BOSTON — The rental market in Boston has been skyrocketing over the last few years, so much, that it’s become out of reach for many wanting to live where they work. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Boston is a little over $3,000. Is there relief on the horizon?
“I know it’s a difficult problem to solve, but yeah, I hope somebody can do something about it,” said Heather Lee, who rents an apartment in Boston.
“I end up spending a significant proportion of my salary on rent, which is very problematic,” said Lee.
“We were looking for apartments when it was like seasonal, so the prices were much higher than renting off-season,” said Michael Katz, a renter in Boston.
“If you have student loans and you’re paying $3,000 a month for your one bed, you’re not saving any money,” said Brett Starr, owner of Starr Residential.
Brett Starr has been doing rental sales for the last eight years in Boston and says rents have been climbing so high that people have been forced to make some tough choices.
“They’re already at the point where people are like, no, I’ll take the train or I’ll drive because I don’t want to pay an extra $600 a month,” said Starr.
According to Redfin, in September, the cheapest median rent was in West Roxbury for $2,626 a month. The most expensive was in Chestnut Hill at about $5,000.
“Housing is a real crisis in Boston,” said Sharon Scott-Chandler, the President and CEO at Action for Boston Community Development.
Scott-Chandler says housing is the top issue her organization deals with.
“The affordability, the vacancy rate, the acceptance of vouchers in Section 8 and subsidies, all of those compound to make it more difficult for middle-income, low-income, everyone to afford to live in Boston,” said Scott-Chandler.
ABCD builds pathways for people to find the right resources they need to get help, become stable, and find success. But when the cost of almost everything is increasing, finding that successful path can be difficult.
“We’ve seen people who didn’t have difficulty before,” said Scott-Chandler. “I mean that may be again teachers or folks who have what we call living-wage jobs. Even those folks are unable to kind of put it together and or have to pay 60% of their income towards rent, which does not leave enough for the other basic necessities or anything else,” she said.
This year, 1,450 people went through ABCD for housing assistance.
“We aren’t gonna solve the housing crisis by just giving somebody rental assistance,” said Scott-Chandler. “We’re gonna solve it by thinking about affordable housing policy and development of more affordable housing.”
Boston has a goal to build 69,000 new housing units—15,820 of those will be income-restricted by 2030. Until then, the rental market has slowed, with the latest Zumper report showing rents are trending down slightly. One reason—a recent jobs report found more than 153,000 workers were laid off in October, the worst in 22 years.
“People are losing jobs, and I think people are nervous,” said Starr. “There’s not a lot of confidence right now in the real estate market.”
That translates into fewer people moving and more inventory in the rental market, which Starr believes could cause prices to continue to trickle down.
“I think this fall market has just stagnated; it’s a lot of units just sitting,” said Starr. “Moving into the winter, if there are going to be vacant units, that’s going to be interesting heading into the spring market, for both rentals and sales, because it’s going to be the first time that there’s an abundance of things to look at.”
Starr added that with the uncertainty in the market, renters might start seeing incentives thrown in—like a free parking space. But he also adds that if the price is still too high, that freebie isn’t going to do anything for you.