing ordinance. If Buxton Woods moves ahead, it will show whether that kind of zoning can produce real units in a town that has spent generations building in a far larger, far lower-density mold.