Residents fear mortgage subsidy's end

They plant peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers in the gardens and pick apples from trees to make juice. They fill baskets with blankets and baby books for newborns. They exchange recipes with each other.

Residents call this Roslindale development, where brick and gray-shingled two-story apartments line shaded streets, a diverse community, their world away from big city lights and noisy living. But by the end of August, the 40-year mortgage of High Point Village will expire. Released from the conditions imposed by the federal government, which subsidized the mortgage, the owner of the property has told the residents that he will convert the 540 low-rent apartments to market-rate apartments.

''It's like a slap in the face," said Molly Hannon, 35, who has lived there for 28 years. ''We're the ones who built this community. My rent and my taxes pay his mortgage."

More than 30 High Point Village residents gathered on a grass patch in front of the complex yesterday to confront the owner, William Kargman of Boston's First Realty Management. Even though the management office door said the office was supposed to be open on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., no one was there. Instead, the residents stood along the street chanting ''Save Our Homes," and holding fluorescent signs that read ''People Not Profit" and ''Support the Working Class."

In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress established a federal program, overseen by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, offering owners generous 40-year loans to provide low-income housing.

On Aug. 31, 2006, High Point Village will become the first apartment complex in Boston to reach the end of its HUD-subsidized mortgage. Kargman could not be reached after numerous phone calls to his office and his residence.

Community members have been told that they will be able to use enhanced vouchers to pay the additional housing costs should the rent go up. But the voucher would only protect the tenant and not the apartment, which will lead to the eventual loss of the affordable housing unit, said Michael Kane, executive director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants.

''There will be more than 240,000 units that will expire over the next eight years," Kane said. ''That means low-income housing will be lost in a short period of time."

Yesterday, community residents, neighbors, and Grace C. Ross, a Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor, waved to passing cars on the street, then rode a bright-red trolley around the complex, chanting and waving to neighbors they knew by name.

Residents say Kargman wants to turn High Point into a white-collar community, with ''more doctors and lawyers." But they insist that they work hard too. They say he is turning his back on them after all these years.

But some residents believe that officials will not leave them out in the cold. ''The government still can help us," said Marie G. Joseph, 61, a native of Haiti who moved to High Point Village last year. ''We are human beings and we live in this country so they're supposed to help us. I cannot live on the street."

Russell Nichols can be reached at rnichols@globe.com.