Affordable housing to be focus of next planning workshop in Chester

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Housing will be the focus of the Chester Planning Commission’s second of four workshops on Monday August 15th, 2022, at 6:30 p.m. featuring a presentation by the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust.

With the State of Vermont, including the town of Chester, currently experiencing a shortage of affordable housing, these workshops are meant to gather citizen’s input to assist in broadly updating Chester’s Unified Development Bylaws with a focus on implementing steps to help ease the local housing shortage.

Public participation in this process is important in helping to shape and refine our zoning bylaws in ways that will benefit the entire community. This second workshop will center on a presentation by Peter Paggi, the Director of Housing Development at the Windham and Windsor Housing Trust. Peter will be discussing potential ways for Chester to better meet its housing needs.

The Windham and Windsor Housing Trust is a non-profit community land trust and housing development corporation that develops new rental housing in Windham and southern Windsor Counties, as well as providing home ownership services throughout Windham and Windsor Counties. Their experience and track record of successfully developing both multi and single-family housing in southeastern Vermont should provide attendees with ideas and examples to help inform this ongoing discussion.

The presentation will explore what the W&WHT looks for in implementing construction and/or renovation of a housing development and ways that Chester might be able to work in helping to incentivize additional housing development in town.  The discussion should also help inform the ongoing efforts to update Chester’s Unified Development Bylaws in ways that assist in enabling village revitalization.

Chester residents, please plan to attend. Your ideas and feedback are needed as we work to keep Chester a happy, healthy, and functional community. The Zoom link for anyone who prefers to attend remotely is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81029256359