Tenants and neighbors of the Fairlawn/Soma apartments on Cummins Highway held another vigil outside their building on Monday night, this time with a community development leader in attendance who hopes his organization can purchase the property and return it to affordable housing.

Attended by about a dozen long-time residents, citywide non-profit housing organizations, and the local non-profit development group Caribbean Integration Development Corporation (CICD), speakers called for the ownership group DSF Realty – which is in the process of selling the property – to sell to CICD.

“In February, I’ll have been living here 50 years,” said resident Annie Gordon. “I have always loved this area and have been supportive of it. We should keep our homes and have the right to say who we want to work with as an owner. I had to go back to work at the age of 72 to pay the rent here and I haven’t paid one penny more since they wanted me to keep paying $300 increases.”

Betty Lewis, who has lived there for 40 years, said: “I’m fighting for justice for me and those who live here. DSF has got to go. We don’t need them because they have not been fair to us. If you’re part of this community, we need you to stand up and fight with us. We need unity.”

DSF Realty, based on Newbury Street in the Back Bay, did not return a call or email for comment in time for this story. The company also did not respond to the Reporter for comment in a story in 2019 when rent increases starting pinching long-time residents like Gordon and a similar vigil was staged outside the complex.

Monday’s rally was spurred by DSF’s recent decision to put the property on the market after owning it since 2018 and rebranding it from Fairlawn to ‘Soma Apartments at the T.’ Built in the 1960s and federally subsidized, the property was sold to DSF on the open market by the developer when the subsidy covenant expired. Residents say that since that time, they feel there has been an effort to push them out, create smaller units, and capitalize on the new Fairmount Line train stop across the street that they fought long and hard to make a reality.

Donald Alexis, director of CICD who was also at the rally Monday night, said his group has been working with DSF on an offer they are making for the complex that they hope to convert into affordable housing, much as they have down across the street at Cote Village. He said they haven’t been getting any great response lately, prompting his attendance at the vigil.

“They want to take these apartments and turn them all into one-bedrooms for $2,500 a month,” he said. “Once you have a building next to a train station, it becomes a dog fight because everyone wants to buy it for top dollar and then make even more money. But what happens to those that have been here? The time is right now to fight for this.”

Fairlawn/Soma Apartments consists of a single-story leasing office/maintenance shop and 12 four-story apartment buildings completed between 1965 and 1968. The unit mix comprises 14 studios, 143 one-bedroom apartments, 75 two-bedroom/one bath apartments, and 115 two-bedroom/one & a half bath apartments with an average unit size of 829 square feet.

According to the current Soma Apartments website, a studio apartment with one bathroom goes for $2,000 a month, and a two-bedroom of 956 square feet rents for $2,675 per month.