Thinking Small: Why No Tiny Houses in Pi Valley’s Affordable Housing Desert?
by Jody Jenkins and Alyssa Lidman
The late Larry Kelly, reporter extraordinaire of the “Only in the Republic of Amherst” blog, had an acronym for the Gordian knot that is development in the Pi Valley: BANANA, or “Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”
It points to the persistent challenges communities like ours have in balancing historic continuity, property values and vested interests while still trying to stimulate growth and innovation. Those challenges in our area are such that oftentimes the process is painfully slow and burdensome, thus Kelly’s complaint. What it means in terms of finding creative ways of resolving the area’s affordable housing crunch is that out-of-the-box solutions can get caught in a kind of alternative reality as they wend their way through a long and very slow digestive process and the problem festers.
In Sperling’s online cost of living index, Amherst ranks 134 out of a national average of 100 in terms of expenses. The single most significant cost driver in that calculus is housing, with Amherst scoring 168–68 points above the national average — in terms of housing costs. We are above the national average in all indices such as food, utilities and transportation, but housing far and away has the largest impact.
In Amherst, as elsewhere in The Valley, a large student population using combined resources to rent apartments and houses has driven costs up dramatically, pricing many people out of the market and pushing them further afield. According to Rentcafé’s online tracking service, apartment rent in Amherst averages $1,414 for a two bedroom apartment, an increase of 9 percent over the previous year. (The average size of such an apartment is 817 square feet.) While that sounds pretty incredible, average rent in Northampton went up 15 percent during the same period.
A cursory glance at online mortgage rates for our area reveal an average monthly payment of about $1,200 a month for a $300,000 home with a $60,000 downpayment. Clearly better than rent (if you can scrape together the downpayment), but considering that average salaries fall around $48,000 a year according to payscale.com, with a 0.7 percent wage increase in the 2nd Quarter, it doesn’t take a math whiz to see that the squeeze is on for many who live here. If you earn $48,000 a year, you take home around $35,000 and pay $17,000 in rent, which leaves about $18K ($1500 a month) to pay your bills, buy your food, pump your gas, go out to eat, take a vacation, go to the doctor, save for your kids’ college, etc.
Clearly demand, profiteering and pressure on the available housing market are far outstripping average wage growth. The result is student ghettos and widespread gentrification in an area that pays a lot of lip service to the idea of diversity.
Clearly demand, profiteering and pressure on the available housing market are far outstripping average wage growth. The result is student ghettos and widespread gentrification in an area that pays a lot of lip service to the idea of diversity yet leaves a lot of hangers on between the two extremes.
In many places across the country, one response to the dilemma has been the growth of the Tiny House movement. While affordable alternatives like Tiny Houses (small houses typically under 500 square feet either on wheels or on a permanent foundation) proliferate in budding hipster communities across the country in places like Portland, Austin, San Francisco and Olympia, Washington, they still haven’t caught on in any meaningful way in The Pioneer Valley, which is odd given the clear need and our penchant for activism and alternative lifestyles.
Tiny houses are finding adherents among minimalists looking for simplicity, environmentalists wanting to reduce their carbon footprint and housing and homeless advocates across the country. It’s an attractive alternative for empty nesters or older Americans who no longer need the same square footage or the maintenance costs associated with larger homes. With real estate costs skyrocketing while incomes and purchasing power have been shrinking, tiny houses present a unique opportunity for many and challenge the old American mindset of bigger is better.
Much of the old economic paradigm is based on building models. The fact that housing starts are a key sign of economic vitality lock us in to a cycle of size, cost and profit margins that stimulate the economy and give workers, contractors, realtors and everyone along that stream a good return on investment. It is an economic powerhouse and accounts for 15–20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product since 2000. The Tiny House movement’s radically smaller scale upends that calculus, existing completely outside the known norms for turning a profit (in fact, many tiny houses are owner built), which is why many see it as a faddish, boutique idea that is unworkable in the practical world. And yet the entire concept of Tiny Houses arose out of what many see as the unworkable current housing reality.
Greenfield showed something of a progressive streak in August 2016 when it proposed an ordinance allowing Tiny Houses. Mobile home living (which Tiny Houses fall under because of the requirement that they be on wheels) is heavily regulated in Massachusetts and that led the town to later pass a zoning ordinance that forbade Tiny Houses. It is now building a “modest house” community called Green River Commons. Modest homes are slightly larger than tiny houses, are built on permanent foundations and have sewer and plumbing systems. While larger, “modest” houses are a way to end-run the restrictions on tiny houses in order to create more affordable housing options, they don’t really solve the larger issue of cost: Green River Commons houses come in at $174,000 for a 780-square-foot, two-bedroom unit. That’s $20,000 less than market rate and they are cost efficient, being solar paneled and Net Zero. But for those seeking more radical cost solutions, it looks more like a Tiny House Trojan horse.
“Everyone gets left behind when costs rise for construction.” MJ Adams, Community Development Administrator in Greenfield.
“Many contractors who I’ve talked to say it’s very difficult for smaller houses to meet … codes.” said M.J. Adams, Community Development Administrator in Greenfield. She cited the example of a duplex in Easthampton slated to have two, three-bedroom units with one bathroom and 1,150 square feet of living space. The state made them upgrade to 1,350 square feet and add another half bath. “Everyone gets left behind when costs rise for construction,” Adams said.
Ironically, according to Realtor.com, homes under 1,200 square feet are appreciating faster than larger homes, at a rate of 7.5 percent per year compared to 3.8 percent per year for homes over 2,400 square feet. It’s probably because the small to medium market is where the pressure is for affordable housing because of wage and price economics and changing attitudes about living large.
One of the most promising forays into local housing affordability came from Sarah Hastings, a former Architectural and Environmental Studies major at Mount Holyoke. Hastings, a pioneer in the affordable housing movement here, ran into resistance when she built a 190-square foot tiny house she called “Rhizhome.”
She lived in her tiny house on a Hadley property owned by Ron and Donna Adams and sought a zoning bylaw amendment to accommodate Tiny Houses. After the town of Hadley offered her an exemption to allow her to remain in her home pending the Zoning Board of Appeals vote on May 5, 2016, the town voted down a proposal under which Tiny Houses fall that would allow backyard sheds of 200 square feet on private property. Hastings was forced to leave Hadley and take her tiny house with her.
“Much progress has been made and tiny homes (in some forms) might have a future in MA with the help of some new regulations,” Hastings wrote in a Facebook exchange. Despite setbacks, she hasn’t given up on her original vision and still holds workshops and private consultations, educating those interested in Tiny Houses about the law and on how you can achieve your dream of living small and affordably.
Each town in Western Massachusetts has its own challenges and initiatives to deal with the issue of affordable housing. Northampton launched a design competition called “Just Big Enough,” focusing on green, small, affordable housing. The competition opens up the process to the community, dispelling some of the mystery of creating affordable housing. This is especially important to help mitigate pushback from people in affected neighborhoods. Project leaders are hoping to create housing options that fall more in the $50,000 cost range for lower income earners and for other options for those with incomes above.
“We are trying to conserve all parts of the housing market. Affordable housing and high-end housing,” said Wayne Feiden, Director of Planning and Sustainability for Northampton. “We need to keep that balance.” Feiden said the goal is to make sure that the community is more integrated in terms of economics to avoid simply having rich neighborhoods or poor neighborhoods. “We want most affordable housing to be near bus lines or close to centers of town,” he said, emphasizing the importance of housing in ensuring class diversity.
While there have been conversations about tiny house initiatives in Amherst, it is still a nascent movement that is starting to show some signs of getting off the ground.
“Housing affordability is challenging in Amherst,” said Christine Brestrup, liaison for the Amherst Planning Board. “We need more housing. We have over 11% affordable housing currently. One of the reasons it’s challenging is because we have a large student population. We have higher-end housing. We struggle with housing for low-income and middle-class (residents).”
Between UMass, Amherst College and Hampshire College, Amherst is home to approximately 34,000 students. The town has 38,000 full-time residents, so the strain on the local housing supply is significant. To help relieve that pressure, the Town of Amherst has begun allowing second dwellings at least 350 square feet but less than 1000 square feet. While not strictly tiny in scope, they are a significant step in the smaller, more affordable direction. They must be on single dwelling properties in the R-V and R-VC districts and were approved to promote more diverse housing options and to increase downtown density. No more than three adults are allowed to inhabit small homes. Either the principle unit or the accessory dwelling unit has to be owner occupied, and they cannot be used for short-term rentals.
Noah Grunberg, founder of Noble Home in Shelburne Falls, which specializes in small, affordable homes, said many towns do not allow a second dwelling on a single lot so Amherst’s move is helpful. But, he said, the biggest impediment to affordability is current national building codes.
“The cost of developing a property, even before building a structure, is quite expensive (well, septic system, driveway, etc), so building a small home carries a quite high square footage cost,” he wrote recently in an email.
“The way to keep housing costs down is to centralize infrastructure, i.e. shared wells, septic systems, driveways, parking, etc.,” he wrote. “However, these are often not allowed with local zoning and/or health codes, so again, housing costs remain high, and development remains environmentally destructive (think sprawl as opposed to high density “neighborhood” development).”
“I am very excited about it,” wrote Lisa Aronson Fontes, who is anticipating building a second dwelling on her property in Amherst through Noble Home. She sees the changes in Amherst as a new horizon filled with possibility: “I”m excited for the town,” she wrote, adding “It’s important that we have a variety of housing options in a variety of price ranges available.”
As we teased this story on our Facebook page, we received a message from someone who had recently located to the area: “I’m appalled by the lack of reasonably sized affordable housing in the area,” the writer commented. “Check Zillow for houses/ condos under 1,000 square feet, you won’t find much!”
That kind of sticker shock makes the Pioneer Valley’s pride in diversity and inclusiveness ring hollow to fresh, innovative minds drawn here by the quality of life but marginalized by sheer economics. While new housing alternatives appear to be sprouting up in the area, without concerted and innovative solutions to such a glaring issue, the area will become a mere microcosm of the larger theater of haves and have nots playing out on the national stage. And it makes Larry Kelly’s cry of BANANAs seem more prescient than ever.
Alyssa Lidman studies journalism at Hampshire College. In her free time she enjoys hiking and hopes someday to win at Scrabble. Jody Jenkins is a writer and filmmaker in Northampton. He is Director of Field Production at Amherst Media and Editor of The Collective.
