John and Maggie Randolph’s recent construction of an entire community of “tiny homes” in Dover has won widespread praise for helping address the need for more workforce housing across the state. 

Now the married couple are eyeing an even more ambitious single-family housing development in Durham with the similar goal of providing smaller and more affordable homes for working- and middle-class residents, many of whom are increasingly getting priced out of New Hampshire’s ever-more expensive real estate market. 

John Randolph, head of GSD Communities, which operates two assisted living facilities in Durham, and Maggie Randolph, an architect who runs GSD Studies, are currently searching for land to buy in Durham, where they hope to build as many as 200 single-family homes that can be rented out to residents. 

As envisioned, some of the new Durham homes would be roughly the same “tiny” size as the recently constructed one-bedroom cottages in Dover, or roughly 540 square feet. 

But the Randolphs, in an interview with The Registry Review, say many of the Durham homes could be as large as 1,200 square feet and include two to three bedrooms. 

The reason: there’s a clear market need for affordable homes that can accommodate more than just one or two people, they say. 

“We want a true mix of housing,” said Maggie Randolph, who personally designed the innovative, super-efficient tiny homes in Dover and who hopes to design any new housing in Durham. “There’s a certain amount of dignity to having your own home to live in, as opposed to an apartment, and we want to provide such [options] to people.” 

A Match for ‘Attainable Housing’ District 

But is all of this just a pie-in-the-sky dream of the Randolphs? 

Not at all, considering the town of Durham late last year approved a new “Attainable Housing Overlay District” that specifically allows high-density housing, with as many as 200 units per project, on approved sites with access to available water and sewer lines.  

Creation of the overlay district stemmed from recommendations by a recent task force established by the town to explore new housing-construction options in Durham. 

Michael Behrendt, director of planning and community development in Durham, stressed that no development plans by the Randolphs have been submitted yet to the town – and therefore no decisions have been reached on any future project. 

But Behrendt did make clear town officials have talked with the Randolphs about their hopes to build in Durham something similar to their “Cottages at Back River Road” in Dover. 

He also noted that town officials are aware of one 100-acre site that the Randolphs have expressed interest in buying for a potential project.  

“Hopefully, they can find a site in Durham that works for them and the town,” he said. 

State needs All Types of Homes 

In passing the new “Attainable Housing Overlay District,” the town of Durham has shown that it recognizes the need for more workforce-style housing – and is taking steps to achieve that goal, Behrendt said. 

“Durham is doing its part,” he added. “At this point, it’s now up to private developers to do their part.” 

Chris Norwood, president of NAI Norwood Group in Portsmouth and a member of the board of directors at the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority, said the state needs all types of new housing, including high-density residential projects. 

He specifically praised Dover’s “Cottages at Back River Road,” which was built to help provide housing for the Randolphs’ GDS employees, as a classic high-density development that reduces per-unit construction costs. 

“Everything in Dover was designed to minimize waste and maximize affordability,” he said. “The [Dover project] can serve as a model for other developments.” 

 What’s Next for Project 

The Randolphs told The Registry Review that they’ve had only preliminary discussions with banks about possible financing for a new project in Durham. Nothing has been decided, they said. 

Though the town of Durham’s recently approved zoning change calls for all new units in the overlay district to be rentals, the Randolphs said they’re hoping they’re allowed to sell at least a small number of homes in order to help recoup some of their equity investment. 

In the case of the tiny-homes project in Dover, per an agreement with that town, individual leases are capped at an agreed upon fair-market rental rate, now set at $1,517 per unit, Maggie Randolph said.  

It seems a similar pricing structure might be put in place in Durham, assuming a development project there ever gets off the ground. 

John Randolph said one of the goals of the original Dover project, and perhaps a future Durham project, is to help push acceptance of smaller homes in general. 

According to Census Bureau data, the median size of a new single-family home in the U.S. was 2,286 square feet in 2023.  

But Randolph noted that the median size of newly built single-family home in the U.S. was about 950 square feet in the 1950s. 

“That number has grown ever since,” he said. “Homes have blown up in size.” 

He expressed hope that the housing-size pendulum swings back to considerably smaller homes in general. 

“I think you’re going to see a reversal,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest today in going small.”