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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 9462394">The city itself can be very expensive to live in. The average rent when I looked it up was over 3,400 dollars a month. Now that is an average so you can get cheaper places if you are in the right neighborhood or in a town just outside the city. You can find places for 1,200-2,000 a month. It is getting harder and harder to find places for 1,200. Where I used to live in Lynn, it was often quite easy to get places for that amount. When I had to go looking again last year, so many apartments were in the 1,600-2,000 range. Just checking listings today, I don't even see anything under 1,800 in Lynn. Keep in mind wages are also generally a little higher here because the cost of living is higher than average. But to live in the city of Boston, my impression is you need money, roommates or you need to find a place in Mattapan or East Boston (not sure how up to date my sense of more affordable locations are). One reason people here aren't too excited about more businesses moving in is the demand for housing is high, while the supply of housing is low. That said, I don't really know many people who live in the city itself, except for one or two folks who live in places like Chinatown and Dorchester. In Boston you have Boston proper which is actually quite small, but there is also greater boston that covers more cities and towns. And you need to keep in mind there are lots of working class and poor neighborhoods around here, there are lots of places where you have multigenerational homes (I lived in a property that spanned three to four generations for many years). So it isn't that people here have money, many of them are just getting by or have found a way to work around the high cost of living. And many towns have affordable housing units that people can apply for if they qualify.</blockquote>

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