The Boston real estate market is hot.

First-class universities, cultural institutions and rapidly expanding computer and biotechnology sectors are attracting swarms of people and resources to the metropolitan area, sparking a city-wide renaissance, impacting even the poorest sections of Boston.

But with prosperity comes a price.

Gentrification, long recognized as a problem in Boston's suburbs, is spreading throughout the metropolitan area, raising rents in traditionally wealthy communities like Cambridge and in poorer neighborhoods such as Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan.

The booming real estate market, coming on the heels of the abolition of rent control in 1994, has created what politicians and civic leaders term a "crisis in affordable housing." They say the current housing crunch is the number one problem facing the greater Boston community.

Despite the plethora of student service groups on campus--well over a hundred, at last count--only one organization seeks to directly confront the problem of skyrocketing rents and mass evictions.

The Housing Opportunities Program (HOP) provides one-time, no-interest loans to Boston-area residents to meet housing payments, with the goal of forestalling eviction and preventing homelessness.

In recent months, program leaders have initiated a major overhaul of the program--founded more than a decade ago--to create a new internal structure, forge better connections to the community and increase available funds.