Take a petition on affordable housing around to those you know, like I did, and I'll guarantee you'll hear many voices raised in descriptions of just how urgent the local housing crisis has become. From my own circle of colleagues, most of whom are working people with decent jobs, the responses were astonishing. Here are a chosen few of them.

Irish immigrants, Sara and David had hoped to purchase a home in Dorchester or in South Boston where they had been living for years in what once were affordable apartments, but the skyrocketing rents and prohibitive prices forced them to move to Plymouth, the only place where they could afford to buy a home. She now spends three hours a day commuting into the city to work, time she would much rather spend with their little girl.

A young professional, Maria recently moved to Boston from New York City. As she signed the petition, she described her own housing problems. When she went looking for an apartment in our area, she was bitterly disappointed to find that although the salaries in the Big Apple are much higher than those offered in Boston for the same type of job, the Boston rents are comparable to those of New York! As a result, people are paying a very high premium for living here.

Pausing before the petition with pen in mid-air, Jay described the battles he and his roommates had experienced when searching for an apartment in Brighton, a place where students whose parents seem to have an endless supply of checks to write for them, have driven the prices through the roof.

Aron has lived in the same, second-floor walk-up in Somerville for the past six years. Recently, the couple downstairs moved out, prompting the landlord to consult with a realtor as to how much the apartment should really be renting for.

When told that after making a few cosmetic changes, he could charge $2,000 a month for the three-bedroom flat, the landlord made the modest renovations, rented the place for the $2,000, and promptly raised the rents for the tenants on the other two floors, without making any improvements to their apartments.

Laura, who has lived in Roslindale all her life, had expected to settle here permanently, in a home of her own, once she married. Our community had always offered a seemingly endless stream of affordable starter homes. Now that Laura's turn has come, that supply has dried up, and nothing is left in her price range. She and her fiance are looking for a house in the suburbs.

Jane is in her mid-sixties. Originally from the South, she raised her family in Dorchester and two of her three children, all of whom are now married, still live here in Massachusetts. The recent rise in her rent has forced her to move back to her native South Carolina.

Toni is in her eighties and has lived in Boston all her life. Her Roslindale apartment is still affordable, thanks to the fact that her landlady occupies the apartment downstairs and values quiet tenants. Yet, Toni lives in constant fear of a rapid rental increase, knowing that with her meager pension and social security payments, if the raise comes, she won't be able to afford to stay in what has truly become her home.

During a recent interview, Father Richard Mehm, pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Forest Hills, told me how in one week alone, four different families had come to visit him to let him know that they were leaving the parish and the area because they could no longer afford the rent on their apartments.

These are just some of the people I know and these are just some of the stories I have been told. They provide a good picture of the kind of price-gouging that is going on out there.

This is a housing market where a family earning $50,000 or even $70,000 cannot afford to buy a home. With half the homes in Boston now on the market selling for over $200,000, it is easy to see why.

The American dream is vanishing in a boom economy where profits are taking precedence over people. And, though economically diverse, the base of my family, friends and acquaintances isn't broad enough to even begin to cover those at the bottom end of the social spectrum, the disenfranchised and the homeless.

When the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization ('GBIO'), the broad-based coalition of over 85 churches, synagogues, and various other groups, held its house meetings to discover firsthand what particular issues are on people's minds, affordable housing consistently rose to the top of the list at every meeting. In rapid and direct response to the consensus of its constituents, the GBIO has launched a massive campaign aimed at bringing an increase in affordable housing to Massachusetts.

At the December 1, 1999 press conference kicking off this campaign, the GBIO challenged both the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to become more involved in providing affordable housing.

Msgr. Frank Kelley won instant notoriety at that meeting. When asked how the group expected to gain the support of the pro-market Governor Paul Cellucci, the Monsignor replied, 'Maybe 100,000 people might change his mind', a reference to the 100,000 signatures that the GBIO hopes to collect on its affordable-housing petitions. His remark led Boston Globe reporter Michael Jonas to refer to the good Father as 'Sacred Heart's scrappy pastor'. It seems that a portion of the blame for the current housing crunch can justifiably be laid at the feet of the Commonwealth. Massachu-setts has happily experienced a steadily escalating boom economy over the past decade, as the overall state budget has risen from $13.4 billion to $20.8 billion. However, during the same period, the amount appropriated for housing has declined from $220 million to $137.5 million.

Likewise, only a small percentage of the City of Boston's budget is committed to housing. In a very recent move, the Mayor announced on March 1 that he had signed an order which basically will require developers of City-assisted housing to build one affordable unit in the same development for every ten built at the going price. It is believed that this move alone will provide approximately 100 to 150 units of affordable housing this year.

Although this is certainly a step in the right direction, the fact remains that only a very small percentage of Boston's budget goes to help undo the housing crunch. By comparison, Cambridge, our neighbor across the Charles, suffering from a much less pronounced housing problem, has consistently devoted more of its budget to addressing the issue. The GBIO campaign hopes to convince both the Commonwealth and the City to devote more of their budgets to affordable housing than their current one percent or less.

Cognizant of the fact that the private sector must also assist with this effort, the GBIO plans to lobby corporations to invest in affordable housing projects. In addition, colleges will be asked to add to the dorm spaces on campus in order to free up those student-occupied apartments that drive the rents skyward.

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring and exciting phase of the GBIO campaign is the organ-ization's dream of building its own affordable units on donated public land. This program, called 'Nehemiah Housing', has been successfully implemented in other areas of the country, most notably in New York City. Under this initiative, the GBIO's sister organizations have created 5,000 units of affordable housing, most of which are homes owned by working-class families who otherwise could not have afforded them.

The Nehemiah program capitalizes on the combination of free land and low-interest, below-market loans provided by member congregations. In voicing a few possible sites, GBIO organizer, Lew Finfer, recently stated that 'Nehemiah requires a big piece of public land...It could be Mattapan State Hospital or Long Island, among other places'.

As the fourth prong of its campaign, the GBIO hopes to 'preserve and protect current affordable housing'. Doing so could even include the passing of new legislation that would provide tax abatements to landlords who keep the rents down.

The next phase of the campaign in our local area will be a meeting on Wednesday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Bethany United Methodist Church in Roslindale. Local elected officials from both city and state government have been invited to attend. The meeting will provide an opportunity for constituents to move their legislators toward supporting affordable housing. Similar meetings have recently been held in four other communities in the City, namely Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and South Boston, with meetings also held in the suburbs and in Chelsea.

All of this will lead up to a May 9th assembly scheduled to take place at the Reggie Lewis Center of Northeastern University. Thousands of GBIO supporters are expected to attend this meeting to which Governor Cellucci, Speaker of the House Finneran, Senate President Birmingham, and Mayor Menino will all be invited. Stay tuned for further details about this exciting interfaith organization that is using its clout to turn the dream of affordable housing into a reality. My bet is on them to succeed.