The Roxbury Multi-Service Center (RMSC) got its beginning in 1964 as a three-year demonstration project, after Helen Y. Davis and Judge Harry J. Elam and other community leaders became alarmed by the large numbers of low-income people moving into Roxbury and Dorchester at a time when public and social support services were disappearing . Once a small pilot project funded by the Ford Foundation, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and the Boston Foundation, RMSC is over 25 years old and owns four buildings from which it programs operate: among them, youth development, adult and family services, a family housing shelter, and assessment and counseling which include housing assistance and crime prevention. Perhaps the greatest indicator of RMSC's contributions to community development is the fact that it was instrumental in the creation of La Alianza, an agency serving the Hispanic community, and the Quincy-Geneva Housing Corporation, which has already renovated several hundred units for low- and moderate-income residents.