Greenfield Community College student will help map rental properties in city

By ANTHONY CAMMALLERI

Staff Writer

Published: 01-13-2025 4:20 PM

Modified: 01-14-2025 3:32 PM


GREENFIELD — Housing Greenfield, in partnership with the Assessor’s Office, has recruited a Greenfield Community College sophomore to map and register the city’s rental properties.

Funded by a $1,500 grant from the Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association, Chief Assessor Randy Austin said the project will address an important need, as the city’s lack of a rental registry has made it difficult for the city’s health and building departments to enforce codes.

Austin noted that mapping out the city’s rental units will also assist the police and fire departments with responding to emergencies.

“In some cases we’re trying to reach out, and it’s the police or the fire department that’s trying to communicate some type of thing to the landlord,” Austin said. “The better off we are, as far as being aware of what’s going on in the city, the better we’ll be able to assist not only landlords, but tenants.”

The city’s 2022 parcel data estimates there are roughly 985 multi-family homes in Greenfield, 365 of which are owner-occupied and 620 that are owner-absent. However, Chuck Green, a member of the Board of Assessors, previously said technological challenges associated with recording addresses from property tax bills make collecting and registering accurate addresses a complicated task.

“There’s a lot of things that could be done if we actually knew not only exactly how many rentals there were, but what their addresses are,” Green said in August. “If there are rentals that [the Building Department] doesn’t know about, there might be implications. For example, fire sprinklers, there are definite requirements for fire protection that vary based on how many units are in a building.”

According to Housing Greenfield Coordinator Susan Worgaftik, the GCC student will spend roughly 20 hours a month checking addresses as he surveys downtown Greenfield from February until May. Housing Greenfield is an advocacy organization that encourages the development of affordable housing in the area.

Worgaftik said the project will focus exclusively on two-to-eight-unit rental properties, as it will likely be easier to track the number of rentals at larger apartment complexes. She noted the project will also help to address inconsistent address numbers.

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“Part of what we’re going to be doing is just looking at the mailboxes and seeing what the addresses are because there’s no standard,” Worgaftik said. “You may go to one house and it’ll say 20 and 21, as it’s a two-family, and you may go next door and it’s 30 and 31, so we’re trying to at least have correct addresses for folks.”

Although the grant will only cover the costs associated with mapping neighborhoods surrounding downtown, Worgaftik said she hopes the project will receive additional funding to be expanded to the rest of the city. She added that the Board of Assessors will likely be tasked with maintaining and updating the registry.

Worgaftik echoed Austin’s remarks that in the event of a fire or an emergency, the city must know how many tenants are living in the home.

“I have personally been in some buildings that used to be two-family that now, when you walk in, there’s a number of single-room apartments in one unit that used to be a single-family apartment,” Worgaftik said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s not necessarily a good thing. We don’t know if the city is aware of that situation, which becomes important if there’s a fire or if there are issues of code enforcement.”

In August, assessors mulled over the idea of creating a rental unit registry during discussions on whether to implement a split tax rate — or redistribute the tax burden between residential or commercial properties. City Council, however, voted against the split tax rate in November, leaving rental properties and owner-occupied structures responsible for the same portions of the property tax burden.

“This is just to be better aware of what’s going on and making sure that we also have property classified correctly,” Austin said. “If we’re saying it’s a two-family and it’s [actually] a three-family, it’d be good for us to know.”

The GCC student could not be reached for comment by press time on Monday.

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the name of the organization leading the city’s rental registration effort. Housing Greenfield is working in partnership with the Greenfield Assessor’s Office to map the city’s rental units.