A Tale of Two Cities

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

My Google News sidebar just gave me pause:

City of Somerville’s survey finds people are happy living there

Study: Somerville residents fleeing high rents

This after coming home tonight from a meeting about affordable artists housing and the lottery for the Millbrook Lofts spaces.
Better odds than the politcally cowardly and regressive tax state lottery, I guess. And....  my landlord is finally planning to jack up my rent (though since my rent has been way below market rate, no fault to him, but it likely means it is time to move on. Waltham?).

Opps... TMI. Ah well. I lived in Wicker Park in Chicago when it was on the "cusp of cool" and then when it was cool. And then it peaked and many of us had tp move to Logan Square, Pilsen or wherever. Just how it goes.

Maybe Somerville Open Studios is a really, really BAD idea.... if artists want to keep living here ;-)

And the earlier link from Ron N. about the Lonely Planet story:
Somerville is one of the best places to visit in the country, according to Lonely Planet

Comments

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

The key is to make all towns as great as Somerville, so it will not be unique, and therefore people won't flock to it. Also, really need to increase the supply of apartments.

[totient]

Increasing the supply does not reduce the price. Quite the opposite: By increasing the density, it increases the range of services that can profitably operate in the area, and in so doing makes all of the housing that much more attractive. See also San Francisco or Manhattan or Tokyo.

[damianpbnj.livejournal.com]

With regard to supply (and San Francisco), coincidentally enough just this week the California Legislative Analyst's Office released a study that concluded:

"Particularly in the Bay Area since 2000, the researchers found, low-income neighborhoods with a lot of new construction have witnessed about half the displacement of similar neighborhoods that haven't added much new housing."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/12/the-poor-are-better-off-when-we-build-more-housing-for-the-rich/

In other words - more supply = less displacement.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

The articles do not contradict each other, if people were unhappy to live here as they were in the 70s, then rents would be cheap as they were then.

[ifotismeni]

Waltham! There are plenty of Somerville expats here.

^ I agree with the above idea that if we have more towns/cities with the similar magic that Somerville has, there won't be this feeling of "Somerville and NOWHERE ELSE" many people have.

FTR I think SOS is amazing and I hope it continues!

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Part of Somerville's magic is proximity to the Red and Orange lines (even if no good buses cross Somerville itself) and a population density almost 4x that of Waltham and higher than anywhere else in New England (including Cambridge, probably second, and Boston, lower than either.)

(Not to mention Somerville's proximity to Cambridge...)

[ifotismeni]

yea, I know! but people can't afford it, so....

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

We ended up fleeing to Cambridge. But that was a unique case, maybe. :)

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

Not gonna lie, that's part of how I ended up pushed out of Somerville. *is in JP now* And honestly, I like JP better, even if getting groceries is trickier and the library's under construction. The green space is great, and while I can easily walk into gentrification areas easily, I'm still enough on the fringe of it to be able to easily walk into places where... well, I don't feel like a hobo.

Plus I can find clothes that fit me. Could NEVER achieve that in Davis Square.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I love JP. I think as a neighborhood, it's wonderful. The trouble (for me) is how hard it is to get from there to the other places I go, and the fact that the areas immediately surrounding are largely not part of my life and didn't seem likely to become so (at least back when we were pondering the possibility -- I don't know if that's changed because I never get there anymore).

[lb-lee.livejournal.com]

This is true, but JP has one huge advantage over Somerville for me: GREEN SPACE. I'm willing to take an hour to get to all my other events for that. And I'm doing more in JP as I learn more folks here, and as I learn more stuff around here. It also seems that a lot of the government institutions and activist orgs I'm interested in take place here, or nearby in Roxbury.

I figure in a few years, I'll have as much going on down here that I did up in Somerville.