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.