At 70 years old, Annie Gordon was facing eviction from the Mattapan Square apartment she called home for 48 years. She raised her family there, and was settling into retirement when a new owner purchased the Fairlawn Apartments in 2019 and, according to Gordon, started raising rents by as much as $1,000 for some tenants.
“Having been here for 50 years in this community, there was no place else to go,” she said. “I just didn’t want to leave so I decided I was gonna stay and fight.”
To keep up with the rising rent, Gordon was forced out of retirement to make ends meet. But she also turned to a different kind of work, rallying tenants together to push back against rent increases. Then, her landlord, Bismarck Street Owner LLC, sent her an eviction notice, citing an “irreconcilable breakdown” in the landlord tenant relationship caused by Gordon’s communications and conduct.
“Some days it was tears, some days anxiety,” Gordon said. “I can’t imagine how people in shelters or people living on the street feel. They have to feel so much worse because I know that was just very heartbreaking for me.”
In 2024, Gordon won her eviction fight in Eastern Housing Court and was allowed to stay in her apartment. A year later, a new developer, Related Biele, purchased the property and pledged to keep all units affordable, supported by a $10 million grant from the city to offset costs.
But Gordon says her advocacy work is far from over. Now she’s supporting a ballot proposal that would bring rent control back to Massachusetts
Organizers with Keep Massachusetts Home and Homes for All Massachusetts say they’ve collected 124,000 signatures, clearing a major hurdle in the process to make it on the November ballot. The measure would cap annual rent increases at either the rate of inflation or 5-percent, whichever is lower.
“We need to make sure tenants are able to stay in their homes, stay in our communities, build roots, and have predictable, stable rent increases,” said Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts. “We feel like it’s a critical piece of solving the housing crisis, but one of many pieces.”
The proposal includes exemptions for newly constructed buildings for the first ten years, and for owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units.
But landlord advocates argue those carve-outs are insufficient and could harm the very renters the measure aims to protect. Doug Quattrochi, executive director of the trade association MassLandlords, Inc., says the owner-occupied exemption covers only a small share of housing providers, and warns rent caps could cause more people to lose their homes.
“There are going to be lots of instances where landlords who are subjected to rent control are unable to keep their building up to snuff and will sell out to a developer, who is going to evict all the renters,” he said. “They’re going to demolish the building and they’re going to build new luxury housing.”
Massachusetts voters banned rent control in 1994 after landlords argued it discouraged new housing investment. Under the current law, municipalities can only implement rent caps if they compensate property owners for the difference between the market rates and the controlled rents.
The new ballot measure now goes before the state legislature early next year. If lawmakers decline to act, another round of signature gathering will start in the spring before the proposal reaches the ballot.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are also considering a separate bill that would lift the state’s rent control ban, instead of implementing a statewide mandate. State Rep. Mike Connolly, the bill’s author, says the Tenant Protection Act is designed to give local governments more flexibility.
“We are facing an ongoing housing emergency,” Connolly said. “We’ve done many things to address it, but one of the things we still need to do is enable municipalities to protect tenants from egregious rent increases.”
Connolly says he supports both efforts, but anticipates a tough fight in the legislature and at the ballot box. He says owner-occupant landlords in Cambridge and Somerville support some type of rent control, but believes larger developers pose the strongest opposition.
MassLandlords, which represents 50,000 “mom and pop” landlords, says it has not been consulted by lawmakers or ballot organizers. Quattrochi believes solving the housing crisis requires addressing a key issue—supply. He’s also pushing for a better safety net for people struggling to make rental payments now.
“The state has a safety net that requires you to prove your worthiness. You have to submit an application, you have to pass someone’s screen,” he said. “That’s exactly the opposite of what a safety net should be. It should be the kind of thing where if we’re falling, we’re caught.”
Gordon says although her case is over, she can’t shake the faces of people waiting outside housing court, fighting to hang on to their homes. She hopes the rent control initiative will provide immediate relief to the people who desperately need it.
“There are still seniors like myself living on fixed incomes, as well as families or just working class people working two jobs that can’t keep up with the rent,” she said. “Something needs to happen that’s going to even the playing field.”
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