
Living in an Allston [near Boston, MA] pantry for $300 a month is nuts - jt2190
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/technology/2016/04/22/renting-allston-pantry-for-month-nuts/66PjxMtJicuwf5dn8R34UN/story.html
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Finnucane
When I first moved to Somerville in 1988, I lived in an apartment with four
roommates, so it was sort-of communal, though we did each have our own
bedroom. We were paying, as I recall, on the order of $250 each. At that time
is was not uncommon to see student ghetto apartments with every room converted
to a bedroom, and illegal subdivisions of rooms (our place wasn't that bad; we
actually had a living room and a dining room). So they've basically taken the
skanky absentee landlord model and put a high-tech veneer on it. (A lot of
those apartments got converted to condos during the Great Bubble.)

It should also be noted that while Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville remain
among the most densely-populated cities in the country, before WWII they
actually had more people living in fewer units of housing--essentially double
the number of occupants per unit as we have now. One of the reasons housing
costs don't come down as you build more housing, is that people tend to take
as much as they can afford, so as more housing becomes available, each person
takes more.

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psook
Here's a news article actually about the headline
[http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Box-living-Peter-
Be...](http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Box-living-Peter-Berkowitz-
pod-San-Francisco-7243988.php)

