Greener Pastures Archives | House and Hammer

Finders, fixers.

aerial view of beacon hill and back bay in boston

How much is a year of your life worth? How about four?

What would you pay for an extra year of your life? A lot, right? People complain about the cost of housing in Massachusetts, and with good reason — it’s outrageously expensive to buy a home in the Boston area. The median price of an existing single-family home in the Boston area was $563,000 in 2020, according…

Diverse communities in Massachusetts

Unlike its northern New England neighbors, Massachusetts is at least somewhat racially diverse: 68% White, 7% Black, 7% Asian, and 12% Latino, according to the 2020 Census. (The U.S. as a whole is 62%, 12%, 6%, and 19%, respectively.) But a lot of our minority residents are clustered in Boston (which is actually a lot more…

Live alone? 14 awesome things you could afford if you had roommates

Last month I wrote a piece for the Boston Globe Magazine praising the virtues of roommates. Almost everyone in Boston has shared a living space at some point — the rent here is just too ridiculous not to. But many people give up roommate life as they cross some psychological threshold — age 30 or 40 or whatever it…

11 ways moving can improve your life

The American Dream has always been linked to mobility. Religious exiles sailed here to start a new, better life. Millions of immigrants later followed in their wake seeking the same. In fact, mobility was part of the American Dream even before there was an “American Dream” — many Plains Indians tribes were nomads who followed the…