Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Amherst is the new Manhattan

The housing crisis for UMass upperclassmen living off-campus
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Ana Pietrewicz / Daily Collegian

“I’m living an hour and a half away.”

“My plan was to live in a tent in the woods.”

“It was all a fiasco.”

Let’s take a glimpse at some off-campus living situations at the University of Massachusetts this semester. For many, affordable housing options are limited like never before, driving students to take drastic measures to live in the area and attend their classes.

Senior journalism major Madeline Zelazo couldn’t find a place that was within her budget and allowed her two cats. Now, she’s forced to live an hour and a half from campus with a friend’s aunt and uncle.

“I would apply for apartments, and they would get back to me saying ‘you need to make three times the amount we’re asking,’” Zelazo said. “If I [did], I wouldn’t be renting there. I would be buying a mansion, not applying to a stupid one-bedroom apartment that’s falling apart.”

Should a student like Zelazo, who works 25 hours per week at Walgreens to keep up with her car, living and education expenses, not be able to secure reasonable housing? How about graduate student and wildfire fighter, Brady Millin?

Coming from Montana and unable to visit any of the Amherst area properties in person, Millin was forced to make other arrangements. That meant bouncing from Hotel UMass to a bed-and-breakfast for about a week and eating out every day.

“I spent just under a grand,” Millin said. “Every day I was on Craigslist looking for places, even looking for places in Hartford. I had no luck.”

Days away from abandoning his housing search in favor of camping in the woods for the rest of the semester, Millin finally found his luck on Reddit from another UMass student who couldn’t manage the commute from Northampton without a car. Even after a month of housing insecurity, Millin feels he “was among the more fortunate.”

This is all too common a problem for upperclassmen at UMass. A statement from Mary Dettloff, deputy director of the news and media relations office, said that “Undergraduate housing will eventually increase by 600 beds. Approximately 200 beds of graduate student, apartment-style housing…[and] approximately 120 family housing units” will also increase.

While that infrastructure is much needed, UMass has enrolled more upperclassmen over the last five years than the number of beds they plan to open up in 2022 and 2023. The hundreds of graduate students that would live in the now demolished Lincoln Apartments have been sent into the fray of the Amherst housing market. While soft deadlines of a year or two might work as talking points, the University needs to provide this infrastructure—or at least a temporary alternative—to compensate for the scarcity of off-campus options.

Doctoral student and father of two Shahnaz Bashir had to enlist the help of journalism Professor Kathy Roberts Forde in order to find housing. Miraculously, Professor Forde found a place from a friend right before the semester began—albeit hardly large enough for Bashir’s family of four. Bashir is still looking for better accommodations, but as one of his relatives said, “[I] haven’t seen such difficulty of people finding housing in Manhattan.”

And herein lies the problem, for both undergraduate and graduate students alike: a lack of reasonable solutions amidst dwindling federal funding.

In January 2019, UMass spokesperson Ed Blaguszewski told MassLive, “The University’s enrollment of out-of-state students has increased as state support for UMass has stagnated.” While UMass may have a plan to adjust for these expenses, many of its students don’t have that luxury. We’re not Chuck Bass or Serena Van der Woodsen of “Gossip Girl,” as much as the University seems to think we are.

In reality, Amherst is in a Manhattan-like housing crisis and UMass students are now turning to agencies meant for the houseless to just live here. Executive Director of Amherst Community Connections Hwei-Ling Greeney has received calls from students for the first time ever. Why? There are just over 9,000 households in Amherst. And this semester, just over 9,000 students needed to find off-campus options if they wanted to attend in-person classes. That means there were enough off-campus students just from UMass, let alone the other four colleges in the area, to virtually fill every household in Amherst this semester.

While this has always been an issue, it’s especially worse this year. Many students who have graduated from UMass and from the other four colleges in the area aren’t leaving their housing accommodations, as noted by Greeney and Dettloff. This trend seems to have stemmed from the rise in remote work among students, vastly reducing the need to relocate because of one’s job. Of course, this is neither the fault of UMass nor the housing market, but it is certainly a compounding factor that hasn’t affected enrollment rates or rising housing costs.

Despite all these factors, Dettloff believes that “a perceived increase in enrollment is too simplistic.”

Yes, there are a multitude of factors at play here, like the lack of housing infrastructure, high market prices and pandemic irregularities. Enrollment may not be the only reason, but to reduce the enrollment trend to a “perceived increase” doesn’t address the facts of the University’s actions. There needs to be accountability from the University for dealing with its financial woes at the expense of students’ housing.

For those who shared the walls with Millin in the bed-and-breakfast, or didn’t have a friend’s uncle to stay with, where would they go to live and continue their education? What if Bashir and his family never went to Professor Forde for help? UMass, we need answers. Your thousands of students who aren’t guaranteed housing need answers. Your town needs answers. The beds you have yet to build are already overfilled.

Ronan Fitzgerald can be reached at [email protected].

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  • S

    SarahNov 6, 2021 at 10:34 am

    Yah, and the families who live here are even more f***ed because anything available is taken by students.

    Reply
  • S

    SusanNov 5, 2021 at 12:53 pm

    It’s the same here in Ulster County, NY. Rents are sky high. Occasionally, a homeowner will lower rent below market rate in order for young adults to live in the community that they work in. There is a lot of resistance from people in the community to accept college aged people into their neighborhoods.
    I used to live near Amherst, MA. For a time, small affordable multi-units we’re being built. Many of the towns around the area felt affordable housing was an issue that needed to be addressed, but often nothing could be agreed upon.

    It’s ironic that I thought moving back to my hometown community would be affordable.

    Reply
  • D

    DoriNov 5, 2021 at 12:12 pm

    It’s not just here. Before I moved here for school it was happening in my rural California town – people thinking it was “quaint” or whatever. I will never be able to afford to move back home.

    Reply
  • N

    NolaNov 5, 2021 at 10:33 am

    My other kids have been in college towns (Upstate New York, Illinois, Colorado) where private student apartment construction has really active over the past seven years.
    With five colleges, why have these national companies not found the Amherst/Northampton area attractive?

    Reply
    • R

      Ronan FitzgeraldNov 7, 2021 at 6:01 pm

      While I haven’t researched this specifically, my first impression is that this is due to the demographics of Amherst.
      Amherst spans over 27 square miles, with a significant portion of it being private farmland. When students go outside of Amherst to find other options, oftentimes the places they can find are too far away.
      Hope this helps, that would be an interesting thing to look into!

      Reply
    • N

      NinaNov 7, 2021 at 6:40 pm

      Some apartments are owned by these companies. (Cliffside, for example, is owned by a random rich man in Texas). But why should they be? Aren’t there any solutions left in this country that don’t require making some unknown billionaire even richer than he already is? No thanks to national companies.

      Reply
  • N

    NoyseNov 5, 2021 at 8:27 am

    Amherst isn’t a place too raise your children it’s a small Manhattan style place like New York which in return people moving here from out of town need to come here with wealth, in order too strive and too make it, Amherst pulled out on the low income housing which in return not just students have places to live for families that from the area can barely afford to live here too..

    Reply
    • D

      Desiree F SotoNov 6, 2021 at 10:47 am

      I Beg 2 Differ…Amherst Is A Alsome Place..2 Raise…
      Children..In Which I Did…Starting…At Belchertown..N Than Coming Here..2 Amherst…While My Daughter Is Raising..Her 4 Children Here…N Myself Coming From..New..York..City…With My Daughter because my son was already here…
      We…have been here..4 23..years…N Loving…Every Bit..Of It….Soooo..Yes….Here…in Amherst..Belchertown..Noho….Spencer..Brookfield…
      Palmer…Coming from..NYC..
      My Grandbabies..My Grown..Children…Now..N Myself…Loveeee..it..Here…
      N Nothing…Nothing…Like NY…

      Reply
  • R

    Robert CallahanNov 5, 2021 at 6:52 am

    Glad that I was a Umie fifty years ago…

    Reply
  • N

    NinaNov 4, 2021 at 10:50 pm

    The pandemic revealed to us that universities actually get a very large percent of their income from students living in dorms and on campus. They get so much money from students living in dorms and on campus, that many universities were willing to put students there even if it meant endangering thousands of people. Unfortunately, that cat is now out of the bag. “We’re not Serena Van der Woodsen,” only makes sense if you think of Serena Van der Woodsen as someone would refuse to invest in something that carries virtually no risk and almost guaranteed rewards.

    The “state support for UMass has stagnated” is also not a good excuse. If state support has stagnated, then we’re in luck. Universities have been flooded with more cash from the federal government than they’ve seen in years. (Maybe someone who refers to the original Gossip Girl might not realize that all this information is readily available on the internet, and discussed often)

    Finally, the housing crisis is an inevitable outcome of unchecked capitalism. What Amherst is experiencing is happening everywhere to various degrees. Refusing to invest in on-campus housing will only backfire as the wider Valley community suffers. There’s no excuse not to house students on campus.

    Reply
    • K

      Kitty Axelson-BerryNov 6, 2021 at 9:13 am

      You might want to consider writing for the Amherst Indy, a hyperlocal news website that reports on Amherst’s issues, policies, politics, acceptance of the status quo, and focus on money, power, and prestige. All volunteer. “Critical. Progressive. Independent.” amherstindy.org.
      We cover housing frequently. I don’t see the 5-story “student-style apartment” houses as attainable housing-for-all, or a way to revive downtown’s small local businesses.

      Reply
  • A

    Adam LechowiczNov 4, 2021 at 8:59 pm

    So I mean, the main reason why there’s a housing crisis is because you have a bunch of NIMBY retiree townies who have lived in Amherst since the beginning of time, and they maintain significant pressure on town government such that they never approve any affordable housing for construction. In fact, the whole reason why UMass has the 3rd largest on campus residential operations in the country (!) despite not being even in the top 20 of largest colleges, is precisely because this has been a dynamic in the town of Amherst since the 60s. If we want anything to change, college students need to start voting in municipal elections, something that townies have overtly discouraged UMass students from doing. And don’t even get me started on the elitist double standards applied to UMass vs. Amherst College students…..

    Reply
    • K

      Kitty Axelson-BerryNov 6, 2021 at 9:27 am

      I see the town government as catering to developers and real estate investors, who take advantage of the captive students and treat you like a cash cow, while claiming that they have to in order to make their profit. And at the same time, they force the small local businesses out and make the town too expensive for low- and moderate-income residents to age in place. I would be happy to explain my perspective more to you.

      Reply
  • M

    MaryNov 4, 2021 at 2:23 pm

    Excellent article. As a community member we don’t always know what student struggles are and then cannot push our town council to push UMass to attend to them. Try to get your article printed in the Local papers – Amherst Bulletin and lHampshire Gazette so community members concerned with our affordable housing crisis can hear the stories you present!

    Reply
    • K

      Kitty Axelson-BerryNov 6, 2021 at 9:29 am

      And the progressive, Independent, critical news source, http://www.amherstindy.org

      Reply
  • T

    ToniNov 4, 2021 at 1:56 pm

    Ronan, thank you for writing this. I received countless emails in August and September this year about students and families looking for housing. The problem impacts many aspects of Amherst town life too. Employees of the town, including our firefighters and educators, cannot afford to live here. Families with school-aged children cannot find affordable starter homes to buy, or places to rent, competing as they are with investors and groups of students. This has contributed to a drop in enrollment in the public schools, which leads to budget challenges and the loss of electives and educators. Property taxes continue to rise while services stagnate or decrease, and many year-round residents take issue with much of the housing that has been developed downtown, with insufficient parking, no setbacks from the street, and empty storefronts on the ground floor. UMass certainly needs to address this problem that increasing university enrollment, without a corresponding increase in on-campus housing, exacerbates.

    Reply