Job in Lynn, where to live? (Boston, Cambridge: section 8, oceanfront, apartment complexes)

[HDS10]

Hello,

I'll be working in Lynn starting in late August and looking for an apt. to share with one or three other people. I'm hoping to find a place with under an hour commute on public transportation; if not i'll try to find a person to carpool with. I'll have around $6-800 to spend on rent (maybe more if abs. necessary) and just looking for a decent neighborhood with access to both Lynn and Boston by T (including commuter rail, buses, etc.). Any ideas? Are the buses reliable? Would greatly appreciate any mildly related advice. Thanks!

[brightdoglover]

May I guess that you might be under 30, or under 25? (Roommates...) You might really like living in Boston itself and getting public transport to Lynn. If you live north of Lynn, you get more and more into family and older people life, not young people life.
I'm not sure what public you'd take to Lynn (anyone?) but if you're willing to live with a roommate or two for that price, you could live in a very neat Boston neighborhood and only commute to Lynn for work. I imagine I don't have to tell you "don'd live in Lynn."

[goyguy]

"Don't live in Lynn" is outdated advice that was never completely valid to begin with. The post-WWII suburban migration did a number on the city, then the other mortal blow was steep cutbacks in employment at the huge GE River Works plant. For many years the downtown area was essentially deserted for all intents and purposes. It was a place to not be caught dead in for fear of having just that happen.
But although "ghetto" conditions persist in chunks of Lynn, neighborhoods such as the Diamond District and Wyoma Square and Sluice Pond never stopped being "nice." More importantly, onetime warehouses and shoe factories near the beach and the commuter-rail station have now been reborn as trendy apartments and lofts. Coffee places and cutting-edge drinking spots are popping up to take their places alongside the dive bars and thrift shops which had hung on during the down times. The first wave of redevelopment has washed over Central Square, with more to inevitably follow. So I'll go on the record as respectfully contradicting brightdoglover.
Rentals are fairly scarce in Swampscott, the next community to the northeast, but some apartments in houses do exist. Public transportation, however, is pretty much limited to a commuter rail station and some express buses into downtown Boston along Paradise Rd.
Beyond Swampscott lies Salem, known to all as the "Witch City," where economical living situations can be easily obtained. Salem, however, like Lynn, has its "good" and "bad" sections. The transpo also isn't all that great; as in Swampscott, commuter rail and a few express bus routes are the only game in town.
Malden, about 15 minutes' drive west/southwest of Lynn, has a considerable number of apartments in its housing stock: everything from older duplexes and carved-up Victorian houses to high-rises adjacent to the Orange Line/commuter rail station. Oak Grove Village, a sizable new development of apartments and townhouses, just opened on the Melrose/Malden line next to the Orange Line terminal. A few apartment buildings of varying ages line the main street, aptly named Main St, of Melrose and some intersecting streets. The portion of Medford which lies directly to the south of Malden also has a similar mix of residential styles available.
Fans of more suburban-style living can find apartment complexes to their liking in Peabody and Beverly, North Shore cities which lie beyond Salem.
The cities immediately to the north/northeast of Boston, Chelsea and Revere and Everett, are in a general state of decline but remain pleasant and safe for the most part. Revere's lengthy stretch of oceanfront is one of the first public beaches in the United States if not THE first. There was overbuilding of high-rises overlooking the shore during the 1980's, with the result being that some of the buildings are Section 8 while others are doing fine as "market rate" apartment houses. The MBTA's Blue Line terminates in Revere, which along with Chelsea and Everett has more extensive bus service (though not to Lynn) than do the cities and towns farther north.
Adjoining Revere and East Boston is the town of Winthrop, definitely a viable option given that it has its own collection of tall apartment houses with views of the sea. It's one of those places that is chock full of "lifers," families that settled and never left and are now seeing the succeeding generations staying put as well. The major downside to Winthrop is that no matter how the flight paths into Logan are redrawn, dozens of planes will continue to go right by there as they take off and land.
$600-800 rent went out with the '90s in Greater Boston. The OP is wise to mention home sharing right off the bat. If her/his company isn't large enough to make advertising for housemates there worthwhile, the "usual suspect" Craigslist is a good resource.

[brightdoglover]

Thank you for the courteous disagreement. I wasn't so much thinking "Lynn is awful" as it's not really a place for a young person who is willing to live with roommates and who likely is oriented socially towards Boston, the college areas, Landsdowne Street, etc.
And Salem and other northern towns just wouldn't seem like a likely place for someone under, say, 25, or maybe 30. Maybe I'm misreading the OP completely, but I were under those ages and new in town, I'd want to live nearer to the big city and college action.

[HDS10]

Thank you both so much for the helpful advice. You're right, I'm 22, and hoping to be close to Boston/Cambridge. I have three roommates, maybe four, and so far we've been able to find some reasonable places in Cambridge, though it looks like public transport will be difficult from there (>1 hr). Living close to 93, I can drive to work in less than a half hour and hopefully find a carpooler eventually. Would you rely on buses to get to work on time?