Neil Chin, at 90; cofounded, led Chinatown community organizations

Mr. Chin won the hearts of his neighbors by working on their behalf for most of the 80 years he lived there.

No matter the issue - affordable or elderly housing, good schools, jobs, ridding the neighborhood of undesirable elements, founding nonprofits, and, generally, improving its quality of life - Mr. Chin was the guiding light.

“Neil was a passionate fighter for poor people and the rights of the community. He fought passionately for those ideals in his community, his family, friends, and for Boston . . . and then he made them happen,’’ said Jacquie Kay of Cambridge, a former president of the Asian Community Development Corporation, of which Mr. Chin was a founder.

Mr. Chin, who started as a junior accountant with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission and retired after 27 years in 1985 as its executive secretary, died of renal failure Sept. 23 at Tufts Medical Center.

He was 90 and lived in Chinatown.

There is hardly one community association there today that Mr. Chin did not start or had a hand in starting, including American Legion Post 328, the Chinatown Branch of the YMCA, and the Chinese Tenants’ Association.

As a member of the Oak Terrace Committee, he helped pave the way for the Oak Terrace apartments, in the early 1990s, his daughter, Karen of Braintree, said.

In his younger years, Mr. Chin was “a father figure to a lot of kids in the neighborhood,’’ said his son, Nelson of Braintree. “A lot of their parents lived in their restaurants, so Dad would organize ball games for them in school gyms and would join in the game himself.’’

He got approval to use American Legion quarters in Chinatown where children could play cards, learn how to dance, and socialize.

“Neil was the mayor of Chinatown,’’ said the Rev. Frederick Portnoy of Avon, who was working for the state when he met Mr. Chin in 1971. “Neil was a great guy. I never saw him angry or pressure anybody. He taught me never to overreact and that there were always two sides to every story.

“He helped many people find entry-level jobs.’’

Mr. Chin’s brother, Edward of Athens, Ga., said his older brother got jobs both before and after his retirement from his state job “for hundreds of people, maybe thousands.’’

Two of them became the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s first Asian transit police in the 1980s, said Ed McDonough of Braintree, Mr. Chin’s son-in-law and a retired transit officer.

“Neil was my mentor,’’ said Kenneth Jong of Lexington, a friend of 50 years. “He got me my first full-time job. He got me into politics. He wanted his generation to pave the way for the next.

“Neil not only helped the Chinese community but many others. He grew up in the Depression years and wanted to make sure the community had access to political organizations and be able to get funding for different projects.’’

Neil Y.H. Chin was born in Toishan, China, and was about 5 when his parents immigrated to this country.

For a few years, his brother said, they lived with relatives who operated a laundry in Lowell.

Then they moved to Chinatown, where Neil worked in laundries and other jobs after school to help the family through the Great Depression.

He was one of seven children.

“He was the quintessential big brother and watched out for his younger siblings,’’ Edward said.

His sister, Mabel of Boston, was Neil’s guiding light, Kay said.

“Mabel was his older sister who guided him when he came from China. He was totally faithful to her until he could not be there for her. Though she is in her 90s, Mabel is still the strength of that family. Neil would go out Sundays for dinner or brunch with her faithfully,’’ Kay said.

Mr. Chin attended the Quincy School in Chinatown (before a new one was built) and graduated from English High School in 1937.

He took accounting courses at what was then Bentley College and got a job in Boston with China Products, which imported items from China.

When Communists took over the country, Edward Chin said, the company changed its name.

Mr. Chin joined the Navy in 1944 and was stationed on Martha’s Vineyard in a unit protecting bridges and canals.

Upon his discharge from the service, he went back to the company for a while.

In 1949, he married Betty (Lee) of Washington, D.C. They had met at a Bible camp, Edward said.

He started work with the state in 1958.

When time allowed, Mr. Chin traveled, his daughter said, recalling a family trip 20 years ago to the humble village in China where he was born.

“It was a culture shock,’’ she said.

In Boston, Mr. Chin had personal reasons to advocate for his neighborhood.

In 1963, the state took the family’s Hudson Street home to build a ramp to the Massachusetts Turnpike, and that motivated him even more in his community work, his daughter said.

For most of her growing years, she said, her father was at community meetings “every night.’’

Another of the family’s former residences on Harrison Avenue “is now a parking lot, and one of his childhood schools on Tyler Street disappeared due to the expansion of the New England Medical Center,’’ according to Sampan, New England’s only Chinese-English language newspaper, in a 2005 interview with Mr. Chin.

He had just received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Asian American Civic Association when the newspaper interviewed him.

“He did more than watch his neighborhood change. He helped shape it,’’ the Sampan said.

Mr. Chin continued his community work even after he was slowed by congestive heart failure about four years ago, his daughter said.

In 2005, the Sampan said, Mr. Chin “was still influencing change in the neighborhood. “Currently,’’ it said, “he is on the board of the Asian Community Development Corporation, which is proposing to build a housing complex on Parcel 24, a strip of land along Hudson Street where Chin once lived.’’

He would like to have lived to see its fruition, friends said. “I talked with Neil just before he died,’’ his brother said. “He told me he was ready to start on his new adventure.’’

In addition to his wife, his son, his daughter, his brother, Edward, and his sister, Mabel, Mr. Chin leaves another brother, David of Revere; two other sisters, Dorothy Pon of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Holmes Beach, Fla., and Lillian of Philadelphia and Holmes Beach; and three grandchildren.

Services have been held.