UMass Officials Talk Housing with the Planning Board
North Apartments Residential Area, UMass. Photo: umass.edu
Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Planning Board, October 25, 2023
This meeting was held in the Town Room of Town Hall in hybrid format and was recorded. It can be viewed here.
Present
Doug Marshall (Chair), Bruce Coldham, Fred Hartwell, Jesse Mager, Janet McGowan, and Karin Winter. Absent: Johanna Neumann
Staff: Chris Brestrup (Planning Director), Nate Malloy (Senior Planner), and Pam Field Sadler (Assistant)
This meeting was the third in a series of special Planning Board meetings to deal with the state of housing in Amherst. The previous meetings were held on August 30 and September 27. The next meeting will be on November 29.
UMass Housing by the Numbers
The Planning Board invited UMass officials Nancy Buffone (Associate Vice Chancellor for University Relations) and Tony Maroulis (Executive Director of Community and Strategic Initiatives) to the meeting to discuss measures the university is taking to house its students. Because of his position in the Planning Department at UMass, Planning Board Chair Doug Marshall ceded running this part of the meeting to Bruce Coldham and participated only minimally.
Prior to the meeting, Planning Board members submitted a list of eight questions to Buffone and Maroulis and three questions to the town.
As an introduction to the planning process at UMass, Buffone said that the university’s planning department mission is to identify the most important campus needs and how they can best meet them while staying within its Master Plan https://www.umass.edu/cp/master-plan , which was created in 2012. For instance, she said, a dean might propose a new building to the chancellor and provost. The proposal is then evaluated by the “system leadership” and sent to the Board of Trustees.
Many of the Planning Board’s questions revolved around the growth in the number of undergraduate students enrolled in the university, and how its on-campus housing is meeting their needs. Maroulis said that in 1982, the in-person enrollment was 24,939, and there was not much change in this number until 2002, when the university developed some programs that were fully online. University Without Walls, for example, had been established in 1971 but is now online only. About 4,500 students are currently enrolled in online programs and could be living anywhere. Also, many part-time graduate students, some of whom have full-time work , don’t reside on campus. Full-time undergraduate and full-time graduate students have the most effect on local residents, and,according to Maroulis,, their number has remained relatively stable since 1982. Maroulis told the Planning Board that most of the growth in UMass enrollment has been in the online and part-time graduate populations.
The growth in on-campus housing was relatively slow until 2006, he said, but since then, the university built North Apartments, Commonwealth Honors College, Fieldstone (the new dormitory on Massachusetts Avenue), and University Village. Fieldstone and University Village are public-private projects, with University Village managed by the university’s Residential Life department and Fieldstone by a private management company. Once those two residences are fully occupied, the university will show a net gain of about 4,000 beds since 2006. In all, Maroulis said, about 7,200 UMass students live off campus. Most of them (6200) live in Amherst, but that number includes those who grew up in town and live at home.
A trend noted by Buffone and Maroulis in recent years, especially since the pandemic, is an increased demand for housing that is on-campus or and close to campus. In 2017 there was a three percent vacancy rate in the dorms. All first-year students and 83% of sophomores live on campus. Buffone speculated that after being isolated during COVID, students are looking for an on-campus experience. She also remarked that moving into off-campus housing as upperclassmen is part of the continuum of a college experience.
Although, the new Fieldstone housing is extremely expensive, therent includes utilities and comes with a nine-month lease rather than a year-round lease. Meanwhile, the town of Amherst has built about 1,500 units in the past 10 years, but that has not “made a dent in off-campus rentals or conversions of single-family homes to rentals because of students’ desire to live near campus,” Buffone said.
When Planning Board member Jesse Mager asked if UMass is where it thinks it should be with on-campus housing, Maroulis answered that the university houses about 65% of its students on-campus and said that this is above average for a public university. Maroulis stressed that building new dorms takes several years and that several of the older dorms have to be renovated or replaced because they don’t meet the needs of today’s students.
Mager took the opportunity to remind the UMass officials that the high price of rentals in Amherst makes it hard for university faculty and staff to afford to live in town. Buffone said that UMass planners and town officials often talk about this. However, Maroulis responded that it is not only student housing raising prices in town, but also people who relocate to Amherst for the lifestyle and work remotely.
In public comment, Elizabeth Vierling urged the university to take more responsibility for those students who live off campus. Maroulis said that UMass has agreed to help pay for inspections of rental units and certain other services provided by the town of Amherst, and repeated that conversations with town officials are taking place regularly. He was “not sure” how the Planning Board could be involved in these discussions.
Planning Department Proposes an Overlay Zone on University Drive
Building off a September 27 discussion of how to increase housing in Amherst, Senior Planner Nate Malloy presented a suggested map for an overlay zone of housing on University Drive from Amity Street to Route 9. He imagined a plan for the University Drive zone that would create residential units primarily for students, with mixed-use buildings on the corners and four-story apartment buildings between. He suggested eliminating the 24-unit maximum on apartments in the overlay zone, because it has been difficult to fill the commercial spaces in mixed-use buildings in town. He attested to the fact that developers have been building mixed- use buildings solely to avoid the limitation on the number of units for apartments in town.
Malloy envisioned having design standards for the overlay zone, constructing a wide pedestrian/bicycle path, and retaining the green space and trees along the street. He gave examples from Portland, Maine; Storrs, Connecticut; and the Lumberyard residences in downtown Northampton. Since the area would mainly be for students, he thought most units would be studio or one-bedroom apartments, with half as many parking spaces as units.
Mager and Fred Hartwell worried about the loss of commercial space with this proposed plan, noting that Amherst is already too dependent on residential property taxes. Mager mentioned the loss of commercial space when the Carriage Shops were replaced by One East Pleasant, saying that those stores never came back. Coldham suggested that the amount of nonresidential space required by the town could be discretionary, decided by the Planning Board and depending on the current demand for commercial space. Doug Marshall offered that developers could build a fifth floor in trade for including some commercial space on the ground floor. Janet McGowan liked the idea of creating “a community” along University Drive, and Karin Winter praised having a bicycle and pedestrian path off of the road, adding that the overlay zone could be a green development with geothermal heating and cooling.
Discussion of the University Drive overlay zone will be continued on November 29. McGowan wanted the discussion of Amherst housing to include ways to protect year-round neighborhoods in addition to creating more housing.
Hartwell Explains the Advantages of Owner-Occupied Subdividable Dwelling
Hartwell said he and his wife have two rental units in their Whitney Street home. In addition to collecting rent, they are able to claim maintenance on the units as business deductions. Also, because the units occupy 60% of the structure, they can claim 60% of costs of lawn mowing, snow clearing, and utilities as business deductions. Portions of mortgage interest and depreciation also offset the income gained from the rent. He would like to see more people in town take advantage of this tax-saving opportunity that also creates housing out of existing housing, and is faster and more affordable than building new housing.
The next Planning Board meeting is on November 1.
UMASS may be “about average” in terms of the percentage of students it houses. However, UMASS is far from average in terms of its size, relative to the size of the town’s population. Amherst is one of – if not the – smallest towns in the US to host a flagship campus. By not recognizing this fact, UMASS is trying to escape the reality and responsibility that it has a disproportionate effect on the housing market, and its impacts on the civic life and politics of the town.
Residents should hold this in mind when they consider casting their votes in the up-coming election. Candidates who want to give a freer hand to real estate investors and UMASS are doing so at the expense of residents who live in the neighborhoods being converted into student enclaves. UMASS may be tone-deaf in this regard, but our Town Council should not be.
Town Council should support a minimum distance, lot line to lot line, between student rentals. This zoning provision has worked in other small towns feeling the stresses imposed by hosting a large academic institution. It can work in Amherst, as well. 700′ LL 2 LL should be a mantra for winning candidates.
Officials at UMass Amherst regularly say, correctly, that the percentage of their students living off-campus is about the average for universities. Apparently this piece of data is supposed to make everyone feel good about Amherst’s current situation. However, that off-campus student percentage is almost meaningless except in relation to the population of the place the university is located. If UCLA has the same percentage of students living off-campus , it has minuscule impact among the nearly 4 million residents of LA. In fact Amherst already has one of the highest percentages of off-campus college students in the country. Among the places with slightly higher percentages of off-campus students are Storrs CT and State College PA. Neither of these as far as I know ever had many of the attractive features that Amherst had, and to a lesser and lesser extent still has. I wonder whether the “vision” of Amherst’s future often cited by some town elected officials and planning board members is to make us more like Storrs and State College.
“Town Council should support a minimum distance, lot line to lot line, between student rentals.”
Sounds terrific on paper but 1) How can it possibly be enforced? 2) Is it legal under our State and Federal Constitutions and Mass. General Laws?
Several people have proposed solution but have they every followed through with studies of any law suits that may have resulted from trying to keep people from renting their property? I always understood that one’s home is one’s castle incurring certain implied rights.
I happen to live in a neighborhood surrounded by very well-maintained rental housing occupied by lessees who have lived there for more than twenty years. I consider them permanent twelve-month year-round residents too! They need a place to live! Don’t assume that all lessees are frat boys. In fact, how about some statistics to go with the rhetoric?
Hilda Greenbaum> A 700′ LL2LL provision is a regulation already in effect in several towns dealing with similar student housing issues. It requires tracking student rental housing as a separate category, which Amherst doesn’t do. In towns where this has been used, existing student rentals are grandfathered in until the property changes hands, at which time it comes under the new zoning provision. This has had the effect of limiting the density of student housing encroaching on residential neighborhoods, and ultimately has clawed back single family homes into the real estate market for single families. We already require rental permits. When landlords apply for rental permits, they could be required to state if they are renting to students.
Catering to student needs is THE business in Amherst. The restaurants that feed them are businesses. The venues that sell them drinks and entertainment are businesses. Renting them housing is a business, and like all the other businesses, it should be regulated as such.