AMHERST — Amherst has an emergency overnight shelter to keep homeless individuals out of the elements during the cold-weather months, meal sites to ensure people are fed and places where clothing and bus tickets can be obtained and job searches can be done.
But absent from the community are single-room occupancy apartments that would provide compact living quarters for extremely low-income individuals and homeless people, while providing them the needed case management and supportive services to ensure they have stable, long-term housing.
Recognizing this need, officials at the Valley Community Development Corp. are beginning work on identifying a place where the first enhanced single-room occupancy, or SRO, apartments, with private kitchenettes and bathrooms, can be created in Amherst, likely in or near downtown or convenient to a public transportation.
“We’re prospecting for sites. We’re actively looking for sites,” said Laura Baker, real estate project manager for Valley CDC.
Valley CDC has received support for the work to find a site that can accommodate 16 to 40 studio-style apartments with $50,703 from a Community Development Block Grant provided by Amherst.
Valley CDC has previously developed and owned four SRO projects totaling 53 units in Northampton and Florence.
But even with the interest, Valley CDC is running into a complication with a town bylaw governing apartments, as the rule states that not more than half of apartments in a building can be a specific size. This means a developer who has to vary the studio, one bedroom and two bedroom units in a project.
Baker said this bylaw is potentially a barrier to providing new housing.
Town planners will ask Town Meeting to amend the bylaw so that projects that include exclusively one type of apartment can be built, with the condition that all units, except that for the property manager, are affordable, meaning for people earning at or below 80 percent of the area median income.
Baker told the Select Board this week that the apartment rules are arbitrary and don’t bear any reality to market conditions.
“This would open the door a little bit to make it a little easier for this project,” Baker said of the possible change.
Baker said Valley CDC would like to do the Amherst project as part of a project to add 16 units, and renovate 15 additional units, at a Northampton site. Combining the projects in the two communities, she said, may make it easier to obtain funding.
Development costs, on average, are $220,000 per unit, Baker said, and the Amherst project could range from $4 to $8 million, based on the application Valley CDC submitted to the town.
Creating single-room occupancy projects has been a long-term objective for Amherst officials and is included in the town’s housing production plan
Hwei-Ling Greeney, founder and executive director of Amherst Community Connections, said she supports Valley CDC’s efforts.
“Amherst is short on housing of all kinds, and people of low income have many fewer options,” Greeney said.
If an SRO project moves forward, Greeney said its impact will be significant, especially since studio apartments in Amherst are scarce.
“In Amherst we don’t have any sort of studio apartments the way Northampton has,” Greeney said.
Most of the money for a development would come from private investments and the state, Baker said, but there could be town contributions through the Community Preservation Act account or more CDBG money.
Baker said the goal is to identify and secure site by the end of 2017.
Anyone with suggestions, she said, is welcome to contact the office.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com
