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Date: 9/1/2021
AMHERST – The Amherst Town Council conducted a first reading of a proposed Comprehensive Housing Policy that would aim to diversify the town’s housing stock and improve equity in owning and renting opportunities.
The Community Resources Committee (CRC) voted unanimously to bring the policy, which Hanneke called a “blueprint,” forward to the council and recommend its adoption on July 27. The plan went before the Amherst Town Council for the first reading on Aug. 23.
“Every study we have done for the past decade has made it clear that we need more housing,” At-Large Councilor Mandi Jo Hanneke, who serves as chair of the Community Resources Committee, told the council. “The current housing crunch and corresponding rise in prices even shows that right now and we need it at all income levels, not just the affordable level; it’s probably the most dire there but we need it everywhere.”
The process that led to this report started nearly two years ago when the Housing Trust proposed an affordable housing policy and the Community Resources Committee had spent roughly 18 months developing the proposal. Councilor Dorothy Pam, also a member of the Community Resources Committee, said there had been 20 different versions of the plan throughout the development process.
The proposed policy has five main goals:
• Promote greater pathways to homeownership and integrated communities through increased supply of a diversity of housing types.
• Increase the supply and variety of affordable and market rate rental housing.
• Create, update and maintain safe, secure and environmentally healthy housing.
• Address climate sustainability and resiliency of housing stock, location and construction.
• Align and leverage municipal funding and other resources to support affordable housing.
During her presentation, Hanneke said the town lacks housing availability. “The demand for housing is outpacing this housing and has been for a very long time,” she said, adding the demand does not solely involve students at local colleges and universities. “I have heard that there are tenured professors who cannot afford to buy a house in this town.”
According to the report, the town’s population has grown by 176 percent, or 24,101 people, while housing during the same period grew by 125 percent, or 5,254 units. The town’s highest rates of growth in terms of housing development occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. The report and Census data do indicate in the past decade, some strides have been made in adding a significant number of units. The report states that from 2010 to 2017, the town added 663 units while the 2020 Census indicated slightly more than 1,000 units were added from 2010 to 2020, marking a 10.7 percent increase from the previous census. Amherst’s population grew by 3.8 percent, or 1,444 people.
However, the Community Resources Committee considered these gains to be modest. The report notes that as part of the 2013 Housing Production Plan (HPP), the town had a deficit of 1,500 units for residents making less than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) and while that HPP established a five-year goal of adding 226 affordable housing units there has been “limited forward movement” in developing housing for this population. It also states a 2015 Housing Market Study predicted an annual housing demand of 643 households including 4 percent new growth. The HPP, meanwhile, set a goal of 487 new units, including 261 market rate and workforce units by 2021.
Based on these numbers, the Community Resources Committee reported the town has averaged 50 new units annually in the past 10 years.
The committee indicated in the report that the “affordability problem has not decreased” and is expected to grow. Citing the 2021 Greater Springfield Regional Housing Analysis Report from the Donahue Institute, the report states that Hampshire County had a housing gap of more than 2,100 units and that discrepancy was estimated to be more than 3,500 by 2025.
Hanneke also noted to the council that the town largely has two housing options – single-family homes or apartments. Senior housing was an area in which she said the town has received requests.
“As the report says, the policy itself is not the end and probably not all it could be. We’re not going to hide from that,” Hanneke told the council. “We could be working on this for years and never be finished, but there comes a time when a committee and a council has to recognize that the time is now to enact it and start moving toward implementation and that’s where we are now.”
Hanneke added a policy would catalyze efforts to align funding, projects and bylaws to a “holistic vision of what we want housing to be in Amherst.”
The draft policy includes several possible implementation strategies, ranging from zoning changes to partnerships to funding solutions to policy and regulatory measures to municipal funding. In all, there are 67 bullet points outlining various possibilities. Hanneke explained to the council that the implementation strategies listed in the report are a compilation of approaches from various reports and studies as well as conversations within the committee as well as with other municipal entities and residents.
“We had, the CRC had thought about deleting it because it is extremely hard to either prioritize which ones are most important or not into a policy document or to agree on them because, as you all know, the 13 of us have very different ideas as to which ones would be most important,” she said. “The way forward that CRC thought to move this policy forward was to list them all or delete them and we actually heard from town staff, from boards and committees and from town residents that they wanted the list in the policy because it was one of the first times anyone had compiled a list from all of the many sources that had it. So we decided to leave it in, but it is not an endorsement of every single one of those strategies that are listed in there; they are possibilities.”
She continued that the next step after adoption of the policy would be to prioritize those strategies.
Pam voiced her agreement with the assessment that the policy should be implemented as soon as possible, calling it a “good step” in creating a more equitable housing market for residents of Amherst.
She also admitted there was a great deal of complexity to the policy’s development, as various stakeholders identified different priorities.
“I am also aware that this housing policy is kind of like the blind men trying to describe an elephant – it depends on what part they touched what they see,” she said. She added she was among those who believe the University of Massachusetts Amherst should develop more housing on their property and was under the impression there would be a stronger emphasis on that in the final report.
Councilor Alisa Brewer commended the committee on the wording used in the proposed policy, noting it focused on consideration and discussion of various issues, including ones that could be controversial. She noted consideration does not necessarily equate to action, but rather encourages discussion.
“As a resident of District 1, some people are going to be highly upset to see somewhere in this report that it talks about a possible university overlay district in North Amherst center because there are residents of District 1 who say, ‘There are already too many students living here; we need more homeownership, we don’t need any more students living here,’” she said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t consider it. That’s why I think the language used in here is very effective … I think too often we say, ‘That will offend someone and therefore we must not even consider it.’ Let’s deal with the things that are hot button issues and work our way through them. I think that’s a really helpful approach.”
Among the comments by Councilor Andrew Steinberg was a caution of maintaining perspective and assessing how much housing the town of Amherst could realistically sustain while maintaining a desirable way of life for residents.
“The problem cannot be solved by Amherst. That’s a nationwide problem, a statewide problem, a regional problem that cannot be solved on the backs of one town. We need to do our part, we need to think about the people who are here but I think it would be a mistake to not recognize that at some point as we cross 40,000 in population, how big does this community really want to envision itself,” he said, also noting that with housing changes and growth come increases in service costs.
While she called the proposed policy “a good start,” Councilor Cathy Schoen, voiced concerns over the report and submitted a 14-page memo to the Town Council and Community Resources Committee outlining a number of revisions.
“I’m offering this really in a spirit of trying to be constructive and identify places where I could be stronger or where I think there is some conflict in the wording in the current document,” she told the council.
Among her major concerns was the impact of UMass enrollment growth on the local housing market, the existing density of housing in Amherst and relative lack of buildable acreage, and the lack of focus on investment in infrastructure to make the community more walkable. She also suggested amendments to various goals as well as “substantial revision” of the list of potential policies, which she wrote was “biased, not analytic, often conflicting, and implies endorsement.”
Councilor Darcy DuMont endorsed Schoen’s suggestions, stating, “I’m concerned that though the policy lists a lot of good ideas, it seems to be a means of bolstering and endorsing the current zoning proposals, which doesn’t feel quite right and doesn’t feel like the basis for creating a long-term housing policy document.”
She added that omitting the relationship with UMass was the most serious problem with the policy.
“I do feel like it’s the elephant in the room,” she said. “I would like to see UMass using its land to house students and I do agree with the proposal to require freshmen and maybe even sophomores to live on campus in dorms or complexes they would want to live in – create a livable environment so that students would want to live there.”
Councilor Steve Schreiber clarified that UMass does require first year students to live on campus with certain exceptions, but it used to require first and second year students to use campus housing until about 10 years ago, causing a shift in housing need. He also noted that the UMass campus has now expanded further into town, including the recent acquisition of former fraternity housing on East Pleasant Street.
He added, “I’ve lived in Amherst for 16 years and I’ve heard this discussion for 16 years that UMass should be building more housing but in a way that’s like saying, ‘Hadley should build our housing or Sunderland should build our housing and that’s how the problem will be solved’ because we don’t have authority over UMass. What we have authority over is the town.”
Councilor Patricia De Angelis said that while in support of accessory dwellings, multi-unit housing and similar developments, the town should use caution when approaching the “unsubstantiated” assumption that increased housing density would lead to greater affordability.
Councilor George Ryan called the draft policy “an extraordinary gift to us,” adding, “We have five goals that I think we all, in principle, can support.”
He opined that the policy would only be effective, however, if a working group or task force was assembled.
“This is just a bunch of nice ideas and a long list of stuff,” he said. “My question for my colleagues and myself is where do we then send this? Where does it go? Where does it live? Because if it just lives out there in the O-zone, nothing’s going to happen.”
Council President Lynn Griesemer later concurred and said, “I’d like to add to that what does the motion from the council look like? Is it at the goal level? Is it the goal an objective level? Is it at the strategy level? I’d start thinking about that.”
She also urged the council to consider how they could move forward with public outreach without the process becoming “another parking study.”
The full policy proposal is available at https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/57396/8b-Comprehensive-Housing-Policy---as-recommended-by-CRC.
Schoen’s written response is also available online at https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/57523/Housing-Paper-Schoen-comments.