It is my understanding that boarding houses were not cheap. But I've mostly only read about them in fiction form the time period. If there's any truth to them, it seemed like to afford to live in a boarding house in the city proper you needed to be a single working professional.

I think people liked to live like that, just like they'd like to have fresh made meals and live in walking distance to everything now. But once you get married have kids, it gets too expensive. You're housing and feeding multiple people that aren't working. Also, people forget boarding houses usually came with a shared bathroom.