For the last six years, Annie Gordon has not gone a day without worrying about facing eviction or a huge rent increase.
Now, she can relax.
Developer Related Beal, with financial backing from the City of Boston, is buying the 347-unit Mattapan apartment complex where Gordon has lived for nearly 50 years and setting rents at affordable rates, putting an end to a lengthy saga that saw fixed-income tenants battle with a landlord that bought the property in 2018 and raised rents dramatically.
“The feeling is overwhelming relief,” said Gordon, who is 74. “When I got the call with the news, I couldn’t even believe it because we’ve been fighting, trying to stay in our homes for so long. There’s still a part of me that can’t believe it. We fought so hard, and we actually won.”
Some tenants wept when they heard the news, Gordon said.
“The toll this took on all of us,” she said, “was huge.”
The city is contributing more than $10 million to the purchase to guarantee affordable rents for all of the units, as well as protections against big rent increases, officials said at a press conference at Fairlawn Estates, as the property was known before it was purchased in 2018. Half of the units will be set at rents affordable to tenants making 60 percent of the area median income, or $78,360 for a household of two, and the other half will be set at 80 percent AMI. Related’s deal with the city also caps annual rent increases at 2 percent a year.
Related’s affiliate, Related Affordable, would not say how much they are spending to purchase the 12-building property, but DSF Group paid $65 million to buy it in 2018.
Boston’s $10 million contribution is coming through its Acquisition Opportunity Program, which provides funding to community and housing groups to finance the purchase of market-rate housing to be maintained as permanently affordable. The groups behind the transactions can borrow against the city’s contribution to obtain additional capital. In this case, the city said it was able to secure nine times its $10 million investment in private funds.
At 347 units, Related’s purchase of the Mattapan property is by far the largest such acquisition under the AOP. In 2022, the city helped finance the purchase of 36 small apartment buildings totaling 114 apartments in East Boston for affordable housing.
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The program is part of a broader strategy by Mayor Michelle Wu that has seen the city pour hundreds of millions of pandemic recovery dollars into the construction and acquisition of affordable housing. By purchasing market-rate homes, the city can avoid the prohibitive costs it takes to build new affordable housing, while maintaining buildings in neighborhoods that are gentrifying rapidly.
“The City of Boston is so proud to play a role in restoring Fairlawn as an affordable home, because for decades, these units were known that way: an affordable place to raise a family,” Wu said Monday. “Over the last few years especially, the rent here was hiked up … and families were forced out of Fairlawn, out of Mattapan, and out of the city.”
Now, “it’s a new day,” said city housing chief Sheila Dillon.
Fairlawn was built in the 1960s off Mattapan’s Bismarck Street, and it eventually became a community cornerstone because its cheap rents supported a community of longtime tenants, some of whom live on fixed incomes.
A few of those tenants spent years advocating for the addition of the Mattapan commuter rail stop, but when it was finally built, the apartment complex became attractive for prospective investors, Gordon said.
That’s when DSF bought the place. Rents immediately rose, in some cases, by hundreds of dollars. Many tenants couldn’t afford the increases. Some left, but others stayed and fought, refusing to pay the increases and forming a tenant association with the help of tenant group City Life/Vida Urbana.
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Last year, DSF moved to evict Gordon, but a judge sided with her and let her stay.
“Tenants have been traumatized by this,” said Gabrielle Rene, the Mattapan community organizer for City Life. “This has been years of pain and struggle.”
The saga at Fairlawn Estates highlights how vulnerable many residents of the city are to big rent increases, and why policy makers should prioritize protections for renters, said Gordon. People like Gordon would benefit directly from something like rent control, she said. And the city should also pass the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would require landlords to give tenants and housing groups the opportunity to purchase apartment buildings before they go up for sale on the private market, she said.
Related’s purchase is a rare victory for tenants in a city where apartment buildings change hands and rents soar frequently. Many of those sales have much different endings.
“We’re grateful,” said Gordon. “I’m grateful I get to stay in my home.”
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