Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Dirty Dozen

 
 407 North Pleasant Street, owned by Gamma Inc Alpha Tau 

The Amherst Rental Registration & Permit Bylaw that went into effect January 1st affecting 1,300 properties in this rental dominated "college town" now has an astounding 99% compliance rate. 

Only 12 properties -- some with the same owners -- have failed to heed the warnings of Amherst Building Commissioner Rob Morra, and will be brought to Eastern Hampshire District Court in the very near future.


The Rental Registration Bylaw is an attempt to bring law and order to a Wild Wild West mining town where the attraction for boatloads of people is education rather than gold or silver.

With restrictive zoning and well organized NIMBYs, housing production -- especially student housing in a town with the lowest median age in the state -- has been almost non existent over the past generation.

Thus supply and demand is out of whack, resulting in higher prices forcing out families and low-to-middle income workers, residential one family-house conversions to student rooming houses and all too many noise and nuisance complaints in residential neighborhoods.

The new Rental Registration and Permit bylaw is working.  Now we need to tweak zoning.

Code enforcement is a key ingredient

5 comments:

Jon said...

The violations map is updated daily!

Kevin said...

407 South Pleasant does not exist. The property owned by that party is at 407 North Pleasant. That might explain something.

Larry Kelley said...

Yes, that's why I used their photo.

Plus they made my "Party House of the Weekend."

Anonymous said...

Hilter would have been so proud....he recognized far before Amherst that people cannot make decisions on their own.

Dr. Ed said...

Sending legal notices to wrong address is at least a defense in court if not grounds for personal liability of the incompetent schmuck who doesn't know the difference between North and South....