For Mary Guillermo, her new townhouse partway up Fort Hill in Roxbury is a lifelong dream realized: more space for her and her 15-year-old son Antony, parking out front, and a garden out back -- a big change from the small apartment they lived in on Commonwealth Avenue in Allston for five years.
''The person who used to live here, they were like a green thumb. I'm not a green thumb at all, I'm so fortunate," said Guillermo, 33, who grew up in New York and Lawrence and now works at Boston University. ''I got daisies, I had daffodils, irises, nice green all over the place."
As big as the move was for Guillermo and Antony, it was an even bigger change for little Nina, a mild-mannered mutt that faced an uncertain future at an animal shelter before Guillermo adopted her last December.
''This was one of my lifetime goals, to get a dog when I got a home," said Guillermo, as Nina took a break from protecting the backyard from squirrels to get her ears scratched by a visitor. ''I'm truly, truly blessed."
The Guillermos and 37 other local families have been similarly blessed through the Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation's Savings for Success Program. In the two-year program, participants deposit money, typically $50 per month, into what are known as ''Individual Development Accounts," money that is matched at a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 rate by Mellon New England and Fleet National Bank (now Bank of America), and, in some cases, money from the federal government. At the same time, participants take classes in home buying at the community development corporation. This month, 24 graduates of the most recent class were honored at the Veronica Smith Senior Center in Brighton, where both youths and adults celebrated.
''We got really lucky," said Nicholas Campozano, 13, whose mother, Gabriella, just bought a home in Jamaica Plain. ''We do gardening, I ride my bike around Jamaica Plain, and I have some really nice neighbors called David and Mikey."
The Bardales family, meanwhile, is going to stay right where they are -- in Allston -- but now, with the money that husband and father Omar saved through the program, wife and mother Francie Harper-Bardales will have a chance to go back to school and help others.
''I worked at Angell Memorial animal hospital for a period of time as a radiology technician," said Francie Harper-Bardales, flanked by her mother, Diane, and her sons, Brendan, 4; Carlito, 15; and Tommy, 18. ''But I wanted to get certified and have a license to do animal technician work, and go further into veterinary medicine."
Unlike some big government programs, which may not improve lives over a long term, Savings for Success helps families make a permanent change, said the keynote speaker, Thomas Shapiro, a Brandeis University professor and author of ''The Hidden Cost of Being African-American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality."
''A program like this is structured on a deal. The deal is that if people demonstrate by sacrificing that they're very committed and they're very willing, then there's an enabling," said Shapiro. ''I can't think of people that are better poised to launch their own mobility than people who are willing to go through that sacrifice for themselves. So it's far from a handout."
Such programs can be, according to a university professor who developed the concept in late 1980s, mechanisms for permanently lifting families out of poverty.
''Public policy supports asset accumulation for people who are not poor pretty extensively," said professor Michael Sherraden, director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis. ''We do it through home mortgage interest tax deductions and retirement pension tax benefits, primarily, so we have this public policy that builds assets for middle-class families, but not for poor families."
In a telephone interview, Sherraden pegged the cost of these subsidies at more than $200 billion per year, contrasting it with programs aimed at the poor which, he says, discourage them from saving money and making long-term gains.
''Economic development in families is something that happens across generations, so one generation makes a little progress, the next generation does a little better, and we've created social policy that's really stood in the way of that," said Sherraden.
The first such program in Massachusetts was created in Lowell in 1998, and now the Allston Brighton CDC -- founder of the first in Greater Boston -- is the sponsor of the Midas Collaborative, a coalition of 17 similar programs across the state.
''I just got really excited about this strategy, because it's looking at people holistically and saying it's not just about what job you get, it's not just about whether you get child care, it's whether or not you get control over your financial life, and what would it take to get you there," said Midas coordinator Margaret Miley, who ran that first Lowell program. ''It was really exciting just to see the light go on, people to say, 'I could do this, here's a path for me, there's a light at the end of the tunnel.' "
For more information on Savings for Success and other Allston Brighton CDC programs, go to www.allstonbrightoncdc.org or call 617-787-3874. Will Kilburn can be reached at wkilburn@globe.com.
