Moving to Boston with Mother (Cambridge, Lynn: apartment, houses, neighborhoods)

[tylerxmark]

I am new to this forum. I am 19 years old and currently living in Birmingham, AL for school. I am from Miami, FL an I am excited to be moving back to a "big city". My mother is a nurse and will be working at the hospital downtown (dont know the name) so we will be living inner city.

Can someone give me Pros and Cons to living in Boston? (i.e skyline, public transit, schools, museums.)

and if anyone could shoot me in the direction of a nice neighborhood for cheap?(rowhouses, also needs to be close to a rail station)

[missionhill]

Well, there's lots of public transit in the areas near downtown and there is a skyline--a subdued one, but beautiful from across the Charles River Basin. Boston is one of the best museum cities in the country (even if Brandeis sells off the Rose). Schools are generally good in Massachusetts but they vary by town or city. Living in Boston may mean living in the city of Boston or in one of the many adjacent cities and towns where you can still be close to downtown but in a separate municipality which will have its own schools. Better schools will be found in more upscale communities. Nice neighborhood for cheap? That's the hard part; nothing's cheap. There's a thread or two now about Lynn; I'd say Lynn is as cheap as anything around without being ghetto, but Lynn is approx. ten miles out of town, on the railroad but not on the subway. The areas north and east (including Lynn) within a ten mile radius of downtown Boston are cheapest, including Revere, East Boston, Chelsea, Malden, Medford, and Everett. West is most expensive (Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Watertown, Newton, Brighton, etc) and south (Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Milton, Quincy, etc.) is somewhere in between. You'll find a lot of the more affordable housing is in unattached but very close together wooden two- and three-family houses, rather than rowhouses. There are rowhouse neighborhoods (Beacon Hill, Back Bay, South End, Charlestown) but they're mostly very expensive.

[Cantabridgienne]

Is your mother actually working Downtown? That is a specific neighborhood, not just a catch-all term for the city. The majority of hospitals are in the Longwood Medical area, which is in Boston, but isn't considered "Downtown".

You also need to figure out what you consider "cheap", decide what amenities you absolutely need in an apartment and see if that is realistic for Boston.

[lrfox]

When I think "Hospital Downtown" I think of NEMC or MGH given their proximity to the center of the city.

Good point about what their budget is, Boston is much more expensive than both Miami and Birmingham. "Cheap" may put them in some more undesirable neighborhoods or well outside the city center.

You likely won't be able to live "Downtown" for cheap. When I say, "Downtown" I really mean the core neighborhoods that make up the primary center of the city. I would consider those to be the Financial District/Leather District/ Chinatown/ Theater District/ Downtown Crossing, Beacon Hill, North End, West End and Back Bay.

Areas to start looking right on mass transit lines would be places like Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Brighton, and neighboring cities with good access like Cambridge, Somerville, Quincy, Brookline and parts of Newton. That's a VERY broad area and each of those places have a variety of different neighborhoods, but "cheap" is relative and Boston is not cheap to most.

[Cantabridgienne]

Also, why are you specifically looking to live in a rowhouse?