Allston Is Gentrifying and Harvard Is To Blame

Harvard University calls Cambridge home, but it's quietly become a bigger landlord across the river. With over 360 acres in Allston – surpassing its 213-acre Cambridge footprint – the University isn’t just expanding its campus; it’s reshaping an entire neighborhood’s destiny.

For many longtime Allston residents, that’s a serious problem.

Nationwide, housing prices are on the rise, and Boston’s Allston neighborhood is no exception. Just last year, roughly 10,500 people applied to live in 88 new affordable housing units built in the area.

Talk to any Allston resident about the changing face of their community, and you’re likely to hear a mention of Harvard — and for good reason. Over the past decade, our University’s investments have turned Allston into a rising biotech hub at the expense of a liveable neighborhood long-time residents can continue to call home.

In short, Allston is beginning to gentrify, and Harvard is to blame.

While true that rising housing costs are not unique to Allston, one need only venture outside of Harvard Square and into Allston to see the changing character of the neighborhood, replete with massive Harvard-sponsored construction projects and shiny new lab spaces.

Harvard’s expansion into Allston didn’t happen overnight. The story began in 1989 with the University’s secret acquisition of more than 50 acres of land through a Boston developer. Throughout the 2000s, Harvard continued to anger residents with its purchases, amassing over one-third of the neighborhood’s land mass.

In the early 2010s, biotech exploded in Greater Boston. Kendall Square rose to prominence as a national biotech hub and set the paradigm for university-industry partnerships while reaping huge benefits for MIT. Soon after, Harvard, looked across the river to Allston and identified its swaths of unused land as a similar opportunity to capitalize on the ongoing boom.

In 2013, with the announcement of the Enterprise Research Campus, a $1.5 billion, 36-acre science and innovation district bridging the gap between the University and the private sector, Harvard officially kicked off its plans for a new Allston.

The University’s decision to direct life science investment into the neighborhood catalyzed a flood of biotech development that has transformed Allston’s physical landscape. New commercial lab space and an accompanying host of construction projects, mostly housed on Harvard land, spread down Western Avenue from the ERC site toward Allston’s Brighton border.

In 2024, three laboratory and office buildings and four residential buildings were planned or under construction on Western Avenue alone. Harvard’s residence in Allston has been a major draw for such development, promising a lucrative flow of knowledge and capital between the University and the private sector.

While Harvard’s development might bode well for the University, the payout for Allston’s residents is far less obvious.

If the neighborhood does become a second Kendall Square, new commercial development will serve commuters and a wealthier class of employees, not long-time residents. Expensive, chain eateries and privately policed office buildings do more than demolish neighborhood character — they erode the livability of the area.

Areas of lower Allston occupied by Harvard and biotech could become ghost towns after work hours. New residential development, while much needed, has consisted overwhelmingly of single-bedroom units, which will make it harder for families to find housing in the neighborhood.

The recent slowing of the commercial lab space market has left Allston’s future in limbo. Projects — including a nearly billion-dollar mixed-use development on Soldiers Field Road, intended to include office, lab, and residential space — have been discontinued or lay dormant.

Harvard’s efforts to expand the commercial lab space market into Allston could leave residents living among these abandoned projects – not to mention Harvard’s vacant buildings scattered across the neighborhood – for years to come. Properties that could be filled with local businesses or turned into vibrant community spaces will lie empty. All the while, rents in Allston will continue to surge.

Harvard must address the question: Who will Allston be for in 20 or 50 years? Walking down Harvard Street and Western Avenue, it’s clear the University has set the gears in motion for an Allston that serves life sciences companies, their employees, and Harvard affiliates. A future for Allston that serves its current residents — renters, families, artists, immigrants — is in jeopardy.

Our University’s investments have attracted new biotech development, which in turn draws a new, wealthier class of residents to the neighborhood. Without dramatic additions to Allston’s housing stock, housing costs will only continue to rise.

Many Allstonians — in 2017, 90 percent of whom were renters, compared to a 2024 65 percent citywide figure — will have no choice but to move. This process is only beginning, and it will continue to unfold as local construction is completed.

It’s not too late, however, for Harvard to change its course, especially during the current community benefits negotiation process. With Allston’s future in the balance, a more responsible Harvard is non-negotiable.

Throughout this column, I’ll discuss how Harvard can not only do better for Allstonians, but also for communities impacted by Harvard’s land speculation across the globe.

Kayla P.S. Springer ’26 is a Social Studies concentrator in Pforzheimer House.