Opinion: Amherst at a Crossroads: Housing, Parking, and Leadership
Photo: amherst.edu
Amherst’s challenges are not abstract but visible every day in overflowing driveways, pothole-ridden streets, hollowed-out storefronts, and families leaving for neighboring towns. With 39,000 residents and a shrinking year-round population, we face a housing crisis that cannot be solved with cautious half-measures.
UMass Amherst is both our lifeblood and our burden. It generates $2.9 billion in statewide economic impact, but it also places outsized strain on Amherst’s roads, neighborhoods, and services. Permanent residents are right to demand accountability: UMass must house more students on its land and contribute more fairly to town infrastructure.
Yet accountability doesn’t stop at UMass. Town leadership has been too timid. Over-occupancy, illegal parking, and absentee landlords persist despite stronger bylaws. Housing density proposals get stalled in endless “design guideline” debates. Council incumbents call themselves protectors of neighborhoods, but their caution is costing us families, schools, and a stronger tax base.
This November, voters will decide whether Amherst doubles down on delay or chooses bold leadership. That means leaders willing to streamline development, expand housing options including ADUs and RG density enforce bylaws fairly, and invest in infrastructure.
Parking and housing aren’t just logistics. They reveal who Amherst is and who Amherst is for. The status quo is not working. The next election will decide whether Amherst clings to caution or acts boldly to secure its future.
Rizwana Khan is a resident of Amherst and a member of the town’s Human Rights Commission.
I admire Ms Khan’s succinct statement. I would modify the headline only by suggesting – as the author does – that leadership is not one of the problems – it is THE problem. The maladies that Ms. Khan alludes to are all the result of specific policies that the Town’s leadership has advocated. I hope questions at the League’s candidate forums will be as specific and pointed as this commentary.