On March 10, 2026, the Haworth Borough Council introduced Ordinance 2026-004, rezoning the former ConnectOne Bank building at 320 Haworth Avenue for a mixed-use residential project. Borough Attorney Bob Regan told a resident that night the site would hold 15 total units, three or four of them income-restricted. The same Round 4 housing plan, adopted by the Planning Board on March 9, 2026 and filed with Bergen County Superior Court on March 11, designates a second site, a 0.27-acre lot at 139 Terrace Street, for a zoning change permitting 10 units, two of them deed-restricted.
Add those two sites together and Haworth has found room for 25 new residences. That number sits next to a much larger one. Under New Jersey's current affordable housing cycle, known as Round 4, Haworth's prospective need obligation is 178 units. The borough's own housing plan, filed with Bergen County Superior Court on March 11, 2026, says directly that Haworth does not have sufficient vacant land to zone for or build its full obligation. The distance between 25 and 178 isn't a negotiating position. It's what happens when a state formula meets a two-square-mile borough that ran out of land decades ago.
That gap is the fact worth sitting with if you're comparing Haworth to towns with more room to grow. It isn't a story about a town resisting housing. It's a story about geography setting a ceiling that policy can't raise.
The Math Behind the Headline
New Jersey's affordable housing obligation traces back to the Mount Laurel doctrine, which requires every municipality to provide a realistic opportunity for its regional share of low- and moderate-income housing. Under the law that reorganized the process starting in 2024, towns that miss the compliance schedule risk losing their immunity from exclusionary zoning lawsuits, better known as builder's remedy suits, where a court can override local zoning entirely. Haworth's mayor, Wasser, told the council in March that failing to adopt implementing ordinances by March 15, 2026 would cost the borough exactly that immunity.
So the borough moved. Here's what it actually zoned for:
| Site | Size | Total Units | Deed-Restricted Units | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 139 Terrace Street (Block 1308, Lot 1) | ~0.27 acres | 10 | 2 | Designated in adopted Round 4 plan, credited to Round 3 and Round 4 unmet need, implementing zoning ordinance to follow |
| 320 Haworth Avenue (Block 1307, Lot 2) | Former ConnectOne Bank site | 15 | 3 to 4 | Ordinance 2026-004, new inclusionary zone district, introduced March 10, 2026 |
That's the entire visible new-construction pipeline in Haworth as of this spring: a quarter-acre lot and a defunct bank branch. Nothing in the current plan resembles a subdivision or a multi-building development, because there's no parcel left in town large enough to hold one.
Why Round 4 Looks So Much Smaller Than Round 3
It wasn't always this thin. Haworth's previous round, settled in 2019, centered on the 5.65-acre Schaefer's Gardens property, which the borough's settlement originally approved for a 41-unit complex with nine affordable units. The site was ultimately built out as Lakeshore Estates, a 32-home townhouse community and Haworth's first non-single-family housing of any kind. The community has since sold out.
Six years later, the borough's biggest available site for Round 4 is a bank building's footprint. That's the pattern underneath the headline number: each cycle, Haworth has less raw land to negotiate with, so each settlement gets smaller and more scattered by necessity, not by choice.
The council meeting carried a small echo of that history. A member praising the negotiating team called the outcome "the least worst alternative," a phrase he credited to the late Mayor Tom Ference, who used nearly the same words defending the 2019 settlement. Whether the phrase survived because it's simply accurate or because Haworth keeps landing in the same bind, either way it's the right description of a town solving a 178-unit problem one 15-unit building at a time.
Who Actually Qualifies for the New Units
If you're picturing these units as a way for Haworth families to stay in town at a lower price point, the mechanics say otherwise. State law bars any residency preference. Applicants for the deed-restricted units at both sites will be drawn from Housing Region 1, which covers Bergen, Hudson, Passaic, and Sussex counties, not from a Haworth-only pool. A veterans preference was built in where the law allows it, but that's the only carve-out. Once someone is selected, the unit stays deed-restricted for 30 to 40 years and can't be resold at market rate during that window.
That's worth knowing if you're trying to read these ordinances as a signal about who will be living in Haworth five years from now. The honest answer is that the borough doesn't get to decide, and neither does anyone buying a home nearby.
What This Means If You're Comparing Haworth to Other Towns
If your search has you weighing Haworth against Bergen towns with more open land, the housing plan filed this spring is the clearest evidence yet of what Haworth can and can't become. The borough is complying with state law, on schedule, through the only mechanism its geography allows: small, site-specific infill rather than new neighborhoods. Twenty-five units spread across a converted bank building and a quarter-acre lot is not a shift in the town's housing profile. It's a rounding error against an already tight single-family market, and it's likely to stay that way through the next decade of Round 4 obligations, since there's nothing larger left to rezone.
For a buyer weighing Haworth's older, larger housing stock against towns where new construction is still genuinely possible, this is the number to carry into that comparison. Scarcity in Haworth isn't a market condition that might loosen. It's written into the parcel map.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many units has Haworth actually zoned for under Round 4? Two sites so far: 139 Terrace Street, designated in the adopted plan for 10 units with 2 deed-restricted, and 320 Haworth Avenue, rezoned under Ordinance 2026-004 for 15 units with 3 to 4 deed-restricted.
Can current Haworth residents get priority for the new affordable units? No. State law prohibits a residency preference. Eligibility runs regionally across Bergen, Hudson, Passaic, and Sussex counties, with a veterans preference built in where permitted.
Has Haworth built anything like this before? Yes. The 2019 Round 3 settlement produced Lakeshore Estates, a 32-home townhouse community on the former Schaefer's Gardens site, the borough's first housing outside single-family homes. That community has since sold out.
What happens if Haworth misses a compliance deadline? It loses immunity from exclusionary zoning litigation, meaning a court could override the borough's zoning entirely in a builder's remedy suit, which is why the March 15, 2026 ordinance deadline mattered enough for the mayor to flag it publicly.
If you're weighing Haworth against other Bergen or Rockland towns and want to know what a town's land constraints actually mean for your search, that's a conversation worth having before you're deep into comparing listings. Rebecca Day works this corridor closely enough to walk through it with you. Request a private consultation to start.
