Living in Cambridge, MA

About Cambridge

Cambridge was founded in December 1630 as Newtowne and renamed in May 1638 after the English university town, two years after the college that became Harvard was founded. George Washington took command of the Continental Army on Cambridge Common in 1775 and used the house at 105 Brattle Street as his first long-term headquarters during the siege of Boston. The West Boston Bridge of 1792 tied the town directly to Boston, and new bridges and roads turned estates and marshland into industrial and residential districts; the New England Glass Company, founded in 1818, with plants in what are now Kendall Square and East Cambridge, was the city's largest employer for much of the 19th century. Cambridge became a city in 1846. MIT moved here from Boston in 1916.

The city recognizes 13 neighborhoods on about 6.4 square miles of land. Squares strung along Massachusetts Avenue anchor them: Harvard Square beside the 22.4-acre Harvard Yard, where Massachusetts Hall has stood since 1720, Central Square with City Hall, and Porter Square farther north, while Kendall Square grew from salt marsh and 19th-century industry into an office and laboratory district beside MIT. Cambridgeport keeps streets of triple-deckers near the river. In the west, Fresh Pond Reservation surrounds the city's drinking-water reservoir, and Mount Auburn Cemetery, founded in 1831, straddles the line with Watertown. Danehy Park, a 50-acre former city dump in North Cambridge, opened as parkland in 1990.

On February 10, 2025, the City Council voted to allow multifamily housing citywide. Multifamily housing is now allowed in every zoning district except Open Space, and in the new base district, Residence C-1, residential buildings may rise to four stories (45 feet), or to six stories (74 feet) on lots of at least 5,000 square feet when 20 percent of the housing is income-restricted. Existing single-family homes may remain and new ones may still be built, and the city's inclusionary housing program continues. Since October 2020, the 100 Percent Affordable Housing Overlay, amended in 2023 and 2025, has allowed permanently affordable buildings denser than base zoning; completed projects include 52 New Street (106 rental units) and 116 Norfolk Street (62). The state lists Cambridge as compliant with the MBTA Communities law.

Homes in Cambridge

By the city's inventory as of June 30, 2025, 6.4% of Cambridge's housing units are single-family homes, 11.9% are in two-unit buildings and 10.5% in three-unit buildings, while 34.1% are in buildings of more than 100 units. About two-thirds of occupied units (66.5%) are renter-occupied and 33.5% owner-occupied (2020 to 2024 American Community Survey). With so few single-family homes, The Warren Group's 105 single-family sales in 2025 reflect only a narrow part of the market.