Council Debates Proposed Nuisance Property Bylaw
UMass Blarney Blowout 2023. Photo: YouTube
Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Town Council, September 9, 2024, Part 2
This meeting was held in hybrid format and was recorded. It can be viewed here.
Present
Lynn Griesemer (President, District 2), Mandi Jo Hanneke, Andy Steinberg, Ellisha Walker (at large), Freke Ette and Cathy Schoen (District 1), Pat DeAngelis (District 2), George Ryan and Hala Lord (District 3), Pam Rooney and Jennifer Taub (District 4), and Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5). Absent: Bob Hegner (District 5)
Staff: Dave Ziomek (Assistant Town Manager) and Athena O’Keeffe (Clerk of the Council)
The Community Resources Committee of the Council (CRC) developed a revision of General Bylaw 3.26, now termed “Nuisance Property Bylaw.” According to CRC Chair Pam Rooney (District 4), the existing bylaw mostly deals with underage drinking. While current ordinances deal with noise and large gatherings, all leave gaps in enforcement and none involve property owners who consistently rent to disruptive tenants. The proposed bylaw revision includes such activity as disorderly conduct, underage drinking (although it does not apply to properties licensed to serve alcohol), disruptive outdoor lighting, failure to maintain vegetation, illegal parking, obstruction of public ways, junked vehicles, littering and illegal dumping, unlawful noise, refuse and recyclable materials, and disruptive gatherings.
The proposed bylaw, passed unanimously by CRC and the Governance, Organization, and Legislation (GOL), with advice from the town’s legal counsel, applies to all residential units, whether rented or owner-occupied. Any property receiving three violations within a year will be designated a nuisance property, and the owner or designee will have to “submit a corrective plan to the enforcing authority” within 10 days or continue to accumulate more fines, which could be up to $300 per day. The first two violations will be assessed to the actual violators (tenants or owners), but the third will be levied on the property owner or manager as well.
Cathy Schoen (District 1) asked if a violation is assessed to the property or to the person. She also wanted to know what happens in the second year, since some properties present problems for neighbors year after year, even if the occupants change. She wondered why the bylaw does not mention revoking the rental registration permit for problem houses. George Ryan (District 3) objected to the fact that a property-owner could be fined $300 per day for not clearing ice off the sidewalk when the current fine is $50.
CRC member Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large) replied that owners of single-family homes who violate the bylaw should be fined, not only tenants. Also, permits are not included in this bylaw because it applies to all properties, and owner-occupied properties do not have permits. Chronically disruptive rental houses are dealt with in the Rental Registration bylaw, she said. When Ryan questioned the need for this extensive bylaw , saying that excess noise and underage drinking are already covered in the existing bylaw, Rooney replied that both Building Commissioner Rob Morra and Police Chief Gabe Ting attended many of the meetings, and both felt there was a strong need for this bylaw.
More difficult to deal with will be the enforcement of the bylaw. Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5) objected to the phrase “as a condition dangerous to health, offensive to community moral standards” included in the definition of a public nuisance. She asked that “community moral standards” be removed from the document. Ellisha Walker (at large) said that people have called the police because her children were making too much noise. Hala Lord (District 3) also worried that the broad definitions of disruptive behavior would be differentially applied to people of color. She suggested having CRESS responders work with habitually disruptive residents.
Council President Lynn Griesemer liked that the bylaw ultimately involves the property owner. She said that an AirBnB in her district regularly has parties of 200 people that disturb the neighbors.
The proposed bylaw will come back to the council for a second reading and a vote on October 7.
Starting next fall — September 2025 — the babies not born during the “Great Recession” won’t be showing up to UMass as freshmen, and this hits with full effect in September 2026.
UMass is going to keep its dorms full for financial reasons — back in the early ’90s, it seriously considered requiring Juniors to reside on campus and as the bonds are now guaranteed by UM’s ability to require a specific minimum number of students in its dorms (and not the credit of the Commonwealth, as they once were), I don’t see how UM is going to not do this. It can’t lower admissions standards as it did then (the state stepped in to stop that) and it can’t justify having a couple of towers sitting empty (as it did then) on the mandate of having to install sprinklers, as they are already installed.
And then one of three things will happen. Some property owners (particularly the complexes) will successfully demand abatements on the grounds that their rental income is no longer what it once was. Some will either walk away from their properties and/or lose them in foreclosure. (That was a major problem elsewhere in 2008.)
And some of these units will be rented Section 8 — just like what happened to Brittany Manor 30 years ago.
(Brittany Manor became The Boulders and Southpoint.)
Unlike UMass students, Section 8 tenants will have children, which will increase the expenses of Amherst taxpayers without any additional revenue (remember that K-12 is about half of town expenses). And as it is already being suggested above, complaints about occupant behavior will be viewed as racist in a way that they aren’t when complaining about UMass students.
I don’t know what will happen next, but it will be interesting…