Letter: Downtown Neighborhoods Transformed For The Worse From Increased Student Density

Dick and I moved to our first home in the downtown neighborhood in 1988. We were married in our back yard on the corner of Paige and Cosby. Because we loved the neighborhood, when we needed a larger house, we bought a house around the corner on McClellan Street and moved there in 1992. 

In the mid-1990s we co-founded the neighborhood brunches that have continued for about 30 years. These brunches created opportunities to connect with student households and introduce them to the rich fabric of our diverse multigenerational neighborhood. It also built communication avenues that we could use if student behavior got out of hand. In addition, the brunches enabled neighbors to cooperate in addressing local issues and get involved in town governance. All of that had the interesting effect of helping to nurture local democracy. 

Then, beginning around 2011, we watched as the homes surrounding us were being bought by developers. Where before there had been one or two people living in a house, now we were surrounded by many houses rented to 4 unrelated students (who sometimes had additional live-in boyfriends or girlfriends). Eventually, nine of the ten houses closest to us became student rentals. This increased noise, traffic, litter, and altered the social balance from living in a mixed neighborhood to suddenly finding ourselves a powerless minority living amidst a sea of students who seemed to feel entitled to behave however they wanted. The friendly relationships that the neighborhood brunches had helped build between resident homeowners and student renters were gone.

In 2013 we made the decision to leave our beloved home of 21 years, where we had designed and built a gorgeous third floor addition. It took a year to find a buyer for the house, and then we lost $100,000 in the sale (measuring against comparable homes that were not surrounded by student rentals). 

We now live on the Amherst-Shutesbury line, in a new home and neighborhood that we have come to love. But looking out our kitchen window into Shutesbury, we mourn the loss of the downtown home and neighborhood that we had loved for two decades.

Respectfully,

Marcie and Dick Sclove