I wanted to understand how the number of housing units in Somerville
had changed over our history, but wasn't able to find anything
searching online. We can get an estimate, however, by looking at the
"Year Built" field in the Assessor's
Database. This shows the age of Somerville's current housing
stock, to the best estimate of the Assessor.
Decade
Number Built
17xx
7
180x
36
182x
3
183x
1
184x
30
185x
65
186x
79
187x
143
188x
476
189x
1025
190x
4657
191x
1863
192x
2104
193x
401
194x
55
195x
75
196x
104
197x
181
198x
394
199x
72
200x
24
201x
51 (57 projected)
In estimating how much building was happening in various decades this
will be biased towards the present: a building that was demolished and
replaced will show up as being built recently, replacing the earlier
older listing. On the other hand, newer projects are often larger, as
former industrial sites are converted to housing. Still, it shows
that current building levels in Somerville, while higher than in the
2000s, are still very low by historical standards.
(The most recent year I see in the data is 2018, so I've scaled the
numbers for the 2010s decade up by 10/9 to reflect that we're missing
2019 data. I've also truncated the data to just the decade because my
understanding is it's common for the database to use the first year as
a stand in for "some time that decade", with 1910 to mean 1910s. Only
11,847 of the 12,145 parcel records contain a "Year Built" field so
I'm ignoring the other 2%. I'm also ignoring 84 Perkins St, parcel
14057, which claims to have been built in 1518.)
In estimating how much building was happening in various decades this will be biased towards the present: a building that was demolished and replaced will show up as being built recently, replacing the earlier older listing. On the other hand, newer projects are often larger, as former industrial sites are converted to housing. Still, it shows that current building levels in Somerville, while higher than in the 2000s, are still very low by historical standards.
(The most recent year I see in the data is 2018, so I've scaled the numbers for the 2010s decade up by 10/9 to reflect that we're missing 2019 data. I've also truncated the data to just the decade because my understanding is it's common for the database to use the first year as a stand in for "some time that decade", with 1910 to mean 1910s. Only 11,847 of the 12,145 parcel records contain a "Year Built" field so I'm ignoring the other 2%. I'm also ignoring 84 Perkins St, parcel 14057, which claims to have been built in 1518.)
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