NEW ORLEANS — Today, the Lower 9th Ward is a dreary landscape of deserted brick and wood-frame structures, concrete slabs where homes once stood, unshaded streets and sidewalks buckled by uprooted live oaks and weeks of standing water. At night, a graveyard silence is broken only by the skittering of rats.

It is about as inhospitable a place as exists in post-Katrina New Orleans.

And yet sisters Tanya Harris and Tracy Flores are moving back.

To them, the “Lower 9″ is still beautiful. In her mind’s eye, Harris is fishing with her grandfather in Bayou Bienvenue at the end of the street where his house stood. She and her sister are sitting on his front porch “door-popping,” their grandfather’s term for playful gossip and people-watching.

Harris and Flores, whose feisty, stubborn devotion to their neighborhood has become well known to City Hall since the storm, are determined to reclaim the neighborhood that nurtured five generations of their family.

Their efforts may seem quixotic to people who know the Lower 9th Ward only from TV news: block after block of houses flooded to their rooflines, and people waving frantically for rescue atop their homes. After the waters receded, crumpled houses had been ripped off their foundations by the wall of water that burst the levee, and lay strewn about, some on top of one another.

Almost entirely African American and working class, the neighborhood became symbolic of an economic divide, in which the have-nots were stranded, overlooked by their own government to the point that foreign nations offered their help.

But to many people who lived there, the Lower 9th is not a symbol. It is a 22-block neighborhood, once home to 19,000 people. It had a significant percentage of owner-occupied homes, a core of closely knit longtime residents and even its own celebrity: pioneering rock-’n'-roller Fats Domino. (Domino, who remained in his home during Katrina until being rescued, is rebuilding and expects to move back by summer.)

And it had families like Harris’ and Flores’.

Before Katrina, Harris, 31, and Flores, 34, were next-door neighbors in lookalike reddish brown and tan brick ranch homes. Their cousin Vernine Veasley owned the house on the corner, and another cousin, Inez Ellis, lived one block over. Josephine Butler, their grandmother, was less than two blocks away in a wood-frame Craftsman bungalow that her husband built in 1949. At least a dozen more relatives lived throughout the Lower 9th, which spans two square miles.

Flores finished renovating her flood-ravaged house in December and moved back in with her two children. They’re the only family currently living on her block. “I hope to serve as a beacon of hope to my neighbors,” Flores said. “I want them to see it can be done.”

Harris is the midst of repairs to her home. And last month, Butler, their grandmother, moved into one of the first new houses to be built in the Lower 9th Ward since Katrina.

Butler and Gwendolyn Guice, her neighbor of 25 years, were given keys to houses designed by architecture students from Louisiana State University, mold and termite-resistant elevated wood-frame structures built to withstand 160-mph winds.

Volunteers and paid laborers built the homes, for which a housing advocacy group secured financing through Countrywide Bank.

The houses — one painted beige, the other powder green — stand against the Katrina-scarred terrain: abandoned skeletons of buildings, missing street signs and pockmarked pavement.

But none of the surrounding blight deterred Butler from returning to the neighborhood she has called home for almost 60 years. “I’ve been here for so long, I just enjoy being here,” said the 84-year-old woman whose quick step and nearly smooth skin belie her age.

A close community

What is now a stark ruin was once a scene of promise.

Originally a cypress swamp with plantations running along the Mississippi River, by the early 1900s the Lower 9th was settled by working poor African Americans and immigrants from Italy, Ireland and Germany.

Separated from New Orleans proper by the Industrial Canal and completed in 1923, “it was always looked at as not as important as the rest of the city,” said Nilima Mwendo , a researcher and community activist who is also a former Lower 9th resident. “I call it the stepchild of New Orleans.”

Out of that isolation and neglect grew resilience and a particular community closeness, Mwendo said. “There was still that rural feel,” she recalled. “It was almost like when you crossed the Industrial Canal, you were coming into another country.”

Harris and Flores’ maternal great-grandmother moved to the then-sparsely populated Lower 9th in the 1940s, after the death of her husband. Ophelia Hugle Short worked cleaning stately homes along prestigious St. Charles Avenue for $3 a week.

Butler and her husband, C.F., a longshoreman and welder, decided to build their home next door to her mother’s in 1949 after a fire destroyed their tenement building in the Uptown neighborhood. “We just decided we weren’t going to rent no more,” Butler said.

C.F. Butler cleared the land covered in cypress trees, built it up, and with the help of his wife and her brother, laid the floor, installed the wood siding and hung the new home’s sheetrock. The house occupied the center of a quarter-acre lot.

The sisters recall their grandfather describing how he worked 16 hours on the docks in the city and then came home to work on the house. The stories stuck with them.

“You owe something to that memory, that perseverance, that determination,” Flores said.

“You dishonor their memory by giving up on it,” Harris added.

At one time, four of their grandmother’s brothers owned lots on the same street and planned to build there. When Hurricane Betsy slammed New Orleans in 1965, unleashing a deluge into the Lower 9th, they changed their minds.

But Butler and her husband didn’t think twice about returning.

“It was just water,” the matriarch said. “We gutted the house and moved back.”

Grandma Butler’s house would become the family’s official gathering place for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July, Harris said.

Leading the fight

Katrina’s flooding washed Butler’s home off its piers and left it on top of three properties across the street. Everywhere, the family’s homes were ruined, and relatives scattered countrywide.

One cousin wound up at the Houston Astrodome, another found refuge in Oklahoma. An uncle landed in Tennessee before making his way back to New Orleans. Flores and her children, Harris, and their mother and grandmother spent about two months in at least half a dozen U.S. cities.

Citing safety concerns, city authorities prevented residents from officially entering the Lower 9th until three months after Katrina, and then they were only permitted to “look and leave.” Residents from other damaged neighborhoods were allowed home much sooner.

A high-spirited woman with a no-nonsense attitude, Harris would not sit back As a community organizer for the grass-roots Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, she has made it her mission to revive the Lower 9th.

When a preliminary city report suggested making portions of the Lower 9th into green space, Harris led the fight to prevent it. She fought for restoration of potable water and electricity long after other areas were being served. When city officials set a deadline for homeowners, many of whom lacked the money to comply, to clean up their property or lose it, Harris fought to overturn it.

Meanwhile, Flores was initially denied a permit to rebuild her home. She staged sit-ins at City Hall until she got one.

So far, only about 700 people from the Lower 9th have officially returned, an estimate based on utility usage, said John Hoal, an urban planner and designer who helped craft the city’s rebuilding plans for the neighborhood.

Flores acknowledged that some of her relatives would probably never return because they couldn’t afford to rebuild, or they couldn’t deal with the magnitude of the destruction.

But her cousin Rosemary Coldman will be back, even though her heartbreak goes far beyond material loss.

Coldman, 62, had planned to marry her fiance, Lee Norman, at the end of 2005. As Katrina approached, Coldman was visiting her daughter in Los Angeles. Norman, a San Diego native with little experience in a hurricane, failed to evacuate Coldman’s two-bedroom gray-brick home.

He was missing for seven months, until a demolition crew found his body on a debris-strewn median strip less than 50 feet from the house.

She knows Norman’s death will haunt her, but Coldman said she wouldn’t dream of resettling elsewhere.

“Lee loved it too. He would have wanted to come back,” Coldman said. “The Lower 9th is where my heart is.”

*

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ann.simmons@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — More than 200 of the Los Angeles region’s top civic and business officials — some of them adversaries back home — kicked off a two-day lobbying blitz in the nation’s capital Tuesday to secure more federal money for transportation, education, anti-gang programs and other priorities.

Members of the delegation — led by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce — delivered a unified message to members of Congress: The Los Angeles area powers much of the nation’s economy and therefore deserves to reap its fair share of federal dollars.

“Southern California’s challenges are America’s challenges,” Villaraigosa said at a midday news conference next to the Capitol, where he was joined by four members of the City Council, Police Chief William J. Bratton, School Board President Marlene Canter, Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom and others. “It’s time to recognize that this is an engine not just for the region or the state but the nation and the world,” Villaraigosa added.

The Los Angeles officials — who fanned out to meet with several high-ranking members of Congress, including Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) — said they didn’t expect to come home with dollars in hand but worked to press the region’s needs on lawmakers who are distracted by the war in Iraq and other matters.

“Sometimes you get immediate gratification. Other times it’s laying the foundation for votes that will take place in a few months,” Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said. “We’re doing a little bit of both.”

During their trip, the officials are focusing much of their attention on what they believe is the need for greater federal investment in transportation and security for the region. They came armed Tuesday with facts and figures about Southern California’s contribution to the national economy, noting that 43% of the nation’s imported cargo comes through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The officials also brought along a breakdown, by congressional district, of the value that goods coming through the two Southern California ports add to a region’s economy. For example, imported goods traveling through the local port complex contributed $2.2 million in economic activity to Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in 2005, the report said.

The Los Angeles officials called on federal lawmakers to authorize money for rail and transit projects that can speed cargo on roads and railways near the ports. And they urged the lawmakers to support legislation that would allocate money for port and rail security based on risk rather than on population.

Gang violence was another important subject Tuesday.

Villaraigosa, Bratton, Councilwoman Janice Hahn and Chamber of Commerce Chairman David W. Fleming urged lawmakers in one meeting to ensure that Congress passes gang legislation and that Los Angeles receives a significant portion of the money. The delegation also recommended that legislation target not only law enforcement activities but also prevention programs, job training and other efforts to keep young people from joining gangs.

Waters and Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village) were among those who listened to the hometown pitch. Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) also attended the session.

“We have a million things competing for our time, and this helps focus us,” Berman said afterward.

In a separate meeting with Kennedy, Villaraigosa and Canter, who have sparred over the mayor’s bid to exert authority over the schools, discussed the pending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind education law. They asked for greater flexibility for local schools and also for the federal government to pay the full cost of reforms. Los Angeles schools Supt. David L. Brewer and Monica Garcia, a school board member, also attended the meeting.

The delegates started Tuesday with a breakfast talk from Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She told the delegation that she supports efforts to pay for more gang prevention programs, as well as transit projects such as the extension of the Gold Line on the Eastside and the Exposition light-rail line on the Westside.

After the talk, the delegates divided into teams covering education, energy and the environment, international trade, small business and goods movement. They fanned out to meet with members of Congress.

Wherever they went on Capitol Hill, the L.A. visitors followed a simple rule: Stay on message.

“We are the ATM machine for the United States, and we’re coming here to get refilled,” Fleming told the gathering at the breakfast meeting with Feinstein. “We need some of those federal dollars back that we have been putting out year after year after year.”

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duke.helfand@latimes.com

California’s vast inland valleys, from Redding to Riverside, remain the fastest growing regions in the state but already face serious economic and environmental challenges that could determine the state’s future, according to a study released Tuesday.

Developing an economy that can sustain this rapid population growth with well-paying jobs is the challenge facing these communities and will determine whether California will continue to prosper, according to the report by the Brookings Institution.

Although often maligned as poor, ugly and polluted, the inland area, spanning 75,000 square miles, is the key to California’s future. One in three Californians calls it home. Four of the nation’s 10 fastest-growing cities — Riverside, Bakersfield, Sacramento and San Bernardino — are there.

High-priced real estate forced many families to flee coastal urban areas and pursue their dreams inland during the past decade. Inland California “represents not so much a break with the California dream, but its new homeland, the state of opportunity for a new generation,” the study said.

Sustaining the dream without ruining the environment or agriculture will determine if California remains competitive and a beacon for opportunity in the 21st century, experts say. The San Joaquin Valley already rivals Los Angeles for some of the smoggiest air in the country.

“When you get that many people and that much economic power inland, you better take a look at it and understand it because that’s where the future of the state is,” said John Husing, president of Redlands-based Economics & Politics Inc., an economic research firm unconnected with the study.

The report paints a portrait of a region at the crossroads. People move inland largely to find affordable housing in the Inland Empire, Central Valley and Sierra foothills.

The population in those regions has increased 14% between 2000 and 2005, four times the rate of the rest of the state, the study said.

But the inland region’s rapid growth brings serious challenges.

More than half the new arrivals are Latino, and many new residents are poor and significantly less educated than in the Los Angeles region or the Bay Area.

They need good jobs, but employers aren’t likely to relocate until there’s a capable, high-skilled workforce in place. Many companies are more likely to relocate to Reno, Las Vegas or Phoenix than to inland California, the study said.

“When we think of the future of California, most people think about what happens in Silicon Valley or Hollywood. But for most Californians, the issue is what happens in the middle-class areas,” said Joel Kotkin, an author of the study. “Will they be the new vital centers for California’s middle class or will they become crabgrass slums with high unemployment and poor living conditions?”

The study recommends three approaches to help transform inland boomtowns into more livable and economically sustainable cities:

• Create more amenities that appeal to families, skilled labor and industries, including more open space and parks, better entertainment and retail centers and improved infrastructure.

• Create upward mobility for residents by offering more work-force training and better schools.

• Build on optimism to create political consensus for leadership and positive change. The study notes that, despite the region’s maligned reputation, 75% of Central Valley adults rated their community as good or excellent — providing a basis for political will.

“It’s up to them whether the area continues to perform to the low expectations as viewed by many commentators or begins to forge a future that will preserve the middle-class ‘California dream’ for at least another generation,” the study said.

William Frey of the Brookings Institution and Kotkin, experts in demographics and urban development, wrote the 20-page paper.

The Brookings Institution is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

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gary.polakovic@latimes.com

As part of the city’s move toward a denser urban environment, officials are lending support to an unusual land-swap plan that would allow a developer to build on a five-acre park in North Hollywood.

Under the proposal, the developer, J.H. Snyder Co., would replace part of Valley Plaza Park with a parking structure for a new mega-development rivaling The Grove shopping center in square footage. In exchange, the company said it would build a new park a few blocks away, adjacent to a 700-unit condominium and apartment complex that Snyder also plans to build.

The parkland swap, approved in concept by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, is the only such transfer in recent memory, according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

It has sparked concern among some local residents, who worry that the developer ultimately will not build a new park as promised.

They point out that city officials talked for years about creating a park just south of City Hall, then decided to build the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters there.

“I want a thorough airing of how a private developer can acquire public parkland,” said Ronald Bitzer, a local resident who serves on the advisory board at Valley Plaza Park. “I don’t trust J.H. Snyder to proceed with caution when it comes to tampering with dedicated parkland.”

The land swap is a small part of a much larger development project to be built on the site of Valley Plaza shopping center on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, south of Victory Boulevard. The 1955 shopping center, one of the San Fernando Valley’s first, has been decaying for years, and has been scheduled for redevelopment since it was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Snyder’s project would involve tearing down the center and replacing it with nearly 800,000 square feet of retail, commercial and entertainment businesses, including a Macy’s department store and a multiplex movie theater. It would be designed by Massachusetts-based Elkus Manfredi Architects, the firm that designed The Grove.

Immediately to the southeast at Laurel Plaza, the site of a former May Co. building that now is a Macy’s store, Snyder hopes to build condominiums, apartments and the new park.

The redevelopment agency, which is helping to build the commercial portion of the project, hopes the renewed Valley Plaza will be a catalyst for development along a stretch of Laurel Canyon that, though once prosperous, has been blighted for decades.

Los Angeles Councilwoman Wendy Greuel sees the commercial project and the nearby residential one as part of the city’s push toward so-called smart growth, in which people live in condos and houses that are near shops, offices and entertainment and are along transit lines.

Laurel Canyon, a major north-south street in the Valley, is served by buses that connect to the popular Orange Line busway and such destinations as Ventura Boulevard.

The city needs to look at developing “places where people can get public transportation and where they can walk across the street to go to a grocery store, walk across the street and go to a Macy’s or a coffee shop,” Greuel said.

Citing neighborhood concerns that the project might be too big, Greuel said that she supported the plan in concept, but that she would continue to review it as the proposal advanced.

Cliff Goldstein, Snyder’s project manager for the two developments, said the company’s goal was to develop Valley Plaza as a gathering place or town center for the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley.

He was scheduled to present the company’s proposed design for the two sites to a nearby homeowners group Tuesday night. It would include a plan for an open-air courtyard in the center “the size of a football field,” Goldstein said, with parking for Macy’s and other stores in a separate structure on the site of the former park.

Goldstein said it was not yet clear when the company would build the new park, because the logistics of relocating it to the Laurel Plaza property are complicated.

On one hand, he said, the company needs to build on the side of the existing park as part of its overall development of the site. But Macy’s does not plan to move out of its property across the street until the new store in Valley Plaza is ready to open, which could make it difficult to build the park early in the process.

He said the company plans to make the new park much nicer than the existing one, which is essentially a five-acre strip of trees and grass next to the 170 Freeway. The existing park was once part of the larger Valley Plaza Park and recreation center. But the wedge-shaped parcel was cut off after the freeway was built through the center of the bigger park acreage.

Under the current proposal, the new five-acre park would include trees and walking paths and possibly a water feature, Goldstein said.

He said the company would not renege on its promise to build the park.

“That has never been an option and that is not an option,” Goldstein said.

But Suzanne Stinson, who lives about a block from the proposed residential part of the development, said it is just not right to pave over an existing park — even if new development is desirable at Valley Plaza.

The community recently planted dozens of trees on the site of the old park, and there are many tall, mature trees.

“Although it’s not used that much, it is a park; it’s an existing green belt,” Stinson said. “If it’s been dedicated as park, it shouldn’t be sold to the highest bidder and then have some crappy little park put somewhere to replace it.”

The old park also has a parking lot, Stinson said, but the new one would have only a few spaces. Without a play area for children or other amenities, the new park would not serve the community well, she said.

Stinson said she had “great trepidation” about the development. Like other residents, she worries that despite the developer’s promise of a high-end development on par with The Grove, the neighborhood will wind up with a collection of big-box stores.

Already, she and others said, Costco Wholesale Corp. has expressed interest in the development, indicating to some in the neighborhood that instead of a pedestrian-friendly shopping area, Snyder will build a behemoth, suburban-style mall.

“We just don’t want something rammed down our throats,” Stinson said.

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sharon.bernstein@latimes.com

Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross; Wednesday, March 28, 2007

San Francisco’s new “stadium plan” isn’t so much about keeping the 49ers in the city as it is about sending the message to the long-neglected residents of the Bayview that Candlestick Point will be developed — with or without the team.

And that the city is not going to wait around for 49ers owner John York to make up his mind about whether to stick around or head to Santa Clara.

 

Here’s the thinking, according to several sources we talked to Tuesday: There’s no huge groundswell of San Franciscans clamoring for the 49ers to stay, especially because the team would still be in the area and would keep “San Francisco” in its name if it headed to the South Bay. A recent David Binder poll found that 63 percent of the 500 San Francisco residents surveyed thought that keeping the Niners in town should be a priority, but only 30 percent felt very strongly about the issue.

“But there could be people upset if we don’t get moving with the plan for Candlestick redevelopment,” said one source close to Mayor Gavin Newsom and negotiations with the team, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the talks.

What Newsom’s people are doing, then, is anticipating the question that will come up repeatedly this election year: If the 49ers insist on leaving, what will you do to deliver on your promises for the Bayview?

Newsom also can’t afford to wait around while York and Santa Clara do an elaborate dance to make the team’s preferred site next to Great America amusement park work — a dance that could take a long time to complete.

Hence the public rollout of a plan for 8,500 units of housing spread across the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Candlestick Point, an office park, international African marketplace, parks, stores and more — none of it tied financially to whether the 49ers build their stadium there.

If the Niners wind up staying, Newsom and Co. have a stadium site ready to go in the abandoned shipyard. If the team decides to leave, well, there’s still a big new neighborhood in the works.

Either way, the administration at least looks like it’s trying — which in politics is often the best way to keep a lid on a bad situation.

Money trap: Nothing like an appearance on “60 Minutes” to bring out the crowds for a presidential candidate.

At least, that’s how it seemed after Democratic hopeful John Edwards packed the room Monday at Kuleto’s in Burlingame for a luncheon fundraiser, one day after he and his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, went on the CBS newsmagazine show to talk about the recurrence and spread of her breast cancer.

Trial lawyer Joe Cotchett, who was hosting the gathering, expected 40 to 50 people to be there. Instead, he had more than 100 guests and raised $100,000 for Edwards’ campaign.

But the many women who showed up at the last minute were a bit disappointed not to see Elizabeth Edwards, who had been in Southern California last week. On Monday, she was in Cleveland.

Before his Peninsula lunch appearance, John Edwards did a sit-down with reporters lasting 45 minutes, and it might have gone even longer had everyone not run out of questions.

His high-profile pass-through was in sharp contrast to that of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in town Sunday morning for a fundraiser brunch at the Pacific Heights home of real estate mogul Doug Shorenstein — just one of several cash calls she’s made in recent days to the Bay Area and Southern California.

She was here and gone without a peep. But then, her real mission is to show she’s the indisputable leader of the pack, at least moneywise, when the first-quarter financial reports are due at month’s end.

If the Glover fits: With the city’s left craving a candidate to challenge Mayor Gavin Newsom this fall, blog chatters have a new favorite flavor — actor/activist Danny “Lethal Weapon” Glover.

After all, Glover is both a San Francisco native and resident, as well as a true blue lefty advocate — whether it’s crusading for civil rights and the poor, decrying the death penalty, or showing up in Harlem with Venezuelan President and George Bush-basher Hugo Chavez.

And he’s no stranger to mayoral politics, having backed Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez’s run against Newsom four years ago and Ron Dellums’ successful candidacy in Oakland last year.

“Danny Glover is everything Newsom is not,” one blog poster wrote on the SFJunto site.

“Newsom’s chief asset seems to be his celebrity status,” another poster said. “Neutralize that and an issue-based contest might be possible. Newsom loses on his record.”

We’re not sure where the Glover for Mayor got started. One blog site operator, Marc Parent, says the idea originated with an anonymous blogger who goes by the uplifting handle, “Wish You Were Dead.”

As for what Glover thinks of the idea? We contacted Glover’s publicist, Michelle Vega, who said: “We don’t have any comment at this time.”

Brown’s bash: Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown celebrated his 73rd birthday by taking in a lecture, of all things.

Not just any lecture, mind you, but a private audience for Brown and about 50 family members and friends at the Atlanta History Center with Elizabeth Muller, who has spent the past nine years cataloging Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal papers and books.

Brown didn’t have to pull too many strings. After all, he was among those tapped by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin to help her city come up with the $32 million to purchase the collection of 10,000 books and documents and put them on display at Morehouse College.

“It’s as good as it gets,” crowed developer friend and political fundraiser Darius Anderson. He flew in 13 of his family members to the birthday bash, which also included a catered meal and a talk by former Georgia legislator and civil rights activist Julian Bond.

EXTRA! Catch our Web page at www.sfgate.com/matierandross. Cast your vote on San Francisco’s latest 49ers stadium plan. Play the Rudolph Giuliani baby-kissing caption contest. Check out the bricks and kisses in feedback. And read the Extra, Extra, Extra musings and insights of friends including Rich “Big Vinny” Lieberman and The Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci and Don “Bad Reporter” Asmussen.

Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on CBS 5-TV’s morning and evening news. Matier can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday to Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/28/BAGUQOT0DC1.DTL

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

BAYVIEW ON THE VERGE: Much of area is ready to transform fading property, mean streets

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Staff Writer; Wednesday, March 28, 2007

After 29 years running an auto body shop in San Francisco’s Bayview district, Jorge Perez found himself in a little green area on the city’s redevelopment map Tuesday, and he had no doubt what that meant.

“Looks like they will be moving me out of here,” he said.

But Perez was anything but upset about impending urban renewal, even if it forces him to make way for a new waterfront park or transit corridor. Like many of those who live and work in San Francisco’s long-overlooked southeastern neighborhoods, Perez is ready for something different.

“I’m tired of being here,” he said.

Much of the area slated for renewal has a worn-out look, the appearance of a hardworking waterfront pretty much unemployed these days.

The Navy is history. The old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, where the city wants to build a stadium for the 49ers, is a lonely movie set of old-time war-making, long ago gone to rust.

“What do you see here? Nothing,” said Sgt. Ron Banta of the San Francisco Police Department’s canine unit, who was out exercising his dog before they were due for work.

Chain-link fences showed about the only evidence of recent activity other than mounds of tarp-covered dirt and a few scattered metal sculptures left by members of the local artists’ colony. Outsized cranes appeared to be welded in place. Even the paint seemed to have stopped peeling.

Mount Diablo presided across the bay. There were clouds and a gathering breeze. Banta ordered the dog back into his car while he took in the view.

“This should be something,” he said. “Candlestick is an embarrassment. We were the jewel of the NFL, and we should be again.”

Just inside the shipyard’s main gates, there was talk of closing at the grand old Dago Mary’s restaurant, a faded, white-tablecloth kind of place with chandeliers and dark, carved-wood doorways. Owner Brian Molony was noncommittal — “The timing isn’t right,” he said — but clearly the menu included an uncertain future during lunch at the bar on Tuesday.

“This whole area is in for a huge change,” he said. “But it’s complicated — you have the Navy, the cleanup, the city, the local politics.”

The desolation of the shipyard is surrounded by some of the few truly mean streets left in a fairy-tale city.

Tyrone Butler, 30, works a day shift at Wizard of Metals, one of the many metalworking shops around the old waterfront. He waited for a bus to his night job as a waiter. He was smoking, listening to music, keeping his eyes to himself.

“It’s a rough scene sometimes,” he said. “You’ve got to kind of fit in. Keep a low profile.”

A young man wearing a ski mask over his face walked with an associate along Shafter Street. Several men, alone or in pairs, sat in the front seats of older-model cars for what seemed a long time. A middle-aged woman bought a coffee at Road House Coffee Co. on Third Street but declined to give her name.

Those who agreed to risk seeing their names in the newspaper didn’t deny the dangers of the area. They also disputed the standard outsider view that the Bayview is nothing but gangs fighting over a crime zone.

“That’s 1 percent or 2 percent of the people,” said Eugene Vincent, proprietor of Community Produce on Third Street.

He also showed off a handmade sign, painted by a group of kids in the neighborhood on the same day some gang members were shooting one another.

Only the gang members made the news.

“You don’t hear about these kids, the ones who didn’t die,” he said. “The gangs are not the whole reality. Most of the people here are middle-class people who want to be part of society.”

Outside his shop, the new Third Street light-rail system is about to start weekday service. Vincent said he knows that won’t mean instant buyers for his bins of tomatoes and avocadoes. He said he hoped the color of his vegetable displays will attract business in from the street. “You have to give people a reason to get off the train,” he said.

A couple of new restaurants have opened. Condominiums and apartment projects are being built. A community center is being renovated at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue.

Most people said they were enthusiastic about a new stadium and all the surrounding development on the city’s planning maps.

“That’d be tight — I will be out there selling tickets,” said Papa Cooper, 39.

Sybreea Dorton, a 16-year-old junior in high school, figured she and her friends could walk down to games.

“Stores, too? Great! There’s nothing around here,” she said on her way to a bus stop.

But football might not be the easy fix some are hoping for in the Bayview, said Kai Takaii, 38, who was cleaning out his car Tuesday for a family outing.

“I really don’t like the idea of a football stadium,” he said. “We need more than that. We need things like theaters here. You want to go see a movie, but you can’t do that in this area. You can’t even find a mailbox around here.”

E-mail Carl Hall at chall@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/28/MNG4JOSS0Q32.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

NEWARK — After Franklin Abazie fell behind on his mortgage last year, he tucked one of his foreclosure notices, still in its ripped envelope, into the visor of his car — a looming reminder of why he had to take a second job.

Rashid and Yvonne Moore, a middle-aged couple whose lenders are threatening foreclosure because they have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, have begun thinking the unthinkable: moving in with his parents.

For Quintin Fields, it may take a miracle to keep his house; he owes nearly as much in late payments as he will earn all year.

“Everything is closing in on me right now,” Mr. Fields said.

Broad swaths of Newark are groaning under the weight of mortgage debt, much of it accumulated in the building boom of recent years that has transformed some parts of the city with gleaming redevelopment.

But in many of these neighborhoods, a heavy mortgage debt has led thousands of residents — many of them first-time homebuyers — close to financial ruin, experts and local officials say. According to recent census figures, more than 40 percent of Newark homeowners spend more than half their income on housing, one of the highest percentages in the New York metropolitan region and among the highest in the country.

In small ways and large, that debt is forcing thousands of people here to change their lives. Many have taken second jobs. Others are selling off prized possessions. Some have had to rent out rooms. And more than a few have surrendered to the inevitability of losing their homes to foreclosure.

Driving the high mortgage debt and the boom in home sales here, and around the country, has been the proliferation of mortgages that have made it possible for people with poor credit, scant savings and modest incomes to buy homes. Among these are subprime loans, which are easier to obtain than prime rate loans but come with an added burden: much higher interest rates. In many cases, financial institutions lent to people without verifying whether their incomes could support the monthly payments.

Federal lending data show that a high percentage of mortgages for homes on the north, south and west sides of Newark — as much as 50 percent in some neighborhoods — are subprime loans. And a national study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research group based in North Carolina, predicts that more than 18 percent of the people holding those loans will go into foreclosure in the next three to four years.

The tales of financially beleaguered Newark are not only about subprime loans. Unforeseen financial problems, misunderstandings about complex transactions and poor money management have been major factors in bringing some first-time homeowners to the brink of foreclosure.

And the situation mirrors conditions in large urban areas across the country and around the metropolitan region. Neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn also have large concentrations of subprime loans, which are at high risk of foreclosure, according to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data examined by The New York Times. The study by the Center for Responsible Lending predicts that nearly 22 percent of the subprime loans in the New York area made in 2006 will go into foreclosure in the next few years, one of the highest rates in the nation. And in suburban counties like Nassau, Orange and Putnam, the percentage of households spending at least 50 percent of income on housing has been rising.

While the overall number of foreclosures nationwide remains low — in New Jersey, it is less than 2 percent of all outstanding mortgages — it masks the reality of conditions in lower-income, heavily minority neighborhoods like Mr. Abazie’s, where multicolored “Avoid Foreclosure” and “Sell Your House” signs seem to decorate most of the lampposts.

Nearly 250 houses within one mile of Mr. Abazie’s home in Newark’s South Ward have been in some form of foreclosure in the past six years, according to sales data from the Essex County Sheriff’s Department analyzed by The Times. In that time, more than 4,000 homes in the city have gone into foreclosure, according to the data.

Malcolm Bush, president of the Woodstock Institute, a national research group that studies mortgage lending in poor neighborhoods, said that widespread foreclosures in an area can depress already low housing prices, making it harder for others in that area to get loans or refinance. And those troubles can afflict an entire community.

“This has wider social implications,” Mr. Bush said. “It appears that things are going to get worse.”

Too Big a Loan

Newark’s long-impoverished, overwhelmingly black South Ward is still recovering in some ways from the exodus of residents and commerce after the 1967 riots. On many blocks, there is a shortage of sidewalks, an abundance of weedy lots and drug dealers who openly ply their trade.

But parts of the South Ward are also hotbeds of development, filled with new multifamily homes with driveways or garages. Many have “For Rent” signs posted in their front windows.

This is where Mr. Abazie and his wife, Beryl, live. Mr. Abazie, 28, grew up in Nigeria and moved to the United States 10 years ago for work and college. After they were married last year, the couple decided to leave the apartment life behind, buy a home and start a family.

They found a broker and a three-year-old two-family home on Schley Street. With good credit and some savings, Mr. Abazie, a night security guard, thought he could obtain a low-interest loan insured by the Federal Housing Authority.

But after two lenders told him he did not qualify for such a loan, he settled for something less: a $325,000 subprime mortgage from Wall Street Financial. It was actually two loans, with an 8.5 percent interest rate on the larger one and a 12.2 percent rate on the smaller one. His monthly payments are now more than $2,600.

Earning about $2,000 a month on his salary, he quickly fell behind. At first, he had assumed that he could find a tenant to help offset the cost of the mortgage, but soon discovered his neighborhood had a glut of vacant apartments. So last fall, he took a second job working nights helping mental patients at a state hospital.

In December, his wife gave birth to their first child, a son. But because they were still straining to pay their bills, she returned to work part time this month, at a home for the elderly.

Last month, they found a tenant, who pays $400 a month, far short of the $1,200 rent they had thought they could charge. They have fallen more than $3,500 behind on their mortgage payments. In November, they received their first foreclosure notice.

Mr. Abazie has thought about selling the house — he even took a real estate class — but would almost certainly lose money. For now, he is hoping he can refinance his loan; but rates are not getting better and his credit record is only getting worse.

They continue to trim the family budget and have stopped sending monthly checks of several hundred dollars to his parents and siblings in Nigeria. Not wanting to field his relatives’ plaintive calls, he changed his cellphone number last month.

“I’m in a really tough corner,” he said. “I just do not feel happy talking about my current challenges.”

A Single Mother Struggles

For Michelle Pitt, subprime loans were not the problem. But she, too, has found herself swimming in debt that is jeopardizing her ability to keep her home.

Ms. Pitt, a 39-year-old single mother of four, bought her two-family house from a local nonprofit group, Episcopal Community Development, in 1999. The house sits on a hill in the South Ward and rattles constantly with the sound of Interstate 78, the highway nearby. It was a good deal, selling for $105,000 under a subsidized housing program.

Ms. Pitt, a first-time home buyer, got a mortgage with a relatively good interest rate of 7.5 percent. And at the time, she was earning decent salaries from two jobs, as a flight attendant for Spirit Airlines and as a dental assistant in state prisons.

Over the next few years, she was laid off by the prison and stopped working at Spirit when the company moved some of its New York operations to Florida. Since then, she has held temporary jobs, most recently as a part-time orthodontist’s assistant.

“I stopped flying and everything started happening,” she said.

She made $25,000 last year, plus child support — just enough to pay her monthly mortgage payments of $1,324 on time. She lives paycheck to paycheck, while scrimping on the extras her family used to take for granted. Dinners out, movies, clothes, shopping trips and visits to the hair salon have become rare luxuries. An annual summer ritual, a vacation in the Poconos, has become out of the question.

Worried that a late delivery of her paycheck will mean no groceries, Ms. Pitt often makes the 30-minute drive to her temp agency to collect it in person. She owes several thousand dollars on her credit cards, and recently canceled most of them to avoid falling deeper into debt.

Ms. Pitt notices the foreclosures in the neighborhood, the boarded-up houses on the drive to her children’s schools. She loves this house: its staircase lined with framed pictures of the children, the backyard deck, the kitchen where the family gathers for breakfast each morning. It represents something solid and permanent, something she wants her children, ages 1, 13 and 14, to experience. (She has a 23-year-old son who does not live with her.)

To keep it all, she is thinking of selling her house and moving to the Poconos. “It’s all about giving them something I never had,” she said.

A Dream Gone Wrong

For Quintin Fields, buying a home in Newark was less about finding a place to live and more about trying to find opportunity in the city’s housing boom. It is an opportunity he now wishes he had passed up.

Almost two years ago, Mr. Fields, who lives with his wife in a Harlem apartment, bought a three-family home from his half brother in Newark’s West Ward, on a street sandwiched between two cemeteries.

Mr. Fields, 46, a caseworker at a residential program for troubled teenage boys in East Orange, thought he might turn the house into a residence for troubled young adults. But he was also enticed by the idea, suggested by his half brother, that buying the building could repair Mr. Fields’s poor credit record and that selling it might someday make him some money.

A first-time home buyer with an annual income of about $36,000 and almost no savings, Mr. Fields did not qualify for a prime loan for the $315,000 house. So his half brother arranged a 15-year mortgage from WMC Mortgage Company, a subprime division of General Electric, and another from the Option One Mortgage Company, the subprime group of H & R Block.

The $2,312 monthly payments were much more than he could afford, but Mr. Fields said his brother assured him that they could find tenants. They did, but then lost them. Last July, without the rental income, his brother, who was managing the property, stopped paying the lenders. Mr. Fields now owes almost $30,000 in delinquent payments and has fallen out with his half brother.

He has received multiple foreclosure notices. With no savings, and with an even worse credit record than before, he has been frantically filling out grant applications, hoping to salvage his plans.

“It’s just sad,” said Mr. Fields, whose wife is expecting their first child this summer. “I can’t even borrow money.”

Starting Over, Finding Trouble

The case ofthe Moores suggests that low-income people are not the only ones to get into trouble with subprime loans.

Mr. Moore, 53, comes from Newark’s South Ward, and met his wife in the 1970s, when they were both in high school.

They dated then, but split apart as Mr. Moore battled drug addiction. Over the years, they both were married to, and then divorced from, other people. He worked as a longshoreman in the Port of Newark, a job he still holds today. Mrs. Moore, now 50, moved away after high school, living in Manhattan, Paris and Tennessee.

When they found each other again three years ago, they had seven children between them. They were married, and after a lifetime of rented apartments, decided it was time to buy their own home.

A year and a half ago, they found it: a large one-family house, for $310,000 on a street of well-kept Victorians in the South Ward neighborhood of Clinton Hill. With six bedrooms, it was a place to bring their family together, a reward for a middle-aged couple who had bumped around in life.

Though he refused to reveal his salary, Mr. Moore said that a longshoreman with his experience can make $29 an hour, and more with overtime. It was enough, they assumed, to get a good interest rate.

But Mr. Moore’s credit “wasn’t the greatest,” he said: He had had problems, including difficulties with a car lease and a federal tax lien. After scraping together a few thousand dollars for closing costs, he and his wife had no money left for a down payment. So they got a two-part loan, similar to Mr. Abazie’s, with the smaller part carrying a 10 percent interest rate. Their monthly payments total almost $2,600.

They thought they could handle that. But work dropped off at the port for Mr. Moore, and a job that Mrs. Moore thought she would get with Mayor Cory A. Booker’s administration never materialized.

Soon, the mortgage payments began squeezing them. Electric and telephone bills became harder to pay; recently his cellphone was turned off for late payments. Mrs. Moore has started suggesting that they sell the house and move in with his elderly parents, who have a large home in Newark.

He rejected the idea, but is now pondering selling some of his prized possessions, including his collection of expensive bicycles and perhaps one of his Fender bass guitars.

“I need to make some moves,” Mr. Moore said. “I need to keep this house.”

The moves may have to come fast. They fell three months behind on their mortgage and started receiving foreclosure letters from their two lenders. They staved off further action by negotiating an agreement to add the $10,000 they owed to their principal.

But they were just able to scrape together the March payment, delivering it two weeks late. Their phone now rings constantly with calls from companies offering ways out of their debt. Mrs. Moore talks to them, hoping one will offer the right deal.

Last week, a man delivered a summons for a foreclosure proceeding. Mrs. Moore became so upset she threw the unopened envelope onto the street. After frantic calls to their lenders, they bought some time.

“I’m not used to not knowing what to do,” Mr. Moore said. “I’m not happy about it, but I’m determined to overcome this.”

In a new twist to the juggling act at ground zero, the city said yesterday that the Signature Theater Company would not be included in a performing arts center to be designed there by Frank Gehry, leaving the Joyce Theater, which presents dance, as the building’s sole resident.

Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said the Signature, an Off Broadway group, was dropped because of the cost and complicated logistics of having the two institutions share a confined space.

Instead the city hopes to move the Signature to Fiterman Hall at 30 West Broadway, cater-corner to 7 World Trade Center. Fiterman, part of the Borough of Manhattan Community College, was heavily damaged by falling debris on 9/11.

Estimates of the performing arts center’s cost were approaching $700 million, city officials said. Under the new plan, the center and a new Signature Theater are expected to come in at about $350 million combined.

“The city said it was going to be too costly to do it, and I think they’re right,” said James Houghton, artistic director of the Signature. “Frankly, it’s refreshing to get this straight talk about it. I don’t think anyone wants to build a $700 million performing arts center.”

Mr. Doctoroff said the decision would “result in substantial savings and hopefully improved facilities for both institutions.”

Yet the decision highlights the striking way the original cultural ambitions for ground zero have been scaled back. In June 2004, state and city officials selected four arts groups for a coveted place at the site with great fanfare, predicting that ground zero would become a cultural mecca. Only the Joyce remains now.

The City University of New York, which oversees the Fiterman Hall site, had been working on a renovation with architects at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners before the Signature became involved. Mr. Houghton said that while he still hoped to collaborate with Mr. Gehry on the interior, he was not disappointed that ground zero was off the table.

“We have the potential to reach all of the goals we were after downtown and do it in a more realistic way,” he said.

Mr. Gehry said he would be happy to stay with the project. “I’m used to rolling with the punches,” he said. “I will try to rise to the occasion.”

In a separate development, the Drawing Center in SoHo, which was pushed out of the ground zero plan in 2005 amid controversy over its programming, is now likely to move to the South Street Seaport, city officials said. Last year the Drawing Center seemed poised to relocate to a site occupied by part of the old Fulton Fish Market. But Kate D. Levin, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, said that proved too expensive because the site, on Pier 18 on South Street, needed significant repairs and must conform with codes involving maritime use.

Instead the Drawing Center is hoping to move to Burling Slip, at John Street, between Front and South Streets, a location under lease to the South Street Seaport Museum. “They will be in a major site of development,” Ms. Levin said, noting the city’s recent efforts to revitalize the East Side waterfront. “There are very few visual arts venues south of Canal.”

George Negroponte, the Drawing Center’s president, said he was excited about the Burling Slip location but emphasized that no deal had been completed. “This is a fantastic site,” he said. “A critical mass is finally being established, and it looks terrific for downtown.”

The Drawing Center was supposed to share a building at ground zero with a proposed International Freedom Center, but the Freedom Center was scuttled after family members of 9/11 victims questioned whether its themes would be sufficiently patriotic. Now that museum building, designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, has been redesignated as the site of a memorial museum and a visitors’ center.

Although the Joyce will have the performing arts center to itself, the building may occasionally be used for nondance events like the Tribeca Film Festival, which takes place each spring. “I’m delighted that we’re moving forward,” said Linda Shelton, executive director of the Joyce. “The project has been stalled for quite some time. It now feels like we have a genuine partner in the city.”

After the downtown rebuilding effort was repeatedly stymied, the city took over from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation last fall. “What we did for months was a detailed review of the engineering, cost and programmatic issues to make sure what was proposed was really not workable,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “It just wasn’t going to happen.”

The city explored the Fiterman Hall location before broaching the idea to the Signature, Mr. Houghton said. It also considered moving the Signature into other buildings on the Trade Center site but found that their elevator cores were unsuitable. For now the Signature is also considering two other CUNY sites downtown, although Mr. Houghton said he preferred Fiterman Hall for its proximity to the performing arts center and the transportation hub.

Over the last three years, the Signature and the Joyce have been trying to figure out how to share the challenging Trade Center site between Vesey and Fulton Streets, next to the Freedom Tower. “There are five stories below grade — two trains, a mall and a parking lot all underneath there, many stakeholders,” Mr. Houghton noted. “It’s probably the most complicated site for a performing arts center in the world.”

The Joyce wanted a 900- to 1,000-seat theater, while maintaining its current sites in Chelsea and SoHo. The Signature, a showcase for American playwrights on West 42nd Street, planned a three-theater complex. Because of the performing arts center’s limited footprint, the theaters would have to be stacked, making it difficult for the audiences to proceed up and down.

Still unclear is how much the city might contribute for the cultural buildings and what amount the arts groups will be responsible for.

Ms. Levin predicted that with 1,000 seats, the new Joyce would fill a niche in the city. Existing theaters have 499 and 599 seats, then jump to about 2,000 in size, she said, and some prominent dance companies bypass New York as a result. The Joyce is also considering a casual cafe that could be used for daytime performances and small concerts.

But the coast is by no means clear. According to the current timetable, construction cannot start on the Joyce site until 2011 because it will be occupied until then by a temporary exit from the PATH train. “It’s frustrating, because of course you lose momentum,” Ms. Shelton said. “But I’m hoping it can move forward more quickly than that.”

The Signature has more urgent constraints, since the lease at its 42nd Street location expires in 2011. “The clock is ticking for us,” Mr. Houghton said.

SUMMERHAVEN, Ariz. — High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

 

Legions of predatory insects have taken to the forest that mantles the upper mountain, killing trees weakened by record heat. And in 2003, a fire burned for a month, destroying much of the town and scarring more than 87,000 acres. The next year, another fire swept over 32,000 acres.

“Nature is confused,” said Debbie Fagan, who moved here 25 years ago after crossing the country in pursuit of the perfect place to live. “We used to have four seasons. Now we have two. I love this place dearly, and this is very hard for me to watch.”

The American Southwest has been warming for nearly 30 years, according to records that date to the late 19th century. And the region is in the midst of an eight-year drought. Both developments could be within the range of natural events.

But what has convinced many scientists that the current spate of higher temperatures is not just another swing in the weather has been the near collapse of the sky islands and other high, formerly green havens that poke above the desert.

Fire has always been a part of Western ecology, particularly when the land is parched. But since the late 1980s, the size and reach of the fires have far exceeded times of earlier droughts. And the culprit, according to several recent studies, is higher temperatures tearing at a fabric of life that dates to the last ice age.

“A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away,” said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But it’s happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.”

And it comes at a time when millions of Americans are moving to these places. Since 1990, more than eight million homes have been built in Western areas that foresters call “the urban-wild land” interface, also the focus of recent federal firefighting efforts.

The fear is that what happened to Summerhaven is a taste of things to come. As heat-stressed ecosystems provide fuel at the edges of new homes, catastrophic fires could become the new normal. Dr. Swetnam compares it to new developments in hurricane-prone areas in the Southeast.

Others say the projections are overly alarmist, and note that fuel buildup is a legacy of fire repression, not necessarily higher temperatures. They also say the higher reaches of the West may simply be evolving into less alpine settings, and could resemble life that exists at lower elevations.

Still, there is a broad consensus that much of the West is warmer than it has been since record keeping began, and that changes are happening quickly, particularly in places like the sky islands.

“The West has warmed more than any other place in the United States outside Alaska,” said Jonathan T. Overpeck, a University of Arizona scientist and co-author of the recent draft by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month in Paris.

A trip up to any one of the 27 sky islands shows the ravages of heat on the land. The forests are splotched with a rusty tinge, as trees die from beetle infestation. Frogs with a 10,000-year-old pedigree have all but disappeared. One of the sky islands is the world’s only habitat for the Mount Graham red squirrel, an endangered species down to its last 100 or so animals.

For the squirrel, the frog and other species that have retreated ever higher, there may be no place left to go.

“As the climate warms, these species on top of the sky islands are literally getting pushed off into space,” Dr. Overpeck said.

The Coronado National Forest, which includes Mount Lemmon and Mount Graham, lists 28 threatened or endangered species. Heat has greatly diminished the web of life that these creatures depend on, and they “have not evolved to tolerate these new conditions,” Forest Service officials wrote in a report on the declining health of the sky islands.

For people moving to the breezy pines to escape desert heat, the fires that swept through places like Summerhaven can be terrifying. Fire comes much earlier, and much later, in the season.

“You can tell the weather is changing,” said Michael Stanley, head of the water district here, which lost two-thirds of its customers after the fire. “The snow melts earlier. The fires are big. It makes life very interesting.”

On her regular hikes around Mount Lemmon, Ms. Fagan has noticed many changes. She recently saw a type of rattlesnake that usually lives in the lowlands, and — while hiking over snow — was surrounded by gnats.

“I’m standing on snow while swatting away gnats,” she said. “I said, ‘Oh my God, what are these guys doing out in the winter?’ ”

Last year, wildfires burned nearly 10 million acres in the United States — a record, surpassing the previous year. The Forest Service has become the fire service, devoting 42 percent of its budget to fire suppression last year — more than triple what it was in 1991.

The current drought is not nearly as bad as the one in the 1950s, or one in the mid-16th century, but it has caused a huge forest die-off.

The only difference this time around is higher temperatures, said David D. Breshears, co-author of a study published by the National Academy of Sciences on the subject.

The increased heat, Dr. Breshears believes, is the tipping point — stressing ecosystems in the Southwest so quickly that they are vulnerable to prolonged beetle infestation and catastrophic fires.

“The changes are so big, and happening so fast,” Dr. Breshears said. “We saw it happen all the way up the elevation grade and across the region.”

Dr. Swetnam, who said he used to be skeptical about some of the projections on Western landscape changes, came to a different conclusion after studying fires. Since the mid-1980s, about seven times more federal land has burned than in the previous time frame, he found, and the fire season has been extended by more than two months.

Dr. Swetnam laments the loss of areas unique to the Southwest.

“The sky islands have existed since the Pleistocene,” he said, “and now with these huge fires you stand to lose some unique species.”

All of which should be a caution to people moving to reaches of the desert prone to dramatic change.

“The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t like people like me saying things like this, but large parts of the arid Southwest are not going to be very nice places to live,” Dr. Swetnam said.

Here at Summerhaven, Ms. Fagan, who lost her home and gift shop to the fire, is staying put, even though she knows — firsthand — about the changes under way on the sky island where she built a business and raised her two boys. She made her last mortgage payment on her house a few months before the fire took it.

“We lost 90 percent of our community and two-thirds of our mountain to fire,” she said recent one warm morning. “There may be nothing left to burn. But I can’t ever leave this place. I love it too much.”