BROOKLINE — Ruth Lebron worked two jobs, scrimped, and tried to set aside as much savings as she could toward her dream of finding a stable place to call home for her young daughters before they became teenagers.
“I prayed for this opportunity,’’ she said.
“I applied to every housing lottery I heard about,’’ she said. “And finally, on Dec. 3, I received a call that changed my life.’’
Lebron is just one of the 32 housing applicants who got that call.
On Saturday local and state officials and US Representative Joseph Kennedy III joined with Lebron and other residents of 86 Dummer St. for the official ribbon cutting at the largest affordable-housing development built by the town in more than 30 years.
Tenants started moving into the new building next to the Brookline Housing Authority’s existing Trustman Apartments in January, and the quadrangle of buildings now forms a residential community of 118 apartments around a rebuilt recreation area and courtyard.
All of the units are affordable to households making at or below 60 percent of the area median income, with tiered rents starting at $850 per month. Preference was given to local residents, with 70 percent of the units set aside for families living or working in Brookline and Boston residents whose children attend Brookline schools through the METCO program.
“Twenty-one hundred people applied to live here, to give you some idea of the need,’’ said Timothy C. Sullivan, executive director of the quasi-public agency MassHousing.
Naimah Toon said she watched the building go up as she passed by on her way from her Hyde Park apartment to her job as a medical secretary in Brookline.
“All the time I kept saying to myself, ‘That’s where I’m going to live, that’s where I’m going to live.’ Then when I got pregnant, I didn’t know where we were going to live or what was going to happen,’’ the 34-year-old said.
Toon and her then 2-month-old daughter, Aminah Toon Davis, moved into 86 Dummer in January, while she and boyfriend Aaron Davis, Aminah’s father, save for a house.
“I am truly blessed, I couldn’t ask for a better situation,’’ she said.
Sullivan said this new development near public transportation, jobs, a variety of services, and in a community with an excellent school system, will be a ladder to help provide families with economic opportunity.
“This is exactly what affordable housing is all about,’’ he said.
The total development cost $16.3 million and includes six one-bedroom, 22 two-bedroom, and four three-bedroom apartments, with $13.9 million for the building, and $2.4 million for rebuilding the outdoor courtyard and playground between 86 Dummer and the Trustman Apartments. The town contributed $4.3 million, and other funding sources include: $7.4 million in tax credit equity from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch; $2.4 million from the state Department of Housing and Community Development; $2.2 million in bank loans from Boston Private Bank & Trust, Massachusetts Housing Partnership, and the Home Funders.
“This is a culmination of years and years of efforts. Efforts by the community to reach out to one another and find ways to invest, to extend the opportunities that this neighborhood has, and I live about two blocks from here, to everybody,’’ Kennedy said.
The congressman said he was thrilled to be able to go back to Washington and “brag about projects like this one.’’
“To show that there is a way, in fact, that everyone can move forward together,’’ he said.
Ellen Ishkanian can be reached at eishkanian@gmail.com.