Affordable housing advocates around the city are losing one of their staunchest friends with the departure of Boston Mayor Tom Menino. But many feel that the changes he’s made to how the city treats housing at all income levels will help ensure their voices are heard, no matter who replaces him.

Housing was always one of the top priorities for the Menino administration.

“Nationally, Tom Menino was known as ‘the housing mayor,’” said Roger Herzog, executive director of the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation, which helps finance housing projects statewide. “He played leadership roles at the U.S. Conference of Mayors [with regard to housing]. The work that was going on in Boston was a really a model for the rest of the country.”

During his tenure, Menino twice increased the “linkage” fees paid by developers who build in Boston, which fund the Neighborhood Housing Trust, one of the main sources of funding for affordable housing developments across the city. Developers now have to pay $7.87 per square foot of new development to the trust.

Menino also launched a “Leading the Way” initiative in 2000 to bolster Boston’s housing stock. Over the next decade, the city saw the development of 20,473 new units, including 6,377 new affordable units, and the preservation of 12,611 existing affordable units.

Boston’s Money, Mayor’s Mouth

He was also willing to put the city’s money where his mouth was.

“One of the biggest things that he did was invest approximately $5 million a year of city resources into affordable housing,” said Evelyn Friedman, who directed the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development from 2008 to 2012 and now serves as executive director at the Greater Lawrence Community Action Council.

“Many cities just use federal housing dollars, and don’t put their own resources into affordable housing programs,” Friedman explained. “The city dollars were able to plug holes we might not have been otherwise able to plug. The feds require that if you commit to a project, those funds have to be used within a couple of years. Sometimes it takes a little longer for the more tricky projects.”

She pointed to the revitalization of Mission Hill and the ongoing projects in Dudley and Jackson squares in Roxbury as highlights of the mayor’s efforts in neighborhood economic and housing development.

Chrystal Kornegay, chief executive of Urban Edge, a community development corporation (CDC) based in Jackson Square, which has been one of the major forces driving the $250-million redevelopment of the area, said she was confident that even in a post-Menino era, neighborhoods like the one she serves will still get their due from the city.

“I think the commonwealth, as well as the city of Boston, has always been committed to affordable housing development,” she said. “The mayor leaves a legacy that shows what can happen in a city if you pay attention to the neighborhoods. So I don’t think that the next person coming in will just throw all of that away. I’m more concerned about our funding from the federal level than, once it gets to the city, whether they’re going to continue to fund the neighborhoods.”

Federal Funding In Jeopardy

That echoed the assessment of many in the CDC world, said Joe Kriesberg, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of CDCs.

“Menino deserves a lot of credit for establishing a precedent that would be very difficult for any successor to ignore or reverse,” he said. “He has baked into the system a strong affordable housing and community agenda.”

Housing advocated will have to hope that embedded support is sufficient to continue the ambitious development agenda Menino announced in the waning days of his tenure. Mere days before announcing his decision not to run for re-election, he announced an initiative to develop a further 30,000 units of new housing in the city by 2010.

Making sure that affordable housing makes up a fair chunk of that may be more difficult in the coming years than it was over the past decade. Looming federal budget cuts are already having a strong impact on CDCs’ abilities to fund new projects, and especially to preserve existing units as affordable. As the housing market in the city heats up, more units will come under pressure from developers seeking to buy them up and transform them into market rate housing.

“Given the very hot real estate market in the city, a top priority has been to preserve every affordable unit that we have, and the city has stayed focused on it like a laser,” said Herzog. “The mayor has a lot to say about the kinds of projects and the types of developers that are going to be able to succeed. The CDCs have had a great ally in the mayor, and that certainly could be different in a different administration.”

If it is, it would be a widely-felt loss, said Friedman. The mayor’s focus on housing “made a huge difference in the neighborhoods. It doesn’t matter if it was in Mattapan, Southie, Roxbury, Charlestown – everybody sees them as their local mayor,” she said.

She recalled touring a newly-completed development in Dorchester with him some years ago. “It was about two or three o’clock, and a bunch of kids were just getting off the bus – and as soon as they saw him, they came running. ‘It’s Menino! Menino!’ They were about six years old and they all knew who he was.”

Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com