May 11--Mayor Thomas M. Menino's administration is tracking foreclosures across the city and this week will deploy blight-fighting city workers to a Dorchester neighborhood as part of an innovative campaign to rescue the Hub from the national housing crisis.

"The problem is, you have to stop the cancer from spreading," Menino said Friday, standing between two boarded-up triple-deckers on Dacia Street. "It's not a partisan issue. It's a people issue, and this is hurting people."

The city identified Dacia Street as a problem after analyzing foreclosure data collected by housing officials. Suffolk County land records reveal that in 2007, banks foreclosed on five recently purchased properties on the street and filed petitions to foreclose on two additional ones.

"They are tracking the units. That was how we realized that Dacia Street was one of the potential problems," said Menino, who opened a "war room" in the basement of City Hall to house his newly formed Foreclosure Intervention Team.

Menino declared war on foreclosure-fueled blight in February after a Herald report about how the national housing crisis had turned the Hendry Street neighborhood into a ghost town of boarded-up and abandoned properties.

In 2007, there were 703 foreclosures in Boston, city records show. Dorchester was hardest hit with 233 foreclosures.

Two foreclosed houses on Dacia Street -- 21 and 21A -- are tied to Dwight Jenkins, 36, of Dorchester, a convicted felon who the Herald reported last month is a focal point in several lawsuits over real estate scams.

On Tuesday, a small brigade of city workers will converge on Dacia Street to remove graffiti, pick up trash, clean street signs and remove tires, concrete blocks and wood debris that have accumulated around the boarded-up buildings.

"I'm tired of seeing the tires and the bricks," said Kim Freeman-Hoge, who lives next door to 21 and 21A Dacia St., which have been boarded up since last summer. In the last year, Boston police have been called to the boarded-up properties 28 times, police records show.

The blight has made it difficult for Freeman-Hoge to rent one of her units.

"I know that's deterring people from taking the apartment," she said.

"We are going to do everything we can to make sure this doesn't spread," Menino said. "These are good, hard-working people that live here."

Because the foreclosure process hasn't played itself out at some of the properties, city officials are hopeful they can help some people save their homes. That wasn't the case on Hendry Street, where many people had moved out.

"The severity isn't what it is on Hendry Street," said Evelyn Friedman, chief and director of the Department of Neighborhood Development. "We'll do an aggressive outreach because we have people to reach out to."

lcrimaldi@bostonherald.com

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