Britton v. Town of Chester

The Town of Chester (defendant) enacted a zoning ordinance permitting multi-family housing only on lots of at least twenty-two acres that also included single-family homes and duplexes — a configuration available on only 1.73% of the town's land — and allowed the planning board broad, subjective discretion to hire experts at the applicant's expense and to judge whether proposals met the ordinance's objectives. Low- and moderate-income people from outside the town (plaintiffs, including Britton) had their affordable-housing development proposal denied under this ordinance and sued; the trial court found the ordinance created an unreasonably burdensome, overly subjective process that effectively deterred affordable housing, and the town sought review.