So I have less than 3 decades behind me and have the impression that affordable cities = trash/crime/poor-food/poor mass-transit, etc.. In other words, you can't have your Boston and eat it too.
But was there ever a time (Maybe pre-2000's?) wherein Boston was both affordable but also offered a decent QoL?
It seems like most of the suburbs that used to be "dangerous" are now relatively safe and gentrified. ^((Relative to cities like Oakland))
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I lived just outside the city but right next to the train. That was back when you could go to a concert without paying ticket master exorbitant fees! I feel like I really lucked out living in those times. Saw the Stones, Steely Dan, Jethro Tull, jGeils (of course) and it was affordable to go. The downside is that I’m old now!
2012 would have been a great time to buy in terms of being quite a bit more affordable (still expensive) and good QoL. Otherwise, yeah maybe 20+ years ago, but QoL would vary more by neighborhood
~10 years ago my wife and I lived in a 1BR in Fenway that was $1,950, which was considered pretty pricey. Most of our friends were spending $700-800 for bedrooms in fairly solid places in neighborhoods such as Mission Hill/Davis/Porter/East Cambridge etc.
Those rooms are probably 1.5-2x the rate now, and the salaries certainly didn't scale commensurately. The early '10s were definitely an easier time when everything was just a little bit but not utterly prohibitively expensive.
The year was 1629
In 1984-87 I had a small but ideally located apartment on Beacon Hill that was $450 a month. I wanted to live alone and knew I had to spend more for that reason. All my friends were living in co-op houses in Cambridge for practically nothing.
It was a dream location, so glad I got to live there. $450= about $1250 today. I don't think you can get an apartment like that on Beacon Hill for that now. I was making about $18,000 a year at a nonprofit, equiv now to about $50,000. I wasn't living extravagantly, but I had a perfectly nice life. (and yes, I'm old).
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We had an entire floor of a triple in Eastie for $1200 which included heat (cause we didn't have access to a dial) and then moved down the street into a single family for just over 200k between 2008 and 2011. I think it was soon after that when prices started to just soar.
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This is my second stint living here. In 2008 I shared a 2br on Revere Beach for 1500/mo, total. Granted it was Revere but we had a newly renovated, waterfront house for $750 each. For a single 20 something, it felt like a pretty good deal.
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I paid $125 a month (with 4 roommates) for my first place in Allston in the mid-90’s. That went up to like $475 (with two roommates) for a place in JP around 1999.
Things went to hell when they got rid of rent control right about 2001/2. That $475 place in JP jumped to $1250 a piece when our lease came up.
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My condo was worth about 25% of what it is worth now in the mid 90s. The early 90s a lot of banks collapsed, and this created a pretty depressed Real Estate market. In some Boston Suburbs some condos went down in value by 50% 88-95. Boston was arguably less safe in the early 90s. 98 is more or less the start of thr current run up.
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lotusblossom60 t1_iuk1113 wrote
In 1978 three of us rented the top two floors of a two family house for $375 a month. It had 5 bedrooms so then we got another roommate. I made $90.00 a week while going to Salem State for $150 a semester. I’m so sorry that things are so fucked for young kids these days.