LYNN — A crowd of roughly 40 housing advocates and tenants of 127 Washington St. protested outside the apartment building Wednesday evening after changes in ownership brought rent hikes of up to $500.
Realtor and property owner Daniel Jacobson purchased the building from The Hall Company at the end of 2022. The change in ownership brought a significant rise in rent prices, in some cases close to $600, sparking fear of eviction among working-class tenants who said they cannot afford the new prices.
Ramona Almanzar has lived at 127 Washington St. since 2016. She said that her son, who is about to graduate high school, is thinking of abandoning his dreams of becoming the first of his family to graduate from college in order to find a job and help his family pay rent.
“We’re hard-working people and humble people who live here, and we just don’t have a way to pay the huge increase in rent this new landlord wants,” Almanzar said.
At the rally, Outreach Director for the mayor’s office Jean Michael Fana read a letter signed by Mayor Jared Nicholson, Sen. Brendon Crighton, Reps. Daniel Cahill and Peter Capano, as well as six City Council members urging Jacobson to negotiate with the tenants and avoid involuntary displacement.
“We know that many of these residents have limited resources and are on fixed-incomes, making the ability to absorb these hefty hikes extremely difficult,” Fana read. “We feel as though common ground can be found in which reasonable rent increases can be established without anyone losing their homes.”
Earlier this year, residents of the complex formed a tenant union to negotiate lower rent. Executive director of the housing advocacy group Lynn United For Change Isaac Hodes claimed in a written statement that Jacobson did not respond to the union’s compromise offer, but instead filed for eviction cases.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Jacobson said that he offered to lower the increase to $1,550 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. According to statistics gathered from the online rent payment company RentCafe, Lynn’s average rent price is slightly higher than $2,000 per month.
Jacobson said that no one has been evicted yet, and that he does not want anyone to lose their homes. But, he said, he bought the property at market price and risks foreclosure if he continues to rent out units at the previous average, which he said was $1,100 per month.
“I want people to be happy in their homes, but at the end of the day, this is a business and my plumber doesn’t give me a 40 percent discount, my electrician doesn’t give me a 40 percent discount, the city lenders won’t give me a 40 percent discount on property taxes or anything. So I’m not sure why I’m being expected to give a 40 percent discount on rent,” Jacobson said.
