Hanneke And DeAngelis Withdraw Duplex/Triplex Zoning Proposal
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Town councilor sponsors Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large) and Pat DeAngelis (District 2) have submitted a memo to the packet for the August 7 council meeting, announcing their intention to withdraw their complex zoning proposal for duplexes, triplexes, town houses, converted dwellings and subdividable dwellings. They explained that a legal opinion from the town attorney recommended against splitting the proposal into discrete parts that may individually achieve the two-thirds approval needed from the Town Council. Their memo states:
“The need to address missing middle housing is as important as ever, as demonstrated by the more than 501 individuals who recently applied to live in just twenty-eight 240 square foot units at 132 Northampton Road, with 357 of those applicants earning at or below 30% of the area median income. Amherst’s residents, elected officials, and Town staff have been saying the need is real for a long time and the situation at 132 Northampton Road proves it.”
From their perspective, they said, there has been a lot of talk but not enough action for creating needed housing, and they saw their proposal as part of an attempt to address the problem on multiple fronts.
Since it was first introduced in January, the complex zoning proposal aimed to increase housing supply and affordability mostly by loosening and streamlining the permitting process so that many of these multi-unit residences would only require approval from the building commissioner, without any public hearing. The lengthy proposal, about 42 pages long, has consumed many hours of review by members of the Planning Board, Planning Department, Community Resources Committee, Governance, Organization, and Legislation Committee, and Zoning Board of Appeals. A petition signed by more than 265 residents recommended the withdrawal of the amendment. The proposal has gone through many iterations, but the Planning Board still voted unanimously to recommend against its adoption. Hanneke and DeAngelis stated that they will submit a new proposal or a series of smaller, more comprehensible proposals that they think could result in additional affordable and attainable housing.
Planning Board Schedules Additional Meetings About Increasing Housing Supply
When it declined to endorse the amendments, the Planning Board stated the need for affordable and workforce housing, thanked the sponsors for their work, and committed itself to devoting at least three additional meetings this year to discussions of ways to achieve it. The first of these meetings is scheduled for August 30 at 6:30 p.m. in the Town Room at Town Hall. That meeting will include a report from Town Manager Paul Bockelman regarding his communications with UMass and the pressure that its large unhoused student population puts on the local housing market. Planning Board member Bruce Coldham is also surveying other towns with large universities to gather ideas about accommodating students while preserving neighborhoods and housing for year-round residents.
The first additional Planning Board meeting to discuss the topic of housing will be held on August 30 in the Town Room in Town Hall in person.
The reason why this proposal was finally withdrawn was so that it can now be fed to us in pieces, being told by the town’s lawyers that the giant proposal can’t be directly re-proposed in those pieces.
The reason it should have been withdrawn is because it doesn’t solve our housing problem. The Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals and Planning Director all stated publicly that it will cause more of the Amherst type problem, not solve it. The sponsoring council members have admitted publicly that they cannot predict the results or consequences of their proposed changes. If implemented in pieces, it will still cause us all the problems of distant investor student landlords buying up homes and converting them into more than the traffic can bear. A half acre property would legally be allowed 12 beds or more, plus the overoccupancy and any other tricks of zoning, like building multiple triplexes and other buildings that quack like apartment buildings.
In reading the withdrawal notice from the 2 council members, it was the first time I realized what they meant by the “missing middle.” At first I assumed it was to create housing for people who are in between rich and poor, and concluded their proposal would not provide that, due to our unique student housing market, aka infinite demand/ limited supply, and pricing that reflects that scarcity.
But what “missing middle” means to councilors Hanneke and DeAngelis is (as they say) anything in between a single family owner occupied home and an apartment building, on the theory that if you build it, they will come.
But the “they” are not young families, retirees, professionals, university faculty and staff. The Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals and Planning Director all have stated the obvious, that the proposal is an assortment of deregulating measures that will decrease owner occupancy, increase nuisance houses, raise rental and ownership costs, and let UMass off the hook of doing the thing they should be doing: building even more housing on campus.
A.S. Neill. of Summerhill School, famously stated “the right to swing your arms stops where my nose begins.” UMass needs to realize that more on-campus housing is a true cost of its expansion plans. Otherwise the town is subsidizing the flagship campus of the state university system.
The ways we subsidize is: allow our streets to become Baja East, with all the wear and tear of all those students cars; spend our ambulance capacity on speeding drunken students to the hospital, damage the neighborhood feel of community that isn’t transient.
There are many people who love living in a college town, but realize that this college town is suffering from the very visible hand of a greedy economy. There are many other college towns, even further down our dead end road. Listen to the webinars of the Town Gown Association to hear of towns that once fought 5 story buildings who are now fighting 12 story buildings. Those are 12 story private dorms, downtown in several comparable college towns. That doesn’t make us lucky. That just gives us a heads up for what could be coming. Five stories is still TOO MUCH!! and only came into existence after a kind of gaslighting of town meeting, way back when. There is video showing that dramedy of errors, with town meeting members not realizing they were voting for a full 5th floor of dwellings, not some kind of peaked roof.
In conclusion, the proposal that is now being withdrawn is about to rain down on us again, in small balls of hail, but just as bad. This is not my keen detective work, it’s what I learned from reading them say exactly that.
The only way I see affordable housing working is if it is built by the government as smaller, single family homes and condos in government acquired land that would then be sold to eligible low income buyers. Even being able to afford those houses, people may not be able to afford Amherst high taxes. The same should be done for renters – mind you that even $1000/ month for a 1 bedroom is also not affordable. As long as the entity in charge is not a large private corporation looking at big profit, that is the only solution my limited knowledge can foresee.
Now that some semblance of sanity has prevailed, perhaps temporarily, regarding the misguided Hanneke/DeAngelis zoning proposal, we must continue to be vigilant. They have practically announced a stealth campaign to sneak this through by little steps, adopting the one-small-step at-a-time approach until they achieve the total goal.
And where are Hanneke and DeAngelis, who are never shy about getting involved, and their “middle housing” crusade when a developer has applied to build two duplexes with eight beds total that will rent for $5,500 per month per duplex ($1,375 per bed per month). That is not “middle housing”. It is not for families, UMass employees, seniors or anyone besides affluent students. It’s housing for the 1% but doesn’t warrant a response from Hanneke/DeAngelis.
Stay on guard, everyone. This withdrawal id nothing more than a delaying tactic.
Well said, David Sloviter, Renata Shepard, and Ira Bryck! More often than not, loosened zoning regulations ostensibly geared to encouraging more affordable housing will lead to high-priced student rentals, when housing for its students ought to be built by the university on its own property. Of course students need to live somewhere, and if residential zoning has adequate controls and protections built in, a healthy mix of students, families, and retirees can be made to flourish. But we also have to commit ourselves to building more state-subsidized affordable housing in town. Amherst just voted to build an expensive state-of-the-art new school; now we have to find ways to enable families with school-age children to make their homes here.