Moving to Boston (Work in Progress)
Housing
We’re located in William James Hall, 33 Kirkland St. Luckily it’s a short walk from Harvard Square, where a lot of transit routes intersect so you could live in most places around Boston and have a reasonable commute. Harvard has subsidized transit passes, so I pay ~$45 a month (straight from my paycheck and renewed automatically) for unlimited bus and T trips. In general, we don’t recommend living somewhere you have to drive from—parking is expensive and a headache in the city, but people in our lab do it!
Some members have lived in Allston, south of the Charles, and take the route 66 bus to and from work, and it’s like a 15 minute trip. Allston is one of the more affordable neighborhoods that are still in Boston. It has great food—about a mile of restaurants from basically every cuisine you could think of—and you can take the green line train or the 57 bus straight into downtown Boston.
Brighton is a little further out but has a similar vibe to Allston, and you can take the 86 bus to right in front of WJH!
Several of our lab members/coworker in WJH live in Cambridge and Somerville with roommates and bike or walk to work, or hop on a short bus ride. Cambridge and Somerville are a lot more residential, but more expensive than other places. Porter Square and Davis Square are pretty popular for living near bars/restaurants with a short walk to work.
More residential, a little cheaper but farther away are Medford and Watertown, both of which are accessible to WJH by bus, though it takes like an hour each way. People in our building happily live there though!
I also know people who live in the Fenway-Kenmore or Back Bay areas and take the red line train into work! These are a little more expensive but are more city hustle and bustle vibes, and more ~essentially Boston~.
For housing, some of the places people tend to post looking for roommates or with available listings are some Facebook groups, including Boston Sublets and Subleases, Boston Apartments for Rent, and Boston Housing. Harvard has its own housing website, including some apartments that are owned by the university but aren’t student housing per se. There’s also a bunch of roommate shuffling happening all the time within Harvard and the psych department, so we're happy to put out feelers if that’d be helpful!
Transportation
Biking - Boston and Cambridge are very bikeable: many areas have dedicated bike lanes, most MBTA buses have bike racks for storing bikes during bus commute. Biking information can be found on this page.
Buses and Lightrail - Harvard Square is the hub for multiple buses (1, 66, 68, 69, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 86) and the subway Red Line. Bus number 86 goes directly to Kirkland St. and William James Hall.
Harvard offers a variety of discounted public transport passes: see options here. Harvard specifically offers semester student MBTA passes with multiple options and zones to be found here. Semester passes can be ordered at the beginning of Fall and Spring terms. There are no Summer term passes.
Parking - Cambridge has some limited street parking, and a few parking garages. Harvard offers paid parking permits at various rates, though the parking permits are not inexpensive. You can use the broadway street garage or the 52 Oxford garage using ZipBy with the discount.
Shuttles - Harvard provides a network of shuttles free to students, faculty and staff. The shuttles are confined mostly to the university area, offer connection with Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business school, and Harvard SEAS in Allston and operate during work hours. There is also an after-hours van service.
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