Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has launched the housing nonprofit called Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) to manage the acquisition, repair and disposition of residential properties in private and government foreclosures.

CHAPA will prevent foreclosed homes from turning neighborhoods into areas of blight and crime. It will also help lower-income families access affordable properties to buy or to rent. CHAPA will be funded from a $54-million federal scheme aimed at helping states mitigate private and government foreclosures.

Governor Patrick said CHAPA will screen local nonprofit housing groups to pre-qualify about 50 housing nonprofits and several for-profit housing developers it will work with. CHAPA will connect these nonprofits to private mortgage banks, including giant lenders Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo and to government-controlled lenders Freddie and Fannie Mae, which have thousands of private and government foreclosures.

The private-public alliance will allow nonprofits to take a first look at private and government foreclosures ahead of speculators and higher-income homebuyers. This will ensure the sale of bulk properties in foreclosure-laden areas, such as Brockton and New Bedford, to nonprofits able to choose needy but deserving families and committed to protect neighborhoods from deterioration.

Massachusetts is 20th in RealtyTrac’s ranking of states by foreclosure rate in January this year. It had a total of 3,362 foreclosure filings, including notices of default, notices of foreclosure sale and real estate owned foreclosures. In 2008, it had more than 12,000 private and government foreclosures.

Since the start of the year up to the middle of March, according to foreclosure.com, there were 6,789 pre-foreclosures, 439 sheriff sales, 2,266 bankruptcies and 2,989 completed foreclosures across the state. Meanwhile, foreclosuresmass.com reported 3,360 foreclosure filings for the previous two-month period. One positive thing about Massachusetts though is its drop in pre-foreclosures in February compared to the previous month, as surveyed by foreclosures.com.

CHAPA President Aaron Gornstein said the program will not only help low-income families and at risk- neighborhoods. It will also help mortgage lenders reduce nonperforming assets and holding costs for lender and government foreclosures.

Furthermore, to make the program more efficient in averting private and government foreclosures, Gornstein made sure that the chosen nonprofits and private home builders have the capability to rehabilitate homes and educate borrowers on how to keep up with payments and avoid foreclosures.