Public Comment: Amherst Can No Longer Sustain a Year-round Population
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The following public comment was offered at the meeting of the Amherst Town Council, October 6, 2025.
Several years ago our Town Manager circulated information about a series of forums about student housing with participants from colleges and universities all over the world. They all had common problems of high rents for students and residents and negative impacts of off-campus housing on residential neighborhoods. Many students were forced to choose between paying high rents and other bills. Local year-round residents could not find or afford housing in quiet neighborhoods. All recognized the incompatibility between student lifestyles and regular folk–families, seniors, workers, and professionals. As a Planning Board member, I frequently heard from residents struggling to work with students and stay in their neighborhoods as house after house turned into student rentals. Entire streets, such as Shumway Street and South Whitney Street have turned into student rental streets in the past 20 years and houses along Main Street used to be filled with families, not students. So what were other cities and towns doing?
First, working closely together with the local university to solve the problems. Second, specific solutions: minimum distance requirements (like College Station), set up zones for student housing with greater density and building heights, decided to build much more on-campus housing (University of Colorado at Boulder was building 5,000 more on-campus beds), among other solutions. One Canadian city with three higher ed institutions created a student housing zone in a triangle area between all three and allowed very high buildings. It resulted in more housing, but rents were so high students could not afford to pay rent, food and utilities. Ithaca NY has different zones for different types of residential housing, a College Town district and reduced the number of unrelated people permitted in a household to less than 4 in some zones. These cities took steps — but Amherst hasn’t.
Amherst hasn’t addressed these college town problems and worked to protect its residential neighborhoods so that they remain livable for year-round residents — and affordable for all living here. As the new Housing Production Plan shows, Amherst is turning into UMASSville –steadily losing home after home to student housing. Real estate ads regularly advertise “Investors take notice” and point out rental potential. Hundreds of new units have been built and most now house students at very high rents–resulting in landlords increasing rents all through town. We cannot solve the problems created by students’ demand for local housing without taking steps that actually address the problem. Doing nothing means street after street will lose year-round residents. With less than 13,000 year-round residents, Amherst is at a tipping point. \
These bylaw articles presented today by residents are important steps to create a healthy balance of year-round residents and students in our neighborhoods and town. It’s time to start.
I am a landlord for just one property. I have rented to UM staff and students. Currently I have a Hampshire employee. I grew in Amherst and left. It is UMASS ville. Accept it. No one will tell me who to rent too.
I am a landlord too and I follow the laws of the city and state — they tell me what to do all the time. Amherst can adopt bylaws regulating student rentals, like other cities. Accept it.
“Students” come in all sizes, ages, colors, sexes etc. yet they are all treated pejoratively by some of our residents and council candidates. Senior citizens attend classes, many students choose to live alone for privacy and quiet and others are families. All the new fees for licensing and inspections only serve to raise rents when many of us know that there are many more compliant rental units than substandard outliers.
Despite the state and local laws and regulations, enforcement has been lax for more than ten years. And, BTW, I’ll bet there are fewer LLC landlords, than trusts, S-corps, trusts, single and joint local resident owners who seem not to be included as owning student houses?
Just a few negative consequences—IF one can figure out how to write and enforce such a bylaw—once a house is designated a “student house”, it’s always a student house, unlikely to become family housing. Another, one downtown house becomes worth much more (perhaps double) because it can be rented to “students” while the next door neighbor must sell her house for much less. Hardly equitable!
The Planning Board was wise in not pursuing this definition given its myriad unintended consequences.
The driving force that has created the town’s troublesome housing situation and the imbalance of the town’s population is the irresponsible UMASS enrollment policy that has been in play for the past 50 years. It’s time for Amherst to respectfully ask the Commonwealth to immediately “cap yearly enrollment acceptances” temporarily and agree to enter into a discussion with town leaders to reset the relationship between UMASS and the Town of Amherst. This year UMass enrolled 32,000 students yet it only has 16,550 dorm beds. This means 15,500 students needed housing in order to attend UMass this year. These acceptance numbers have increased every year with total disregard to the continued impact on the community. 70% of Amherst population are now part timers and 30% are year round residents. Year round residents struggle to pay the lion’s share of the town’s services and infrastructure through exorbitant real estate taxes. UMass is tax exempt and the current payment in lieu of taxes arrangements with UMass are a pittance and an insult to Amherst generous nature.
The k- 12 school system enrollment is in a nose dive decline and at risk because student rentals don’t house school age children. Merchants accommodate the commuter and student economy. Family centric amenities for year round residents have dwindled. Housing developers have filled the housing demands and gobbled up family neighborhoods and charge high rent prices that are out of reach for young families.
Amherst has always been reactive to housing pressure instead of identifying and creating solutions to the root causes. Is it time to look at things differently and bring our biggest neighbor and stressor (UMass) into the conversation?
Another issue, as I see it, is the conversion of homes that once housed families to AirBnB rentals. A gorgeous, old house in our neighborhood has recently been flipped into such a commercial money-maker, further exacerbating what can only be described as a growing family housing crisis. True, nobody can “tell” property owners what to do with their property, but the Town can — and should — impose some level of regulation regarding these types of short term rentals in the interest of preserving family housing stock.