Opinion By Evan Naismith

Several years ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones came to UMass to discuss her seminal work, The 1619 Project. As she listed off accomplishments for the Black community, the crowd cheered enthusiastically. The applause, however, subsided noticeably when she mentioned racial diversity in public schools. Lightning-quick, she quipped, “Oh, I see. You all celebrate Black excellence except for when it actually impacts you.” 

Ouch. 

Hannah-Jones is one of America’s most prominent historians, but her biting comment was rooted in the present: Amherst claims to be anti-racist, but we balk at making the sacrifices necessary to achieve racial equity. At first, I didn’t really buy her assertion. After all, Amherst had established Caminantes, CRESS, and the Reparations Assembly. We are the good guys, right? But then I started researching housing. 

The US Census shows that white Amherst residents own homes at twice the rate of Black residents. That disparity has profound effects on wealth. Ta-Nehisi Coates points out that homeownership is the primary vehicle for wealth in America and that, for most of the 20th century, African Americans were locked out of it by policy. Because of our homeownership ratio, Amherst’s anti-renter bylaws have a disparate impact on minorities–possibly in violation of the Fair Housing Act. 

These policies originated during the Town Meeting years, when zoning decisions were written almost exclusively by homeowners. Eventually, the Amherst Charter Commission found that the Town Meeting “did not reflect the demographics of the Town,” with renters and minorities being significantly underrepresented. Town Meeting was a classic tyranny-of-the-majority situation, with students and renters having virtually no political representation. 

During this period, Amherst imposed strict limits on homes occupied by four or more unrelated individuals and layered on environmental and design requirements that made new housing exceedingly difficult to build—even as the town struggled for additional property tax revenue.

These anti-growth policies proved popular with homeowners, in part because they caused real estate values to rise at roughly twice the national rate. But this intentional scarcity turned the housing market into a high-stakes game of musical chairs, with the greatest harm falling on those with the fewest options—disproportionately renters and communities of color. 

Today, the consequences are clear. Landlords can pass through the vast majority of regulatory costs to tenants, contributing to strong profits as rents continue to climb. In that sense, Amherst’s long-standing resistance to development functions like Trump’s tariffs: the burden falls primarily on consumers rather than corporations. Meanwhile, homeowners have continued to see substantial gains in wealth. 

But these gains have come at a steep cost. An estimated 68% of Amherst renters are now cost-burdened, compared to just 21% of homeowners. Rising housing costs have also contributed to broader economic strain: roughly 4,000 Amherst residents face food insecurity, prompting the Survival Center to open a satellite location and report that it is sometimes impossible to secure shelter for families in need. 

The African Heritage Reparation Assembly’s Harm Report documented “profound and widespread discrimination and economic exclusion in contemporary Amherst” and called out the outsized rent burden on Black residents. The Town Council endorsed the Comprehensive Housing Policy that followed — which outlined feasible pathways to increase Black homeownership — but then ignored the vast majority of its recommendations. 

In his book How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi maintains that, “[a] racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity… Antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity.” By Kendi’s metrics, our current policies are racist since they dramatically advantage homeowner interests over those of renters. An antiracist housing policy (one that seeks to reverse inequities, not just slow them) must instead elevate renter interests above those of homeowners. 

The current town council has been empowered to do better, yet some councilors continue to indulge wealthy homeowners who don’t want homebuilding in downtown, North Amherst, or South Amherst. They don’t want market rate or luxury. And they will literally sue the town if it tries to permit affordable housing. These residents are implacable, and their policies are demonstrably harmful to racial equity. 

It took me half a decade to digest what Nikole Hannah-Jones recognized in one instant. Amherst is expert at diagnosing racial inequity and negligent at fixing it. The town council knows what needs to be done. The Harm Report told them. The CHP told them. The Census data tells them every year. The question is no longer whether Amherst understands its housing crisis — it’s whether our elected officials will finally stop protecting the people who created it. 

We need to codify the recommendations in the CHP and the Housing Production Plan. And anybody standing in the way should be forced to explain why the character of the town is more important than racial equity.

Evan Naismith is a five-year resident of Amherst and a graduate from the Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst. He is the VP of the American Constitution Society at UConn Law School, where he specializes in public interest law.