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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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 17.3 ms ] threadIt 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.