Opinion: What’s Wrong with the Positive Growth Narrative
Photo: istock
Amherst’s “positive growth” narrative, as framed in George Ryan’s recent article in the Amherst Current, on closer inspection begins to look less like a success story and more like a house of cards. While the town leans on UMass’ PILOPILOT (Payment in Lieu of PILOT) to offset UMass’s footprint, our local tax structure fails to distinguish between a modest, owner-occupied home and a high-density, commercialized student rental.
A landlord collecting $5,000 or more per month from a single property pays the same base tax rate as a long-term resident next door. That is not neutrality—it is a structural subsidy for a high-turnover business model.
Also, we are about to see a surge in “Frankenstein” properties—overstuffed homes and outsized ADUs designed to pack in a dozen or more students and their vehicles on a half-acre lot—place disproportionate demands on police, fire, and infrastructure, yet contribute no more to the tax base than a typical household. In effect, single-family homeowners are subsidizing these commercial operations. The irony is hard to miss: those same homeowners are often labeled “NIMBYs” or worse racist, (says the guy who lives in an $800k house himself) even as they shoulder the financial burden of maintaining the very services that enable others’ profit.
If Amherst is serious about equity and sustainability, it is time to realign our priorities. A residential tax exemption for owner-occupants would more fairly distribute the tax burden and begin correcting a system that currently penalizes long-term community investment.
P.S.: The town should also charge student-owned vehicles the local excise tax, rather than allowing those payments to flow to their parents’ home municipalities. Amherst bears the infrastructure and service costs; it should receive the corresponding revenue.
P.P.S.: If one finds it objectionable to give some tax relief to owner/occupants, then they should also support canceling the several popular incentives and tax abatements we reward developers with – fair is fair.
Ira Bryck has lived in Amherst since 1993, ran the Family Business Center for 25 years, hosted the “Western Mass. Business Show” on WHMP for seven years, now coaches business leaders, and is a big fan of Amherst’s downtown.
With rent control almost surely to be on the horizon one way or another, I wonder what the impact will be on the taxes of an owner-occupied single family home. It certainly will decrease the Net Operating Income on which the tax evaluation of large apartment buildings is based. Smaller properties are taxed on arms length sales so we wonder what an owner might get for his owner-occupied duplex which could be exempt from rent control? What will be the impact on the town budget—schools in particular—of any shifting of the tax burden? Seriously, I wonder.
Kudos to Mr. Bryck for labeling student rentals for what they are: small businesses that should be taxed as such.
On to ADUs:
ADUs have been heralded by policy makers as a solution to housing shortages here and across the state. One moniker for the ADU – “granny flat” – alludes to one type of ADU, basically a “tiny house” erected to accommodate an aging relative close to family members who can assist in caring for them in a non-institutional setting. This cloaks ADUs in their most sympathetic guise. But in many, if not most, instances in Amherst, ADUs are in reality small businesses that seek to maximize the number of renters (in Amherst, read students) on a given parcel of land. Until ADUs start popping up in posh enclaves, we should recognize them for what they are: a way to increase the population densities of working force (i.e.: lower middle class) neighborhoods, with the concomitant effects of more cars parked on less land and increasing the wear and tear on our roads, less green and fewer open spaces, and more noise and commotion, all without inconveniencing the residents of tonier zones with their larger houses and lots.
If this sounds like class warfare, consider it a retaliatory volley. It is not a first shot.
Massachusetts allows cities and towns to adopt a local‑option “residential exemption” that reduces the taxable value of an owner‑occupied primary residence and thereby shifts more of the residential tax burden onto non‑owner‑occupied properties such as second homes and many student rentals. When a community uses this option, qualifying homeowners get a chunk of their home’s assessed value excluded from taxation, so to raise the same overall levy the residential tax rate is higher and falls more heavily on properties that do not qualify; typically vacation homes, rentals, and investment properties.
The Massachusetts cities and towns that have adopted this owner‑occupant residential exemption include Barnstable, Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Malden, Nantucket, Provincetown, Somerset, Somerville, Tisbury, Waltham, and Watertown
Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 59, Section 5C
Bryck is spot on in his post and comment. Every few months or so I comment about the inadequate share of responsibility UMASS shoulders for the expenses due to the traffic and other services they (students/faculty/staff) and their contractors create for Amherst. Until the Statehouse addresses the PILOT formula, pressure on full time resident owners will only increase.