After a 20-year NIMBY battle, Haddonfield is building its first-ever affordable townhouses for families

The brief ceremony to mark the start of construction on a downtown Haddonfield townhouse development Thursday broke ground in more ways than one.

The 20 rental units at the Place in Haddonfield will be the borough’s first-ever, purpose-built affordable dwellings for families.

“It’s critically important for people to have the ability to achieve housing in a community like ours,” Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich said during the event, which was held on the single-acre construction site behind Borough Hall.

The $4.7 million development is being built by Community Investment Strategies Inc. of Lawrenceville, Mercer County. Construction is expected to take 15 to 16 months.

Bezich attributed some of the delays in recent years to the relatively small size of the the Place at Haddonfield, which was reduced from 28 to 20 units in part because some nearby residents were concerned about increasing the neighborhood’s population density.

Other concerns include the impact on street parking and on Haddonfield’s historic character, and tree removal at the construction site.

The mayor said NIMBYism, or “not in my back yard,” remains “part of the challenge” of constructing affordable housing in Haddonfield, where the average price of a single-family home is $698,563, an increase of 8.3% over a year ago, according to Zillow.com.

“There is some feeling of ‘the other,’ or of the bubble being burst, when we welcome everyone into a community,” Bezich said. “That’s the furthest thing from what we want to see. We can’t wait [to welcome] the 20 individuals or families who are going to be part of the fabric of Haddonfield.”

Adam Gordon, executive director of the Fair Share Housing Center, praised the efforts of Bezich and her borough commission colleagues.

During an interview before the groundbreaking, he said the borough had “found a balance make some change to accommodate the neighborhood and get something done.”

New Jersey needs about 200,000 affordable housing units. The 22,000 that have been produced since 2015 and the estimated 40,000 to 50,000 in the pipeline “aren’t even close to what we need,” Gordon said.

The center launched the legal battle to outlaw exclusionary zoning in New Jersey, particularly in the suburbs, in 1975. Haddonfield signed a court-ordered and legally binding agreement with the center in 2019.

Breaking ground for new homes “is what the Mount Laurel doctrine is all about,” Gordon said. The doctrine arose from a series of state Supreme Court rulings and created a constitutional obligation for New Jersey municipalities to provide their “fair share” of their region’s need for affordable housing.

Until now, affordable units built in Haddonfield had been reserved for senior citizens. The borough also plans to rent up to eight existing properties it owns or will purchase to income-qualified tenants; a solicitation for the first four of those units earlier this year drew more than 1,000 applications.

The Place in Haddonfield will include four one-bedroom, 10 two-bedroom, and six three-bedroom townhouses.

Chris Foglio, president of Community Investment Strategies, said she expects there will be “incredibly high demand” among prospective tenants.

Meanwhile, the borough is reviewing requests for proposals and hopes to designate a developer in January for the former Bancroft School site on East Kings Highway. The borough’s agreement with Fair Share requires that 10 affordable units be part of residential development there.