Fragments of conversation float out from the cubicles:

“Foreclosure is a big black eye on your credit.”

“Can you scrounge up $500 to make a partial mortgage payment?”

“Have you heard of a short sale?”

Here in a downtown San Francisco high-rise is a window on America’s foreclosure epidemic. The Consumer Credit Counseling Service of San Francisco is one of five nonprofit agencies around the country that staff the HOPE hot line - the free telephone assistance for struggling homeowners touted by President Bush on Thursday.

“I have a message for every homeowner worried about rising mortgage payments: The best you can do for your family is to call (the HOPE hot line),” Bush said in a televised speech, although he actually recited the number of a Christian school in Texas, instead of the correct number, (888) 995-4673.

The phones have been ringing nonstop since then, although there were already plenty of desperate people calling. As foreclosure filings nationwide have skyrocketed, the HOPE hot line has handled almost 100,000 calls this year. The San Francisco office typically fields 400 to 600 calls a day; on Thursday, that jumped to 1,900, said Rick Harper, vice president and director of housing.

The calls make one thing clear: Many callers are grateful for someone who can explain basic facts about managing their cash flow, what to say to their lender and how the foreclosure process works. Some are in so far over their heads that there is only so much counselors can do to assist them. Some might be able to qualify for a workout plan in which their lender accepts smaller monthly payments, but even with the hot line’s help, getting approval from swamped lenders can take weeks.

Bush’s plan to freeze some mortgage payments isn’t something the counselors can assist with. Callers who ask about it are told to contact their lenders directly.

“We do counseling for people in foreclosure - sometimes days away from it,” Harper said. “If someone’s loan is resetting in six months, there is no crisis, we’ll tell them to contact their lender.” He hopes the HOPE line will set up an automated message telling people to press “1″ to learn more about the loan-freeze plan.

The line is administered by the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, a Minneapolis nonprofit that was formed in 2004 with $20 million seed money from GMAC Residential Capital, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders.

Consumer Credit Counseling Service of San Francisco, which has been in existence since 1969, was hired in April as the fifth agency to staff the HOPE hot line. Since then, it has tripled its housing counseling staff, going from 10 to 30 - and it’s still hiring.

The San Francisco housing counselors patiently walk each caller through their personal situation - are they behind on mortgage payments, what is their monthly cash outlay, can they boost their income and cut expenses. Sometimes, especially if foreclosure is just days away, the counselors get the caller’s lender on the phone immediately.

After spending an hour or so with each caller, the counselors write up a personalized action plan, describing the caller’s financial situation and recommended next steps. They send the plan to the caller and his or her lenders. Their No. 1 recommendation to everyone: Call your lender.

In fact the HOPE line is heavily funded by lenders, which see it as the best way to make contact with overdrawn borrowers who are often too scared to call directly. Grants from government and foundations also contribute to its budget.

Lenders also hire the San Francisco agency to place calls to people who have fallen behind on their mortgage, because a call from a nonprofit is less threatening than one from a lender.

The San Francisco counselors call 3,500 such people every month, reaching about a third of them. Of those, 60 percent avoid foreclosure, although some may lose their house in the process by selling it or deeding it to the lender.

The counselors are mainly in their 20s and have an idealistic bent.

Brian Hunt, 23, exemplifies that. A public-policy major in college, he was active with Habitat for Humanity and sees this job as a natural extension.

“I wanted to do boots-on-the-ground housing counseling to help people,” he said.

One call he took on Friday came from a single mother in Florida who was four months behind on payments for the home she has owned for 10 years. She’s already working two jobs and her budget is clearly barebones. The good news is she’s expecting a big tax refund next year.

Hunt suggested she tell her lender she could get caught up after that refund and meanwhile change her tax withholding to temporarily fatten her paycheck. He patiently ran through other options: Find cheaper home insurance, ask if the lender will add an additional 10 or 20 years onto her mortgage term to lower payments.

“I try to give (callers) a working knowledge of how they can help themselves in talking to their lender,” he said. “I suggest talking points; even a tone of voice to use - ‘This is my problem, is there any way we can work together?’ ”

Some victories are small: “Last week, I got a lady’s (foreclosure) date pushed back 30 days to Jan. 6 instead of Dec. 6; her goal was no foreclosure during the holiday season.” That extra time might allow the client to sell her house, he added.

A few success stories are dramatic. An elderly woman in Minnesota had set up automatic mortgage payments that stopped, due to a technical glitch around the same time she was hospitalized. She didn’t realize what had happened until it was too late. The house was repossessed by the lender at a foreclosure auction; the woman was still living there but was terrified that the sheriff would soon be knocking on her door.

“I was able to call the (loan servicer) and Freddie Mac (the investor that owned the mortgage), explain the situation and they undid the foreclosure,” Hunt said. “She got the house back on the day before Thanksgiving. That was the highlight of working here - to pull something back from actual foreclosure.”

Coming from around the country, the calls provide a snapshot of regional economics. “When someone calls from California, you can suggest they explore getting a second job,” Hunt said. “If they’re from Ohio, they say, ‘I’m struggling just to hold onto my first job’; there are no other jobs.”

Hunt said he typically does four or five full counseling sessions a day and juggles 10 or so shorter calls.

Counselors make $30,000 to $40,000 a year. They do a lot of on-the-job training and must pass credit-counseling certification tests. In a sad reflection of how devastating foreclosures can be, they are also trained in suicide prevention.

David Lopez has been a counselor for three months.

“It’s the best place I’ve worked in my life. I’m not selling anything or trying to trick anyone and I get thanked 20 times a day,” he said.

Lopez said he made more money in construction - but he said he’s learning more about money in this job.

“I learned that people really overextend themselves with a lifestyle that’s extravagant for their income,” he said. “It’s helped me out with my own budget. I stopped eating out so much, cut out my cable and Internet and drive less. I want to save up for a home but I don’t want to end up like one of these callers.”

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

Call it a renewable power double play. The Northern California Power Agency will use solar energy to help generate geothermal energy at the Geysers geothermal field north of Calistoga. The agency, which supplies electricity to several cities, will install 6,300 solar modules on an existing water pumping station that takes wastewater from Lake County and places it deep underground. Earth’s heat turns the water into steam, which power plants on the surface use to generate electricity. The agency operates two power plants at the Geysers, one of which is pictured at left. “This is unique,” says Ken Speer, the agency’s assistant general manager for power generation. “We’re using wastewater to generate geothermal power, and we’re using solar to power the wastewater pump.” The $8.2 million project will be designed and built by SPG Solar of Novato and should be finished by September.

Unmanned craft pose crash threat

Aerial vehicles piloted remotely are gaining in popularity, but aviation experts warned increasing use of unmanned aircraft raises the risks of in-air collisions. Once exclusively used by the military, unmanned surveillance aircraft are expected to soon be deployed by some police departments to patrol cities and monitor traffic, and by companies to use for aerial photography. Aviation Week reported that 4 service aviation chiefs said the higher traffic could lead to in-air collisions if new regulations are not put in place to address the growing trend in aviation.

Wood scraps converted to fuel

The first commercial liquid biofuel plant in the U.S. is going to produce energy from wood scraps by mid-’09. Canadian biofuel developer Dynamotive Energy plans to build a plant south of St. Louis to generate up to 12 mil gallons of fuel a year from 73,000 tons of wood byproducts from nearby sawmills. Industrial users could use the fuel to replace conventional oil to operate their boilers. The company said its fuel produces less polluting nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide gases.

A stem cell procedure that reprograms adult skin cells so they mimic embryonic stem cells has been used to give mice with sickle cell anemia a healthy new blood supply. This work provides the first evidence that the breakthrough technique, which grabbed headlines worldwide in Nov., really has the potential to treat disease. The work, detailed in the journal Science, was led by a Univ. of Ala. team.

About 17% of some 1,300 toys and other children’s products tested by a coalition of U.S. environmental health groups had lead levels above a federal standard of 600 parts per million. Jewelry products were the most likely to contain high lead levels, according to the study by the Michigan-based Ecology Center and several other groups.

Automated reminder calls can persuade couch potatoes to get up and exercise, a study by Stanford Univ. found. Sedentary people who received a computer-generated phone call managed to work out 30 minutes each day, almost as often as people who got reminder calls from real people. Many participants thought they would need an actual human’s call to get motivated.