What Is a Student Home? Planning Board Adds Definition to ADU Bylaw

Report on the Meeting of the Amherst Planning Board, December 4, 2024

This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded.

Present
Doug Marshall (Chair), Bruce Coldham, Lawrence Kluttz, Fred Hartwell, Jesse Mager, Johanna Neumann, and Karin Winter.

Staff: Nate Malloy (Senior Planner) and Pam Field Sadler (Assistant)

In conjunction with the need to develop a revised Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Bylaw, the Planning Board voted 4-3 to add a provision to the draft bylaw that only the primary dwelling (a single-family home) or the ADU, but not both, can be classified as a student home. Amherst’s existing ADU bylaw requires that one of the two dwelling units be owner-occupied, but this provision is not allowed under the newly passed state Housing bill.

The housing subcommittee of the planning board proposed that the town adopt a definition of a student home based on the definition developed in State College, Pennsylvania. This definition states:

“A student home is defined as any dwelling unit within a one-family dwelling, a one-family dwelling with an apartment, or a two-family dwelling that is occupied by persons who are unrelated by blood, marriage, or legal adoption and are attending undergraduate or graduate programs offered by colleges or universities (including those on a semester break or summer break from studies). The residents of a student home typically share living expenses and may live and cook as a single housekeeping unit. Student homes include living arrangements where the property owner(s) or their family members are residents of the dwelling unit. Student homes do not include fraternities, sororities, or rooming houses.”

In explaining the proposed addition to the ADU bylaw, Jesse Mager stated that Amherst has an outsized proportion of students, as noted by the fact that it is the only town in the state that has a decrease in water use during the summer due to college students leaving the town after the spring semester. He said other towns are trying to regulate ADU use in short-term rentals, so this provision would attempt to achieve the same goal. He added that he did not think the intent of the new state bill was to say, “Okay Amherst, you can now have more student homes in town.” Adding the provision that only one of the dwellings can be a student home could be a way to promote more ADUs as rental opportunities for non-students. “It is not anti-student, but pro-permanent resident, “Mager concluded.

Planner Nate Malloy noted that the town’s attorneys will need to review the proposed changes to the ADU bylaw to ensure that they comply with the state’s regulations. Even so, he cautioned that someone could appeal the restrictions. Also, he said that determining who is residing in an ADU could be difficult for the town to enforce. Planning Board Chair Doug Marshall stated that, since there would be no physical difference between a student home and a non-student home, adding a restriction to the bylaw would be specifying operation of a structure, rather than what could be built. He questioned whether this requirement was appropriate for inclusion in the Zoning Bylaw.

However, Planning Board members Bruce Coldham and Fred Hartwell agreed with Mager that the change in the ADU bylaw presented a good opportunity to add a definition of a student home to the Zoning Bylaw. Mager pointed out that the town does not often enforce the provision that no more than four unrelated individuals can occupy a dwelling unit, but, like the proposed restriction, it can be enforced if there are frequent complaints under the new Nuisance Property Bylaw. He said that the point of the student home restriction is not to try to fix behavior, but to increase the number of year-round residents and to limit the density of student homes in single-family neighborhoods.

Karin Winter worried that, without the added restriction on ADUs, the town might see an onslaught of investors who see this as an opportunity to get more rental income by building an ADU and putting another four students in it.

Marshall expressed concerns that the student home definition includes both undergraduate and graduate students, when most of the problems stem from the behavior of undergraduates. In public comments, former Planning Board member Janet McGowan noted that students are not a protected class under state and federal law, but discrimination on the basis of age is not allowed, so allowing graduate students who are generally older than undergraduates might be seen as age discrimination, while barring all students would not be.

Councilor Pam Rooney (District 4) also noted that the Rental Registration Bylaw requires a parking plan and management plan, which should also apply to ADUs that are rented.

The strongest opposition to including student homes in the ADU bylaw came from Planning Board member Johanna Neumann, who said, “I disagree with the whole premise here, and I’m not really in support of this approach—to make permanent residents in town somehow more valuable than other people who live in town. I’m worried that this approach could prompt legal challenges. I think it distracts from other important things that we know are in our lane.  I think it has the potential to add really cumbersome kind of red tape and more regulations—it just kind of screams ‘Nanny state government at its worst.’”

Marshall asked if Malloy thought adding the restriction against renting both the primary structure and the ADU to students would discourage people from building ADUs because they did not think they can rent both units. Malloy said that more information on Amherst’s rental market would be revealed in the housing needs assessment now being prepared as part of a new Housing Production Plan, but he thought that there is a strong rental and ownership market in town for all types of units from all types of households. He noted, however, that there is a significant cost of building an ADU, but some owners who were planning on building a nonowner occupied duplex may use the new ADU bylaw to create more rental income.

Mager, Coldham, Hartwell, and Winter voted to add the student home restriction to the draft ADU bylaw. Lawrence Kluttz, Marshall, and Neumann voted against it. Planning Department staff is still working on refining the bylaw to comply with the state law. The Planning Board will review it at a future meeting before sending a recommendation to the Town Council.