At the time that I was selling 143 Fearing Street I was asked if there was anything wrong with the property to disclose to a potential buyer. What I wrote down was the address of the house. The main reason that a person would not want to buy that house is that it is located at that address, on that street, and in Amherst. Both the immediate neighbors to 143 Fearing Street and the town itself make living in that house a stressful and unpleasant experience.
Behind 143 Fearing Street is a five unit row house. The students who live in these apartments change every semester. But it seemed that there was not a year that went by that I did not have some difficulty with the people who lived there. It was common for them to have loud parties, and I regularly needed to call the police because of the noise. There was one group of young men who were particularly bad. They thought it was amusing to set up jars in their backyard and shoot at them with BB guns from their back door. I was alerted to what they were doing by the repeated sound of breaking glass. When I saw that they were shooting BB guns I was particularly upset because they were shooting in the direction of my house. I told them to stop and I called the police. I guess that this worked because I never heard any more breaking glass.
Across McClure Street is woman who runs a boarding house that may have as many as seven students living there at one time. This is illegal. In Amherst there is an ordinance that says that no more than four unrelated people may live in the same house. When my girlfriend moved into 143 Fearing Street, the Amherst Building Inspector threatened to bring me to court if I didn’t evict one of my other three tenants. This woman has never had any problems with Amherst Building Inspection despite the fact that she runs several of these over occupied boarding houses all over Amherst. Her son is an Amherst Police Officer. There are no laws in Amherst Massachusetts, only abuses of power.
Across McClure Street and one house down from the illegal boarding house are two women who own a home that is one on the Amherst Garden Tour. During the time that I lived at 143 Fearing Street these women made about one complaint about me to the town every year. There was always some new way they wanted me to spend money on my house, trimming trees, having my driveway repaired, and even painting the house. What they told me is that if that my house wasn’t maintained it could bring down the value of their house. I kept the house as well maintained as I could. Most of the work I did on the house was on the inside. It wasn’t their place to tell me how I should spend my money on my property, but each one of their complaints came in the form of a letter from the city and each one of these complaints cost me money to comply with. Just be warned, if you own 143 Fearing Street these women will be watching you.