By Maura Keene

When Ruth Hazzard retired, she longed to devote time to her passion for gardening. Unfortunately, the Logtown Road house she had raised her family in for 26 years had a north-facing, sloped yard surrounded by trees and received very little light. This was in 2012, when the North Amherst Community Farm was trying to raise money by selling a housing lot at the east end of the farm, off of Pine Street. Hazzard and her partner Claude Tellier took a look at the sunny, flat lot and were sold on it. Hazzard’s brother, an architect, designed a house, and she and Claude moved in.

They decided to rent the house on Logtown Road to help pay the mortgage on the new house. A series of families rented the house, but usually stayed only a year or two. But the latest resident expressed an interest in purchasing the house. With the mortgage on the new house paid off, Hazzard was amenable to selling the house on Logtown Road. She described the area as a “neighborhood in transition,” with several houses being sold to investors and rented to students. She said she did not want the house to be a student rental. “It is a great family neighborhood,” she maintained.

In order to make the house affordable to the current tenant and to others who may purchase the house in the future, Hazzard worked with Amherst Community Land Trust (ACLT) to sell the house to the single mother who was living there. Hazzard explained that in 1983, she was a newly divorced woman with two small children who needed a place to live. Her father had the means to purchase the three-bedroom home on Logtown Road for $74,000. When he died in 1989, the home belonged to her. 

Hazzard noted that having the home, mortgage free, allowed her to attend graduate school. She received her degree in entomology and worked for the UMass Extension in integrated pest management until her retirement. “I recognized the privilege I had in having a family who could help me own a home, and made my life easier. A lot was gifted to me,” she said, and she wanted to help someone else. 

Hazzard worked with ACLT to make the house affordable to someone making 70%-80% of Area Mean Income (AMI). The balance of the home’s assessed value was donated to ACLT, which issued a 99-year ground lease to the new owner. Because the sale was arranged through ACLT, there were no realtor fees involved. According to the ground lease, when the home is sold, it must be at a price also affordable to someone earning 80% of AMI or less. Although this would limit the profit the resident would make on the sale, it would keep the house affordable in the future. 

Founded in 2014, ACLT now has seven families living in houses in Amherst. The houses came to ACLT in different ways. In addition to Hazzard’s gift,  two were built through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity, two were purchased through a first-time homeowners grant from Community Preservation Act funds, and two were donated by ACLT members. ACLT is part of a nationwide land trust movement that began with Black farmers in the South, but now promotes permanently affordable housing in both urban and rural areas. ACLT has also made it a priority to stabilize Amherst neighborhoods for families. This goal is furthered by the generosity of homeowners like Hazzard who can afford to sacrifice some of their profit from selling their home to provide a home for a family and help preserve the character of their neighborhood. 

To find out more about ACLT, visit the website or email ACLT at Amherstcommunitylandtrust@gmail.com.

Maura Keene is a retired ob/gyn physician and a long-time Amherst resident. She is a writer for the local news blog the Amherst Indy and serves on the Board of the Amherst Community Land Trust. 

 This article was previously published on The Amherst Indy, here.