Council Candidates Support Housing More Students on UMass Campus

Not surprisingly, the following independent candidates for Amherst Town Council have signed the petition urging UMass to house significantly more students on campus and the Council to prioritize creating and preserving housing for year-round residents to help reverse the flow of low and middle income residents from town.

They are:

At Large Candidates
Allegra Clark
Ellisha Walker

District 1 Candidates
Jill Brevik
Vince O’Connor
Cathy Schoen

District 2 Candidate
Amber Cano Martin

District 3 Candidates
Heather Hala Lord
Patrick Drumm

District 4 Candidates
Pam Rooney
Jennifer Taub

The petitioners invite Indy readers to both sign the petition and to share it with friends and neighbors and social networds. You can sign the petition here. 

The petition states:

We, the undersigned residents of Amherst, support the petition below asking the University of Massachusetts to make a commitment to house significantly more students on campus, in order to ameliorate the housing crisis for year-round residents of Amherst, and asking the Town of Amherst leadership to change its focus from expansion of student housing in town to ensuring that new and existing housing is prioritized for family, senior, low-income, and workforce residents.

Petition organizers argue that the housing crisis here is especially urgent in that our year-round resident population has now dwindled to approximately 13,000, less than 1/3 of the town’s total population of 40,000. With 9,000 students living off campus in Amherst, there is a growing imbalance in the downtown area, the village centers, and the neighborhoods.

See the Indy article.