Habitat Homes in Encanto Not Pleasing to All : Housing: Area residents picket first day of work in Southeast San Diego, and ex-President Carter seeks to reassure them.

The sound of hammers striking nails filled the early morning air Tuesday in Encanto as more than 150 Habitat for Humanity volunteers began raising wall frames for seven low-income homes while a dozen neighborhood picketers protested the construction.

The 1.4-acre triangular lot tucked away at the corner of 60th and Merlin streets will become the home for seven lower-income families, and protesters say city officials are once more dumping the city’s problems in Southeast San Diego.

“I don’t object to them building low-income houses, and I don’t object to bringing in seven new families,” Verna Quinn, who has lived in the area for 28 years, said. “But they did not follow the rules and play the game like everyone else, and I object to that.”

Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit Georgia-based organization, began its five-day Tijuana-San Diego project, dubbed Miracle on the Border, on Monday. It is the organization’s first binational venture and is the eighth and largest Jimmy Carter Work Project to date.

The former President and his wife, Rosalynn, Habitat’s most prominent volunteers, were in San Diego Tuesday to help kick off construction at the Encanto site. They joined about 1,200 volunteers from throughout North America and as far away as Europe in Tijuana on Monday to begin construction on 100 homes for needy residents in the border town.

Carter, who had donned jeans and a plaid cotton shirt for the day, met for about 10 minutes with protesters who were picketing on the sidewalk just outside the construction site Tuesday morning. Picketers, mostly residents of the community, said they would demonstrate all day Tuesday.

“We support the concept of low-cost housing for low-income families,” Ardise Rawlins, chairwoman of the community council said. “Our point is that the city allowed people to come in without prior notice to the community, and they did not adhere to zoning codes.”

Rawlins and other protesters said Habitat asked for 11 zoning code variances so it could build the seven homes, which will house 36 people, on the lot. Rawlins and other Encanto residents were unsuccessful in a suit they filed to block the project after they heard of Habitat’s plans.

“Nowhere else in San Diego would they have been able to do this,” Rawlins said. She said protesters are worried that the changes to the lot, where one-time Mayor Edwin M. Capps built his home in the early 1900s, will disrupt the working-class neighborhood.

“We know what you’ve been doing has been good, and we appreciate what you’re doing to help poor people, but they’re using your name for political clout,” Jesse Constancio, who lives a block from the site, told the former President.

Protesters said Habitat is trying to pack too many homes and people on the property, which could eventually kill the 2 dozen mature Torrey pines, Phoenix palms and pepper trees that tower over the hillside lot.

“I’ll be personally sensitive to what you’ve told me this morning,” Carter told the protesters. “I’ll try to come back to talk to you and see that the trees are protected and so forth.”

Local Habitat officials, who purchased the property for $210,000 from a developer who had originally planned a condominium project for it, said they received overwhelming support from community members they talked to.

“We felt like we really did bring the community in on this. It’s not Habitat’s intention to invade the community in an unwelcomed fashion,” Ed Walton, San Diego’s Habitat for Humanity project coordinator, said.

Habitat officials said the organization went through all the proper channels to get its plans approved and even scaled down the project from 10 to seven houses to accommodate the trees and historic Capps house.

“The variances they’re talking about are variances we asked for to protect the trees, keep the Capps house up, and also to not have congestion on the streets,” City Councilman John Hartley, who represents the Encanto area, said.

During a news conference, Carter said his talk with the demonstrators earlier that morning helped ease some of their concerns and answered many of their questions.

“Within a few months, these concerns--some legitimate, some just because they don’t understand--will be over and gone,” Carter said.

But picketer Thomas H. McPhatter, asked, “How can they say things will work out?” He said he was not content with Carter’s answers, although most protesters said they appreciated Carter’s willingness to talk with them.

“We’re against the power structure. They would not allow this in an affluent, all-white neighborhood,” Constancio said, holding up a sign that stated, “Encanto is no dumping ground.”

The seven simple houses are expected to be completed by Friday, and the new residents will move in Saturday. The houses will have two to four bedrooms each, and each house will sit on a 6,000 square-foot lot, which meets density zoning codes.

By providing interest-free loans and plenty of donated material and labor, Habitat is known for helping working poor families afford homes. Residents are screened and must immediately start making payments on the home. That money is immediately recycled to build more homes.

The houses, which are between 850 and 1,250 square feet, cost about $55,000 to build, most of which comes from donations to Habitat for Humanity, Jeff Snider, coordinator for the Tijuana-San Diego project, said.

Half of the volunteers who will work on the Encanto site this week will be bused from the camp in Tijuana. The rest of the volunteers are mostly San Diego County residents, Habitat officials said. The Carters will remain at the Tijuana site for the duration of the project.

These homes are the first Habitat homes in San Diego, Millard Fuller, founder of the organization, said. Although Habitat is fairly new on the West Coast, with the San Diego affiliate just established in 1987, the 14-year-old organization spans 31 countries and has built over 7,000 houses, he said.

“We don’t just crash and burn, build new houses and move on,” Snider said. “We follow through.”

Although local Habitat officials are not certain where their next San Diego project will be, they said they will not just concentrate in Southeast San Diego.

“Our intention is to build anywhere in the county and to do some rehabilitation projects, where we will take over torn-down areas and rehabilitate them,” Walton said. “We’ll go to where the needs are.”