Housing Production Plan Aims for 700 to 900 New Units Over the Next Five Years 

Revised Accessory Dwelling Unit Bylaw Recommended to Town Council

Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Planning Board, May 21, 2025

This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded.

Present
Doug Marshall (Chair), Fred Hartwell, Karin Winter, and Joanna Neumann. Absent: Jesse Mager and Bruce Coldham

Staff: Nate Malloy (Senior Planner) and Pam Field Sadler (Assistant)

Housing Production Plan Draft Specifies Town’s Housing Needs
Judi Barrett and Tony Duong from Barrett Planning Group presented the draft of the Housing Production Plan (HPP) that they have been working with the town to finalize for the past year. The purpose of the plan, Duong said, is to address the town’s housing demands. The previous HPP was completed in 2013. Over the past year, Barrett Planning Group has met with town officials, the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, and developers, and held two community meetings. They are now inviting public feedback on the draft plan until June 1, after which they will incorporate suggestions and produce a final report. The Planning Board will vote on the plan in June and the Town Council in July.

Duong summarized the report in a PowerPoint presentation. He noted that Amherst meets the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) minimum standard of 10 percent affordable units, but residents still pay higher rents and house prices than surrounding communities. He said that housing demand in town is driven by students, mostly those at UMass. With the increase in student enrollment outpacing the construction of university housing, about 9,000 UMass students live off campus in Amherst, and about 10,000 live in nearby communities. It is estimated that about 7,000 live even farther away. Housing cost is a primary reason why 25% of Amherst residents say they plan to move out of the town in the next five years, Duong said. According to data, over 40% of Amherst households pay more than 30% of their income for housing.

EOHLC goals for affordable housing are a mix of housing types that are affordable to different income levels and a range of housing options for rental, homeownership for families, individuals, persons with special needs, and the elderly. The implementation strategies include identification of sites for development of affordable housing, characteristics of residential or mixed-use developments preferred by the town, identification of municipally-owned parcels to develop into affordable housing, and participation in regional collaborations addressing housing development. According to EOHLC metrics, Amherst needs to create 265 units by 2030. However, with the increased pressure from students, the HPP put a goal of building 700 to 900 new units, affordable and market-rate, by 2030. About 500 new units, mostly in multi-family buildings, have been built in the past five years.

Planning Board member Johanna Neumann asked what the rationale is for doing a new HPP if it is not required and is not binding. Planner Nate Malloy said an up-to-date HPP provides a framework useful for planning and achieving housing goals in the coming years. Barrett said that some grant programs give preference to towns with an HPP. Karin Winter noted that even most of the new housing built for students is too expensive for many of them to afford, but Duong noted the increased cost of new construction, so that it is hard for developers to build affordable housing. 

Planning Board chair Doug Marshall, admitting that he was playing devil’s advocate, stated that the town doesn’t have control over the basic building code, but could lower the cost of construction by eliminating the specialized stretch code that it adopted last year. Duong agreed that the extra sustainability features required by that code do raise costs, but did not recommend eliminating them. As Janet Keller said in public comment, the one-time spending to meet the code upfront leads to lifetime life and health benefits as well as savings on energy costs.. 

After the plan is finalized, it is expected to come back to the Planning Board on June 18 for further discussion and recommendations to the Town Council.

Revised ADU Bylaw Sent to Town Council for Approval

With some aspects of Amherst’s Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) conflicting with the state’s new housing law, the planning department rewrote the town’s bylaw to include two types of ADUs: the local ADU that can be up to 1200 sq. ft. and requires that either the ADU or the principal dwelling be owner-occupied; and a protected ADU that is limited to 900 sq. ft., but does not require owner-occupancy. Malloy noted that keeping the option of the larger ADUs, will keep those units permitted under the previous bylaw from becoming non-conforming.

The owner-occupancy requirement of the local ADUs burden the property if the owner wishes to sell it, but board member Fred Hartwell argued that many properties have an owner-occupancy requirement as part of a special permit and that the requirement offers a “local policing of renter behavior that is quite effective.” Winter agreed that owner-occupancy protects the neighbors.  Property owners who wish to remove the owner-occupancy requirement could appeal to the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA), but many owners have not been successful with the ZBA.

Neumann worried that the new bylaw would suppress the building of ADUs, but Marshall pointed out that the existence of the protected ADUs could mean that the town will get more 900 sq. ft. ADUs and fewer larger ones.

The Planning Board voted 4-0 to recommend the new ADU bylaw to the town council.

Palley Village Place Recommended for Acceptance as Town Road
The Palley Village subdivision (off of Old Belchertown Road) was approved in 2008 with the intention that its road, Palley Village Place, would become a town road when construction was complete. Attorney Tom Reidy of Bacon, Wilson LLC said that developer Gordon Palley has been working with Town Engineer Jason Skeels to bring the road up to town standards. The items on a 2020 punch list have been completed, and the homeowners’ association has agreed to maintain the common areas, drainage, and retention basin on Lot 7. A site visit by Planning Board members showed the road to be in acceptable condition.

Although Marshall noted that the town cannot maintain the roads it has, so maybe should not be adding more roads to maintain, all members present agreed that the developer had complied with the conditions established by the subdivision plan and it would be unfair not to approve it. Malloy said that some recent subdivisions, such as Vista Terrace, have a provision that the roads will never become town roads. The vote was 4-0 to recommend to the Town Council that the town accept the Palley Village Road.