On a recent, unseasonably chilly spring morning, Brent Berc crouched on a Beacon Hill sidewalk, applying rust-treatment paint to an iron garden fence along Joy Street, trying to avoid getting any on the bricks beneath. He isn’t part of a maintenance crew or neighborhood association — he’s a founding partner at Boston Real Estate Collaborative LLC, and he serves on the Board of Trustees of Rogerson Communities.

Brent had come to Beacon Hill along with seven employees from his firm for a morning of volunteer work at three buildings: Beacon House and the Joy Street Residence, both Rogerson properties for older low- and moderate-income adults, and Hill House, a non-residential building managed by Rogerson. They were tackling a task that is key to maintaining any property: painting. Several handled interior work in a hallway up on the seventh floor of Beacon House, where residents’ mobility devices can take a toll on the walls. Two more were outside, painting the entryway of the historic Hill House building, originally constructed in the 1860s as one of Boston’s first police stations and now home to the Beacon Hill Civic Association. A few doors up the street were Brent and his group, working on the rusted garden fence along the facade of the Joy Street Residence.

A passerby cracked, “You need a Tom Sawyer!”

But Brent and his team weren’t trying to avoid the work like Mark Twain’s mischievous young protagonist — their aim was to support Rogerson in its mission to provide quality affordable housing and care for older adults. And lest anyone doubt the significance of a few hours of painting, Daryl Ramdehal, Rogerson’s Director of Facilities, is quick to put those doubts to rest.

“It’s a bonus for our staff,” he says, explaining that this kind of regular upkeep can often slip down a priority list for busy maintenance crews facing more pressing tasks from day to day. “We really, really do appreciate it.”

Naturally, Brent’s involvement as a Board member goes deeper than the occasional fence-painting job. Since joining the Board five years ago, he has used his acumen as a real estate developer to help guide Rogerson in its expansion strategy. The organization currently has six new properties in various stages of development, with a goal of 1,000 new housing units by 2030.

As older adults, their families, and caregivers across Massachusetts well know, the need for this kind of growth has never been greater. In Boston alone, a quarter of all homeless in 2023 were older adults. There are 56 affordable homes in the city for every 100 individuals who need them — a shortage of 117,000.

“The Baby Boomer wave is aging and looking for housing, empty-nesters are downsizing, and the whole state and region is just woefully unprepared,” says Brent. “You look at what Rogerson is doing, providing an A+ product to lower- and moderate-income families, and you just can’t build enough of it.”

Bob Sherburne, Vice President of Advancement for Rogerson, points to another growing area of need for Rogerson’s programs: memory care. Today in Massachusetts, he says, 150,000 people have Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, or other forms of memory loss. Caregivers, typically family, are giving 246 million hours of unpaid care valued at $5.6 billion.

“And the folks providing that care are going to work, working overnight, coming back and having to do it again, day after day,” he says. “Unpaid, really hard work.”

Brent calls statistics like these “jarring,” and credits them as a main motivation for getting more involved with Rogerson’s mission. Recruited to the Board by his longtime friend and mentor John Hall, he initially saw the position mostly as a welcome addition to his real estate resume and a nice way to give back — but that changed.

“I didn’t realize how impactful the issue was going to be for me until recently,” he says, noting that at the time he joined no one in his life had Alzheimer’s or dementia and that the housing market, while tight, wasn’t as challenging as it is today. “A lot has happened in five years — the world just seems to have accelerated. Even people with means in my life can’t afford care and housing, and so the low- and moderate-income communities have no chance unless there are organizations like Rogerson.”

Today, Brent works to support Rogerson on multiple levels. He lends his professional expertise to help guide strategic decision-making around real estate at a time of transformational growth. He rallies support through an approach similar to that of his mentor: putting people in front of the organization, explaining its mission and the needs it meets, letting them see his own involvement, and trusting them to decide whether and how to contribute. Who knows — there may even be a future Board member among his group of volunteers.

And sometimes, he’s painting a fence outside of a building that dozens of older adults in need call home.