Mattapan woman leading push for ballot measure to combat rising rent prices in Mass.

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”