Opinion: Affordable Housing is Cruel to the Majority
The Amherst Community Homes duplex development by the non-profit developer Valley Community Development is much needed. Amherst is in a severe housing shortage, to the point that it is spilling over into neighboring communities (look at housing prices in Belchertown/Granby/South Hadley along the border of Amherst versus the other side of the towns). The average price for a house for sale in Springfield is around $250,000. It is more than double that in Amherst, with about half of the housing units for sale in town being listed for more than $1 million. There are myriad reasons for this, the most obvious being the socio-economic divide in the Pioneer Valley, but another important factor that is often overlooked is that there is a glut of market rate housing in Springfield. As of May 20, 2025, there are about 210 houses for sale in Springfield on Zillow. In Amherst there are 30. (See above links) Even accounting for Springfield’s population being about 4x that of Amherst’s year-round population, there is about double the number of housing units available for sale in Springfield on a per capita basis. “Well of course Springfield has more houses, it is a city!”, you might cry, but that doesn’t negate the fact that there’s fewer houses going around for more people looking for them in Amherst. Springfield actually built houses for people when they needed them.
Amherst may be finally beginning to build much needed housing, but going back to the duplex development in North Amherst, begs the question, how on earth is it so expensive? It is estimated to cost over $20 million for just 30 affordable housing units. That is almost $700,000 per unit. Not only is this unaffordable for developers, but it is also untenable to continue to build “affordable” housing in a way that cannot be built affordably. Not only is the building of affordable housing expensive, but the subsequent market rate conditions after accounting for affordable units ultimately raises market rates. If a developer can build four units for $1 million, they can expect a 10-20% profit, or $200,000 if we’re being generous, for a gross total of $1.2 million. Split between four units, the market rate would be $300,000. Now imagine one of the units is required to be affordable, which would bring the price down to about $150,000 for one of the units. What do we think the developer is going to do with the prices of the other three units? Developers need to make money too. No company, or individual for that matter, is going to put hours and years of work through meetings, public comments, design standards and more into developing housing to only make percentiles of pennies on the dollar.
When there is a shortage of housing, there is little to no distinction in the market between “affordable” and “market rate”, the only feature that is felt is the lack of supply. Fundamentally, an affordable and market rate unit offers the same thing, a place to live. The only difference is who qualifies. Amherst’s affordable housing bylaw, although only required for projects with greater than 10 units as well as with an option to “buy out” of the requirement to build affordable units, ultimately creates more barriers to developing housing, driving up prices. I do not claim that affordable housing projects and the affordable housing bylaw are the sole cause of Amherst’s housing struggles. However, the regulatory environment created by these “affordability” bylaws, as well as the financial impact of them on developers pushes up market rates. This effect on market rate housing is felt even more strongly in communities such as Amherst with a below-median-income.
Affordable housing is forcing out the majority, the middle and the working class. In its place will be the 20% of the population that can qualify for housing support, and the top 10% that can afford the market rate conditions created by “affordability”. The premise of affordable housing is admirable. Housing should be a human right. However, we must take a hard look at our policies as progressives and liberals to see what is, and what is not working.
Republicans and conservatives are running circles around Democrats and progressively run areas when it comes to not only building and providing housing, but also growing their populations. We must refocus and rethink our priorities rather than being aligned to a policy that is not working. This column is not even going to get into the zoning bylaws, public meetings, and myriad other regulations the town of Amherst has in place that make it incredibly difficult (and subsequently, expensive) to build. Affordable housing regulations take the plight of the housing insecure from the bottom 20% of society, and thrusts it upon the majority. It is cruel, and there are better ways forward, for those that are housing insecure, and for those that make an average living.
Craig Judicki is a lifelong resident of Granby, Massachusetts.
Thank you, Craig, for writing this. Spot on! People should read the book “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson for a similar perspective. The so-called progressive Blue states have largely been a failure in achieving the goals they promise — like affordable housing — because of . . . well, you’ll have to read the book to see why!
The ten 900 sf two-room units and twenty 1200sf three-bedroom units now cost over $700,000 each to build. Only 7 of the smaller units are set aside for families who live or work here. The Town has kicked in more money to cover increased expenses—at least another million. And, no one has built starter-level homes here in two generations.
Among the reasons for the higher prices are more regulations requiring more government oversight, more legal preparation, more expensive construction due to the prevailing wage law etc.
Yes, a better way is for the town or non-profit entities to buy the aging starter homes in neighborhoods, bring them up to current codes and sell them to eligible families. If we built more senior housing—a tax windfall since there are few if any school-age kids—their homes would be open to families. Hadley has permitted more and more senior housing!. Yes, believe me, restoring and/or rehabbing old houses is a winning solution!
“and sell them to eligible families.“
Hi Hilda, what stops the usual people from buying up these houses and renting to the students? I didn’t think there was a “families only” option. If so I’m all for it. We’re surrounded by rentals now and this town seems to encourage it. How about building some single story condos for the over 55? That’s what we would be interested in now and yes, sell our house to a family but?
Because the non-profit Valley Community Development screens, trains, and selects all the buyers. The deeds are restricted such that the units must remain affordable with built-in caps on the selling price. All the details are listed in the many conditions of this Ch.40B Comprehensive Permit. The two bedroom units are handled differently from the three-bedroom ones since they will be marketed to a slightly higher income bracket.
The North Amherst units are subsidized by the State Common Wealth program to allow disadvantaged population build equity. There is no way that this can become a student ghetto that I can imagine. (But I never imagined a lot of other things that are happening in Amherst and America in all my 88 years)
Also: Unfortunately the town’s software program no longer supports public access to permits, noise violations, inspections…etc. Data that have been useful to me, in particular, as a reporter and zoning board member. Access to these data should be part of Open Government if Amherst is truly democratic. It’s the only check and balance available with this Charter.
“Developers need to make money too.” This one, seemingly innocuous statement speaks volumes. Why should housing, an absolute necessity of life and a human right, be subject to profit-seeking by developers and landlords? This central contradiction is not going to be solved by Ezra Klein-esque, neoliberal, market-based policy tweaks. That way of doing things is to blame for massive wealth disparities, driving working class Americans into economic despair and making our society susceptible to fascist megalomania. Here in little Amherst, we’ve rolled out the red carpet for the Joneses, Robertses, and the Amherst College investment portfolio, allowing our local bourgeois to devastate the housing market while we impotently wring our hands. Amherst, like municipalities all over the country, badly needs Social Housing: create a public fund to invest in housing units, the increasing value of which will stay in the public trust, while positioning town government to protect us all from predatory real-estate speculation.
Hear, hear, Jonathan Sivel. Our current form of government is doing a LOT to enable this sort of thing – support for developers, real estate interests and the colleges over the basic needs of the rest of us. We need to return to government that affords public participation, democracy, transparency etc.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Sivel and Darcy DuMont, everything is commoditized. Despite the wishes of a loud portion of the area population, firms and individuals need to make a profit (on any project) to be viable (and ultimately share our resources in the most efficient way possible). Not working within the way the economy actually works, and working from a place of idealism is how we got into this mess in the first place. From food to housing to healthcare to, everything has a price. It is our duty to ensure that people can afford to buy these things, not in just words but in action. We can put our head in the sand and complain about shortcomings of capitalism and blame everything on the “developers” and “gentrification” or we can follow in the footsteps of places that have actually managed to solve their housing crisis, like Austin, Texas. It’s time for Amherst to stop with the platitudes and the housing experimentation. There’s too much at stake when already we know what works in practice, building more housing (Amherst is educated, just look at the data!) The issue for Amherst and indeed the state will be convincing people such as yourselves that this obvious solution is the best solution, when there’s a large portion of the population that simply does not believe in the capitalist system.