When something broke in the Polsby household, Allen Isaac Polsby fixed it. He repaired his children’s toys, built shelving around the family’s answering machine and arrived early at their apartments ready to install shelves, caulk bathtubs or assemble furniture.

At the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Polsby drew on those same instincts on a larger scale. As a federal attorney, he helped construct legal and regulatory systems for housing programs that his former colleague Karen Daly said remain substantially intact half a century later.

Polsby, a Bethesda resident who spent more than 35 years at HUD and retired as an associate general counsel for legislation, died at home Sept. 6. He was 88.

Born Nov. 4, 1937, in Norwich, Connecticut, Polsby grew up on a farm. His father, Daniel Polsby, died when Allen was young, and the family later moved to Chevy Chase. Polsby attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, Brown University and George Washington University Law School.

His childhood also gave him a lasting connection to Judaism. His son, Dan Polsby, said his father remembered being bullied and encountering antisemitism in Connecticut. Although he was not deeply observant, he considered himself a Reform Jew and refused to minimize that identity because of other people’s prejudice.

“I think he was a bit defiant about, ‘You’re not going to get me down,’” his son said.

Polsby married Gail Kissling in 1963 after a friend arranged their first date, a bicycle ride along the C&O Canal. The couple adopted two children, Dan and Abigail, and raised them in Bethesda’s Tulip Hill neighborhood. They remained married for 63 years.

Dan Polsby recalled the family attending Washington Hebrew Congregation when the children were young. At home, his father regularly recited the Friday night blessings and used Yiddish expressions learned from his mother, Edythe Woolf. Because Gail was Catholic, the family celebrated holidays from both traditions. Chanukah emphasized education, with books among the children’s gifts.

“He laid upon me and my sister the importance of education in Jewish culture,” Dan Polsby said.

After beginning his legal career in private practice and working at the Civil Aeronautics Board, Polsby joined HUD around 1966.

What began partly as a search for more manageable hours became a commitment to public service. His son recalled him arguing that public housing was one of the most efficient ways to address poverty. Homelessness troubled him personally; he gave people money and once bought coffee for several homeless people.

Later in his HUD career, Polsby handled appeals arising from Fair Housing Act complaints. Earlier, at the Civil Aeronautics Board, he contributed research connected to senior citizen fares and the deregulation of fares, accomplishments he enjoyed explaining whenever the family encountered such a discount.

Daly, who knew Polsby for 50 years and retired as director of HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Coordination, first worked with him after Congress created the Community Development Block Grant program in 1974. Polsby was then the environmental lawyer for the department.

The new program allowed states and local governments to assume federal responsibility for environmental reviews, an untested arrangement that required a constitutional and legal structure as well as workable regulations. Daly said Polsby was the principal lawyer involved in creating that framework.

“It wasn’t forcing it. It was actually inventing it,” she said. “He was willing to think broadly about the concept and to seek legal arguments to make things work.”

Daly said the basic system has remained substantially unchanged for 50 years, a testament to the work of Polsby and the team around him. He also helped develop HUD’s early environmental regulations, worked on the complicated financing of public housing and became an expert in federal budget and appropriations law.

Members of Congress and their staffs trusted him because his advice was grounded in law rather than partisanship, Daly said.

They called on him for legislative drafting when they knew what they wanted a measure to accomplish but needed exact language that would allow federal money to flow.

He passed that specialized knowledge to younger HUD attorneys. “He trained a whole lot of attorneys to be able to read” appropriations measures, Daly said, and taught them how to transform legislative goals into precise legal language.

Dan Polsby described his father as funny and intense, with an easy laugh, a broad smile and an ample supply of bad dad jokes.

He wrote playful anniversary poems for Gail and remained calm and persuasive when he believed something was unfair.

His generosity sustained lifelong friendships. Dan recalled his father spending hours helping an overwhelmed new mother get her baby to sleep and joining friends on building projects simply for the camaraderie.

Away from work, Polsby loved classical music and played the French horn. He also enjoyed gardening, antiques, New England stone walls and autumn foliage. The family spent long summer vacations at Martha’s Vineyard, where he tended azaleas and rhododendrons, took the children for ice cream and watched sunsets near the lighthouse. Although allergic to shellfish, he learned to shuck oysters and clams for everyone else and staged “lobster races” on the deck.

After retiring, he and Gail traveled to music festivals, antique shops and national parks and visited family around the country. Mobility problems limited him during his final years, but his attachment to family and friends endured.

His son remembers the lesson Polsby carried from his childhood farm: Life can be difficult, but “you’re the horse with the bridle. Just keep pulling.”

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the greater Washington Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.