Public Comment: “Trickle Down Housing” Will Not Help Amherst’s Work Force

The following public comment was submitted to the Amherst Town Council via the town’s public comment portal on February 23, 2023.

I would like to register these comments in relation to the recent proposed zoning by-law changes put forward by two town councilors.

It should be abundantly clear to anyone who listens to the news that the “housing crisis” is not unique to Amherst, but is a state- and nation-wide issue. However, what is unique to Amherst along with other college towns is the high student/permanent resident ratio, which has a major impact on our town in many ways.

I don’t know the answer, but there need to be more targeted and creative ways to ensure that the Amherst student population does not dominate the town to the EXCLUSION of permanent residents.

I appreciate Bruce Coldham’s goals (as a member of the Planning Board) of getting information to understand how successfully or unsuccessfully other college towns have dealt with this issue.

I would also note that there has been the suggestion that “shouldn’t we want, for traffic, climate change, etc., to have students live close to campus?” But what about the 4,400+ UMass staff (separate from faculty) who could be permanent residents here? This is a population that is barely mentioned and seems to be one we would want to have live close.

I am hardly a zoning or development expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but these zoning proposals seem to be nothing more than trickle-down” housing — analogous to trickle-down economics, which I don’t think is viable.

In summary, I hope that efforts on solving the “housing crisis” can really be not just on changing zoning, but on developing approaches/programs so that we might get what we really want and need, which is housing for permanent residents.

Elizabeth Vierling is a resident of Amherst’s District 4 and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UMass Amherst.