Leaving work today, something struck me about the neighboring neighborhood. Namely that a lot of the houses have signage somewhere on them that declares them to be businesses. Data industry, massage therapists, at least one pharmacy. They look like residential houses, but they aren't. Unless someone is also sleeping above whatever business they've set up or are managing. It's a fairly tony neighborhood, so maybe the owners―assuming they own―can better afford to set up a business and take in money than to just live there.
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Living above one's business used to be a very typical thing; it's only in recent times, including the onset of giant factories (and banks, of course) that homes became separate buildings. Maybe you're noticing a return to the earlier phase.
It wasn't until I read your post that I remembered a time my friend Jackie and I had to go to the Miriam Hospital to pick up some patient records for Dr. Golini. We didn't go to the hospital itself though, instead, we were directed to an office in a house in a neighboring street. When we got there the woman we met took us to another house further along the block to get what we needed. On the way she told us the Miriam owned more than twenty houses that were used to store records. I doubt if that's still the case now everything has been digitized, but it was true then.
It would be interesting to find this was a new-old trend. Of course the number of people who are able to own property (i.e. land, house) at all are a shrinking minority. I'd like to see that tendency reversed before there's a collapse.
Neat tidbit to remember. Some of the old records would be shredded and some not. By law they have to be kept intact for, I think, 20 years after. So eventually they'll be gone, but the process is still ongoing. In any case, Miriam Hospital does still own houses that it uses for administrative work, as does Rhode Island Hospital.
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