Living in Quincy, MA

About Quincy

Quincy calls itself the City of Presidents, and the reason is on Franklin Street: the houses where John Adams was born in 1735 and John Quincy Adams in 1767 still stand side by side there. The family's later home, the Old House at Peacefield, and its Stone Library are part of Adams National Historical Park. Quincy split from Braintree as a town in 1792 and became a city in 1888. Granite quarrying was its major industry for more than a century, and in 1826 the Granite Railway carried stone for the Bunker Hill Monument.

The shoreline runs from Squantum and Marina Bay around to Houghs Neck, with Wollaston Beach stretching about 2.3 miles along Quincy Shore Drive. Inland, the Blue Hills Reservation covers roughly a quarter of the city's land, and the old quarries in West Quincy are now a state reservation that climbers use. Four Red Line stations, North Quincy, Wollaston, Quincy Center and Quincy Adams, connect the city to Boston, and the Kingston, Greenbush and Fall River/New Bedford commuter rail lines all stop at Quincy Center.

Quincy permitted 3,008 units from 2015 through 2021, most of them in multifamily and mixed-use buildings, according to Housing Quincy, the 2022 MAPC study. Its zoning allows multifamily housing by right or by special permit in every district except Residential A, which is limited to single-family homes, and two special districts are aimed at transit: the Quincy Center districts and a transit-oriented district at North Quincy station. Projects of ten or more units that need a special permit, variance or site plan approval must set aside at least 10 percent of units as affordable, or donate land or pay a fee instead. Quincy Center has been the focus of an Urban Revitalization and Development Plan since 2007, covering 62 acres around the MBTA station, and the city began a Wollaston Urban Revitalization District in early 2021. The state lists Quincy as compliant with the MBTA Communities law.

Homes in Quincy

Housing Quincy, a 2022 study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, found that about a third of the city's housing units are detached single-family homes, two-thirds are in buildings with two or more units, and 63 percent were built after 1940. It describes the oceanfront areas of Squantum, Merrymount, Adams Shore and Houghs Neck as having predominantly older single-family housing. The same study found that 54 percent of occupied units are rented, and the 2020 Census counted 51,156 housing units in the city.