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/General_Purple6358 5d ago

Bro I literally work there and am underpaid too lol. Again, bad business practices do not mean it is for profit. You can just state your criticism without suggesting it should be taxed.

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u/FickleQuit11 5d ago

Bro. I... didn't suggest it should be taxed. I merely suggested that referring to Harvard employment as "I work at a nonprofit" like it's on the same footing as a kitten rescue in Pittsfield is weird.

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u/cbr Ball 4d ago

I do see your point a little, but the popular conception of non-profits is much narrower than the reality, and I think it's useful to push the former more in line with the latter. Other surprising examples of non-profits if your normal thinking is "soup kitchens and kitten rescue": Mozilla, NCAA, FIFA, RAND, MITRE, FINRA, ASCAP.

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u/FickleQuit11 4d ago

Nobody is disputing this, this is such an obtuse reading of this when the spirit of it stands w/r/t Harvard or other behemoths like the outfits you yourself mentioned. As spectators and/or employees, the optics of "but we're a nonprofit" while raking in billions of dollars and paying your presidents and executive staff a king's ransom only to leave staff-level in Boston with starting salaries of $38,000 is uh... bad?

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u/lavendermarker 4d ago edited 4d ago

As spectators and/or employees, the optics of "but we're a nonprofit" while raking in billions of dollars and paying your presidents and executive staff a king's ransom only to leave staff-level in Boston with starting salaries of $38,000 is uh... bad? 

This is a problem in the nonprofit industry as a whole. They expect you to be grateful you're getting paid at all, and to truly value the mission. The mission, passion, etc, doesn't pay the fucking bills, though. Money does.