Suzanne Stillinger, a Northampton preschool teacher, says her rent takes up 40% of her yearly income.
Stillinger is one of the tenants living in a Smith College-owned property in the West Street neighborhood who is organizing for a rollback of a June rent hike.
“Nobody is getting raises right now, everything is more expensive. So when they raise my rent, I add another job and another,” Stillinger said. With the summer rent hikes by Smith, Stillinger said she’s donating plasma once or twice a week in Springfield to “make up the difference.”
With an endowment of more than $2.5 billion and around 100 rental units in Northampton, Smith College is the wealthiest landlord in Northampton, according to Smith’s student newspaper The Sophian. Since June, over 20 tenants in the West Street neighborhood have been getting organized alongside other local tenants and community members to pressure the college for better housing practices.
Last week, the West Street Tenants Association held a press conference in front of Smith’s entrance gates. They demanded the college roll back the June rent increases, address all necessary repairs in rental properties within 30 days of being reported, and commit to capping annual rent increases to $25 a month — something they said would be in alignment with the college’s previous agreements with its tenants.
The tenants were referring to agreements they said Smith College made with tenants in a city-run working group during mayor Clare Higgins’ administration. Those agreements reportedly included a $25 monthly cap on annual rent increase and the creation of an affordable housing fund, according to Eliza Menzel, a Smith alumna and an organizer of the Northampton Tenants, a group primarily composed of renters in Northampton.
Neither the tenants association nor the city has been able to locate the written agreements the tenants are referencing, though. Sydney Fahey, the mayoral assistant in Gina-Louise Sciarra’s administration, said that the office “[has] looked extensively for any relevant files, and did not come up with any responsive records.”
Carolyn McDaniel, the senior director of media relations and strategic communications at Smith College, neither confirmed or denied the existence of the rental increase cap agreements, but said that the college “[complies] with the terms of all documented agreements related to its rental properties.”
Menzel alleged that Smith has consistently breached the agreed-upon rent cap, raising monthly rates by as much as 22% for tenants this past summer.
“These increases are destabilizing tenants, forcing many to leave, and burdening those who remain,” Menzel said. “It’s additionally sobering that Smith runs on the hard work of Northampton’s community members, but a growing number of them cannot afford to live in housing owned by their employer.”
In 2003, Smith College announced that it would commit to local affordable housing development. The announcement came after it faced backlash for a demolition plan of several affordable housing units to construct its $73 million Ford Hall engineering complex. The news release, archived here, was deleted from the college’s website earlier this year.
Since June, Northampton Tenants and Smith students have also met with Sciarra and with college administrators Andrew Cox and Larry Snyder, Menzel said, in an effort to “have Smith uphold its previous agreement and keep rent affordable.” As of the press conference, Menzel said they have not received a response from Smith College.
Reached for comment, Alan Wolf, Sciarra’s chief of staff, told The Shoestring that “the city honestly has little to no role other than advocacy in the tenant-landlord relationship.”
“The goal of the mayor was to understand everyone’s concerns and connect them and I think she successfully did that,” Wolf said.
In September, West Street Tenants also held a rally to pressure Smith College on its rent hikes, which attracted dozens of Smith students and staff, as well as community members.
Housing affordability is a major issue for many renters in Northampton and across western Massachusetts, according to Joel Feldman, a local tenants rights attorney who works with tenants across the Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties.
“If you don’t maintain your housing, there’s no place to go. My clients who are low and moderate income tenants have no choices. They have to stay where they are because they cannot find any affordable apartment in western Massachusetts,” Feldman said.
According to the recent Northampton resolution on rent stabilization, more than half of the renters in Northampton were housing cost-burdened in 2023, meaning they paid more than 30% of their income towards rent. Over a quarter of renters were “severely cost burdened,” paying more than 50% of their income on rent.
“So when Smith is saying we’re going to choose to raise your rent, they are saying, ‘We don’t care what happens to you,’” said Feldman. “Smith needs to do something different. They need to be a good neighbor, they need to be part of the solution and not be the problem.”
In the face of similar housing insecurity, tenants in other western Massachusetts towns are also getting organized. Mona Shadi, a member of the Easthampton Tenants Union, provided testimony in solidarity with West Street tenants.
A local landlord in Easthampton, Pine Valley Realty, has recently enacted rent increases upwards of 60%, according to Shadi. Shadi is one of the tenants evicted after the tenants union collectively chose to pay original rent until the company agrees to come to the negotiation table.
“My eviction is a large part of why I’m here in solidarity with my Smith tenant neighbors,” said Shadi, “Now the word is out, and everybody knows. Where Smith tenants have taken us under their wing, we now have their back.”
Alex Jarrett, the Northampton City Council president, also spoke in support of the tenants at the press conference, citing the City Council’s unanimous approval of a symbolic resolution in support of rent stabilization in September. Sciarra has also endorsed the resolution.
However, Jarrett told The Shoestring that the city does not have a lot of leverage in negotiations with Smith College. “There isn’t anything we can do to say ‘you must.’ We have to come and we need to say ‘you should,’” he said.
Beyond the tenants themselves, Northampton community members are answering the tenants’ calls and rallying around the cause for housing affordability. Amina Castranovo, a senior and union organizer with United Smith Student Workers, said she hopes Smith students and unions can work together with the local community.
“We are all facing the same institution that wants to exploit us for our labor and for our money in different ways, and we will not stand for this, together,” Castranovo said.
A petition by the West Street Tenants outlining the group’s demands has received over 500 signatures and a diversity of testimonies of local renters, including members affiliated with the college.
”Please act on your professed commitment to the communities of Northampton by taking these crucial measures that will help make this city a place where stable housing is a given for all people, and where our vibrant and supportive communities are free to flourish,” Menzel said, addressing the college.
Stacey Zhang is an independent reporter studying history at Amherst College. She can be reached at staceyzhang03@gmail.com.
