So far, Mayor Bloomberg has been trying to convince New Yorkers that his effort to fix the city’s schools, along with New York’s low crime rate, provided reason enough to give him four more years in office. Now it appears his political strategists see affordable housing as a program to tout as well.

Mr. Bloomberg first introduced his affordable housing initiative in December 2002.He vowed to build or preserve 65,000 units of affordable housing by 2008. While the initiative has made steady progress since its introduction, the program got a jump-start last week when the Enterprise Foundation, a national pioneer in advocacy for the poor, said it would create a special $1 billion fund to help finance it.

At the time, Mr. Bloomberg called the new money a “tremendous vote of confidence” for the city. It also provided a great political opportunity to give housing pride of place in his developing campaign for re-election.

“Clearly this money from the Enterprise Foundation allows him to make affordable housing a central plank in his platform, and he should,” said Douglas Muzzio, a professor of public affairs at Baruch College. “Affordable housing woos several different audiences. It woos people in some of the editorial boardrooms, which is no small thing ahead of an election. It woos the housing advocates and good government groups. And it is making a statement to a wider public that he has concerns for all New Yorkers irrespective of class. So politically, this is smart.”

A political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, made a similar point. “The trick for Bloomberg is to seem like a compassionate manager,” he said. “The words ‘affordable housing’ constantly uttered will be a good thing for him. Housing appeals to middle-income New Yorkers, and it is a big outer-borough issue. Adding it to his list of accomplishments is just another way for him to bridge his billionaire vs. everyone else gap and could really help reduce his negatives.”

The staff director of an advocacy group for affordable housing, Joe Weisbord of Housing First, said Mr. Bloomberg must have been motivated by what he heard during his appearances at events in the city’s neighborhoods. “If you ask council members what their number one constituent service problem is, they’ll tell you affordable housing,” he said. “I think the mayor gets it, knows how important this is. The initial commitments in 2002 were a really important step, but he could do more.”

According to figures from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city met its target of creating or preserving 10,200 units last year and is on track to add 16,000 more units by the end of this fiscal year. That would mean the city will have started 40% of the units it had promised to create by 2008. That, Mr. Weisbord said, is a good beginning, but he would like to see more than 100,000 units of housing created or preserved over the next 10 years.

Analysts said the advantage for Mr. Bloomberg, as he gears up for next year’s campaign, is that his intention to tackle the housing problem will be enough to win him the political dividends he is seeking. The question asked by private developers who work with the city is whether the Bloomberg administration can keep creating units at a breakneck pace, when the traditional pool of properties, such as buildings with tax liens, is drying up.

They worry that making shelter an issue in the campaign will lead to the city’s padding the numbers, and cause cutbacks elsewhere in the budget, because of intense political pressure to create affordable housing by a certain date. The city’s commissioner of housing development and preservation, Shaun Donovan, said his department is fanatical about making sure its housing numbers are precise.

“You would not believe the amount of time we spend making sure we are not double-counting,” he told The New York Sun early this month in an interview, “because there are units we work on in combination with the Housing Development Corporation, there are units we are working on in combination with the Housing Authority. We’re fanatic about what we will count and not count.”

Mr. Weisbord declined to comment on whether affordable housing was good politics for the mayor, but he did say Mr. Bloomberg was clearly aware of the problem. “I think he recognizes the pressure the city is under,” he said. “He’s taken positive steps in the right direction.”