Alula Hunsen, 24, lives in a six-bedroom apartment in Allston. He and his five roommates share the space, which has only two bathrooms and one kitchen, not because they hate having privacy, but because Boston is crazy expensive, he said. “Affordability is really the only reason that I’m living in this configuration,” said Hunsen, a writer and MIT graduate student.
With the cost of living skyrocketing in Massachusetts, more renters said they have no choice but to reside with more and more people if they want to stay in the city, where they can be closer to their jobs, friends, and a vibrant social scene. With a recent study showing Massachusetts now has the highest cost of living on the mainland United States, for some locals that means having four, five, six, or even more roommates to be able to make rent. Advertisement The current average rent for a studio apartment in Boston is $2,350, while a one-bedroom is $2,750, according to Apartment Advisor, a Cambridge-based apartment-search platform.
The more bedrooms you add, the more the average price decreases: about $1,700 per person for a two-bedroom apartment and $1,400 per person for a three bedroom. It’s an equation that many young Bostonians said is increasingly appealing in a housing market that is brutal for both homeowners and renters alike. Boston Pads, an online real estate marketplace, said in a February report that renters across the city “appear to be gravitating towards shared spaces where they can reduce their overall living costs as opposed to renting a smaller unit for a higher price.
” Though more affordable, living with large numbers of people comes with challenges for some. Hunsen said he pays about $1,000 per month for both rent and utilities, which he said allows for more disposable income than he would have if he lived with fewer roommates. “A tough thing for us to manage has been hygiene,” Hunsen said.
“We’ve tried a bunch of times to set up a chore schedule and have conversations about shared responsibility to clean, but it’s six people who don’t know each other living together. There isn’t that accountability structure or relationship that makes everything stick.” Advertisement He said he doesn’t want to live with so many roommates forever.
But he’s not sure he has a choice. “I genuinely don’t know if I’ll be able to afford an apartment to myself in this city,” he said, noting that even moving to a place with just two or three roommates is “more expensive than I want it to be.” In Brookline, Sarah Rouse, a 25-year-old human resources worker, lives with four roommates in a five-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment where she pays about $1,150 monthly in rent and utilities.
Her landlord also lives on the property, but in a different portion of the house with a separate entrance. She said she moved to Boston from Rhode Island in 2021 so she could be closer to her job. Boston is so expensive that her one-bedroom apartment in Rhode Island, plus the cost of the long commute, was still cheaper than her current setup.
“There are definitely a lot of different personalities in the house, but we all try our best to get along and divide up chores and cleaning duties,” Rouse said. “But it gets hard and things get messy, since it’s five people trying to bring all of their stuff into a space.” None of the roommates knew one another before they met through a Facebook housing group when looking for a space to live.
Rouse said she would “love” to live with fewer roommates, especially since finding enough storage space for everyone has been a major struggle. “I don’t even have a full refrigerator shelf to myself,” she said. “I purchased a mini-fridge so that I could keep my food cold.
” Advertisement Rouse said she spends about 30 percent of her income on rent, leaving her with enough money to get coffee in the morning, go out to dinner with friends, and generally live comfortably. “I’d rather have a more abundant social life and just use my apartment as a place to sleep than have a really nice place with less roommates,” she said. Neil Eustice, a realtor at Prime Realty in Brighton, said young people living with not just one or two roommates, but three, four, and more is the natural result of rising rental prices.
Because potential homeowners can’t afford to buy, they continue renting longer, reducing the number of rental properties. With higher demand for what remains, he said, rental prices increase and prompt people to turn to larger-bedroom apartments for more affordable prices. “That leads to the problem with overcrowding,” he said.
Not everyone finds living with a large number of roommates to be a negative experience. Some have leaned into it by practicing “co-living,” a housing model where people intentionally share living spaces and work to build a small community among inhabitants. One such group is a nine-person housing cooperative near Union Square in Somerville, which members have named “The Forbidden Zone.
” Residents range in age from 24-31 and include one married couple. The Forbidden Zone tries to create camaraderie among housemates with weekly meetings to discuss house issues, nightly family dinners (a recent Monday meal attended by a Globe reporter featured stir-fried noodles and sweet and sour tofu), communal bookshelves, and a crowded whiteboard with everyone’s cooking and cleaning roles for the week. On average, rent costs about $927 for a single room, while a few people sleeping in shared bedrooms pay about $667.
Groceries, which are pooled, are anywhere from $30-$60 weekly per person. Advertisement “Affordability is not the main factor for living here, but it is a really nice benefit,” said Mehitabel Glenhaber, 26, a museum educator at the Paul Revere House in Boston’s North End. “I can live near where I grew up and can do things I wouldn’t otherwise.
” Glenhaber, who previously shared a bedroom, said the arrangement worked out well, noting that they and their roommate had compatible sleeping schedules and enjoyed keeping each other company at the end of the day. “When I was moving into this house, I wasn’t full-time employed, and I couldn’t have afforded rent at the full price of a single room,” Glenhaber said. “It’s not better than living in your own room, but that’s a huge luxury in 21st-century Boston.
” Madison Hahamy can be reached at [email protected] .
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