Provide a range of housing types that are affordable to a diverse residential population throughout the community where supported by this Plan

To encour­age the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive hous­ing options avail­able to house­holds with a range of income lev­els, hous­ing leg­is­la­tion (i.e. zon­ing) and devel­op­ment incen­tives with­in the Town Code should be stud­ied. Cur­rent­ly, the Town Code requires a cer­tain per­cent­age or num­ber of lots be cre­at­ed for the pro­vi­sion of an afford­able hous­ing unit in new sub­di­vi­sions. The Town should deter­mine whether exist­ing per­cent­ages should be increased to bet­ter encour­age price point and hous­ing type vari­a­tion in all zon­ing dis­tricts. So as to main­tain New Castle’s bucol­ic, sin­gle-fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial char­ac­ter, all new hous­ing units should be con­sis­tent with the char­ac­ter, aes­thet­ic and scale of the neigh­bor­hood with­in which they will be locat­ed. Alter­na­tive hous­ing con­sist­ing of small­er sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes (e.g. ​“gate” hous­es), two-fam­i­ly homes and acces­so­ry apart­ments locat­ed in sin­gle-fam­i­ly res­i­dence build­ings should be devel­oped using cre­ative design tech­niques to appro­pri­ate­ly fit seam­less­ly among exist­ing res­i­dences in the Town’s low-den­si­ty neigh­bor­hoods. Large-scale res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment of any kind in more remote, unde­vel­oped areas of the town faces a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the fol­low­ing: (i) sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal con­straints (such as sen­si­tive wet­lands and wet­land buffers, steep slopes, pub­lic drink­ing water water­sheds and aquifers); (ii) the lack of exist­ing infra­struc­ture (such as pub­lic water and sew­er util­i­ties, sub­stan­dard roads in terms of sur­face, width, drainage and sight lines); (iii) lit­tle or no access to pub­lic trans­porta­tion; and (iv) lim­it­ed fire pro­tec­tion when pub­lic water is unavail­able. Alter­na­tive hous­ing should be devel­oped as part of infill and mixed-use devel­op­ments in the Town’s ham­lets and sur­round­ing areas.

This goal can also be accom­plished through the reuse and repur­pos­ing of under­uti­lized prop­er­ties. The Town should coor­di­nate with finan­cial insti­tu­tions or non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions to iden­ti­fy prop­er­ties that may be rede­vel­oped or reused as alter­na­tive hous­ing avail­able to a range of income levels.