Reviews & Comments
Cambridge, MA
re: Cambridge rocks. - 10/29/2008 -
6/29/2010Cambridge has been hijacked by people with lots of money who wish to buy into the instant cool and hipness that a Cambridge address provides. I grew up here and can no longer afford to live in this town because real estate values are so far out of whack with reality. Check it out: there are no middle-class/middle-income people left in Cambridge, only high earning people with money to burn and townies in subsidized housing. The old middle-class neighbourhoods of West Cambridge (north east of Huron Ave) has been gutted, the families gone, and the multi-family houses are now all condo'd. The house I grew up in, a three family owned by my father, had been chopped up by a developer who sold each level for 600k each. I think my father originally bought the house for around 30k back in the mid 70's. And ours wasn't the only place this happened to. My aunt's house, a two bedroom, one bath, is worth about 900k because it has a yard and off-street parking. It's absurd.
It's such a shame. Growing up here exposed me to all sorts of people from kids who lived in the projects to some of my friends whose parents were teaching at Harvard, and everything in between. The diversity that made Cambridge so wonderful is slowly disappearing.