By LEIGH HORNBECK
CHRONICLE STAFF

The state Housing Innovations Fund has awarded Cambridge $500,000 to refurbish low-income housing in the city.

This particular grant will help fund a $1.4 million project at an 8 Bigelow St. complex. that is managed by the Cambridge and Somerville Cooperative Apartment Project. (CASCAP, Inc.) CASCAP has also received grants for work a 14-unit complex on Cambridge Street and one on Putnum Avenue of eight units.

CASCAP Executive Director Michael Haran said he hopes to build 10 units on Bigelow Street. The group is still working out the details of design and traffic with Bigelow Street neighbors. The apartments will be a mixture of studio and one-bedroom apartments for single people of low and moderate incomes - those who make 50-80 percent less than the median income in the city.

The program, Affordable Small Apartment Preservation (ASAP), is designed to preserve and recreate affordable, small apartments in Cambridge in ample supply to meet low and moderate income needs.

The need for such housing is a direct result of the end of rent control.

"The city came to us at the end of rent control and asked us to help secure low-income units," said Haran.

In January 1995, according to CASCAP's Web site (http://www.cascap.org) 92.5 percent of the city's 20,000 households protected by rent control lost that protection. A fraction of those households - 1,500 - were protected for an addition two years because the residents were elderly, disabled and/or low income. In 1997, that protection ended and rising rents powered by an economic boom left housing more and more difficult to attain.

CASCAP's mission is to purchase apartment complexes before developers turn them into luxury apartments, or take debilitated housing and rehabilitate it into apartments for low and middle-income Cambridge residents.

The newest grant money that CASCAP received from the state was part of $2.7 million distributed to Brockton, North Reading, Plympton, Wales and Weymouth.

CASCAP, which also concentrates on assisted living housing for senior citizens such as on Fresh Pond Parkway, has recently lent its grant-writing skills to a Cambodian group in Lowell, Haran said. The group will soon receive funding under a federal program.

This article originally appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle.