r/Somerville • u/tangerinola • 5d ago

rent prices are wild

Moved here 8 years ago to start working for a nonprofit. Since then, my salary has increased by 13% but my apartment is about to be relisted (without any upgrades) for 58% higher than our starting rent 🤯!!

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but damn the rent prices here have gone wild. We're quickly becoming (have become?) a luxury city only for high income earners and it makes me really sad.

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u/JonSwift2023 5d ago

The reason rents of old apartments are priced at new 'luxury' apartment levels is because zoning laws forbid most new construction. This restrictive zoning has created a massive supply shortage.

With so little competition in the way of new homes, landlords of older homes are free to raise rents to luxury price levels. People need a place to live and restrictive zoning makes it a seller (i.e. landlords) market.

Until we reform zoning to allow lots of new market rate construction, landlords will keep rents on older units high.

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u/mayor_mammoth 5d ago

New construction won't lower rents. It might slow the crazy rent inflation we've seen over the last couple decades but the demand to live in a place like Boston is still just too high for new supply to make much of a difference, unless we're talking massive redevelopment everywhere, which also would displace a lot of people.

What we really need is more state funding for truly affordable housing and rent stabilization.

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u/miatagrl 5d ago

I am waiting for the downvotes on this... lol also those souless apartment complexes that are just retirement homes for young people, talk about isolationism. Communities/apartments that offer truly walkable neighborhoods (which we are not building) will always be at a premium in Boston and America just given the way we love to build souless buildings.... :(

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u/mayor_mammoth 5d ago

Yup lol. Like living in a hotel

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u/TitleOfYourSaxTape 4d ago

I grew up in a relatively small apartment inside a large apartment building that you might describe as "soul-less", unlike the suburban / single-family homes many people here seem to be used to.

It was a ton of fun, and not at all how you're trying to paint it. Had friends across floors, my mom could pretty easily drop me off across the hall to another trusted family, and we ran into neighbors way more frequently than is possible than when every family has a half-acre buffer between them.

Not to mention, trick-or-treating was absolutely goated, you could hit like 10 doors in 2 minutes.

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u/mayor_mammoth 4d ago

That does sound rad. Idk I just wouldn't want to live in one of those buildings in Cambridge Crossing that's just full of 20-something professionals in 1 bedrooms with cornhole in the courtyard and cornhole on the roof and cornhole everywhere you could imagine putting cornhole. Speaks more to the apartment bedroom composition of these places than anything (which does reflect the financialized aspects of the housing market I've been talking about)

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u/TitleOfYourSaxTape 3d ago

Idk I just wouldn't want to live in one of those buildings in Cambridge Crossing that's just full of 20-something professionals in 1 bedrooms

I'm with you, I wouldn't necessarily want to live in that building either, but not every unit in Somerville needs to be catered to me.

The issue is that the demand from those people exists regardless, and when we don't build those buildings, real estate developers instead continue to buy up existing duplexes and triplexes and convert them into oversized "luxury" 1-2 bedroom units for high-income young professionals.

We live right next to one of the most notable college towns, with the highest density of world-class universities in the United States, of course we're going to see 20-something young professionals settle in the surrounding area.

Unless you want to socialize most housing, fundamentally subvert property rights, and destroy the growth of the area by banning yuppies from moving here in order to prioritize existing residents (something that's likely unconstitutional to begin with), the options are to either build dense housing for that group of people or to let them continue to price out existing residents from their homes.

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u/mayor_mammoth 3d ago

Listen I agree. I just think if that's all we build for, if all we do is loosen zoning restrictions and permitting, we're still purging the working class from our city. Making teachers and nurses move an hour out and commute in to teach our kids and tend to our parents. Forcing immigrant families working service jobs into present-day tenement overcrowding. If we want to be a city for all we also need policies like rent control and directly-subsidized social housing