By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | October 12, 2006

The old apartment building at the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Ruggles Street was a neighborhood nightmare for years.

As Jeanne Pinado put it yesterday: "It was the drug-and-crime building of the neighborhood. The owner didn't maintain the property or care about the public safety issues." Over two years there were more than 100 police calls to the building. "The police knew it well," Pinado said.

Pinado is executive director of the Madison Park Community Development Corporation. The CDC bought the building in January 2005 for $3 million. After a complete renovation that required temporarily relocating all the residents, the 43-unit building is scheduled to reopen later this month. If all goes according to plan, the returning tenants will all be in their new units by Thanksgiving.

Residents also get help in connecting with the social services they are eligible for, which can range from food stamps to prenatal care. There is a waiting list for units that is 1,000 people long.

"This is typical of the work that CDCs do," Pinado said. "The services are as important to us as the bricks and mortar."

Rehabbing a building, even a troubled one, is fairly routine. But Pinado and other activists wish that affordable housing got more attention in Massachusetts, specifically in the governor's race.

On Saturday, they will get at least part of their wish. The Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations is holding its semiannual convention at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. All four candidates for governor have been invited to speak, and three -- Deval L. Patrick, Christy Mihos, and Grace Ross -- are scheduled to appear. Each will answer questions about housing and small business development.

Joe Kriesberg, the association's president, said that in a campaign in which the high cost of living has been a recurring theme, one of the biggest factors, housing, has been all but ignored.

"I'm disappointed it hasn't gotten more attention," he said. ``It's routinely identified as one of the two or three biggest issues on people's minds. It's a bigger part of your [spending] than the income tax, and it's affecting everybody."

In fact, both Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Kerry M. Healey have called for spending more to address the affordable housing shortage. Still, the issue doesn't come up a lot.

There is some evidence that the housing problem is worsening. The number of foreclosures in Boston has risen steeply this year, a sign that even those who have gained a toehold in the housing market are struggling to maintain it.

The aim of the convention is to bring together housing activists from across the state to compare notes and formulate policy goals for the next two years, Kriesberg said.

"A lot of people work in Lawrence or Lowell or Worcester, and they're slogging away and knocking on doors, and they don't necessarily get to meet with their counterparts," Kriesberg said. "When you add up what all these community groups are doing, it's amazing." The association's 60 member groups have created or preserved 4,000 units of housing, he said.

Kriesberg said he regrets that Healey declined the group's invitation. "She's still welcome to come if she changes her mind," he said.

The CDCs do more than rehab housing; they also provide assistance to small businesses, sometimes providing places for such businesses to operate. They have a ground-level perspective on the gaps where state policy is falling short for people who need it, be they homeowners or business owners.

That makes their victories, such as the renovated building in Roxbury, that much more satisfying. Pinado said not all of the families who left are returning. Some opted for lump-sum payments they applied to buying their own houses, and a few simply left.

Those who opted to return should find a far better standard of living than they left. "This is typical of our approach to affordable housing," Pinado said. "It's kind of holistic."

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