Public Comment: Amherst Can No Longer Sustain a Year-round Population

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.