In Canarsie, a Coalition of the Tried-and-True To walk or drive around Canarsie, a quiet suburblike peninsula on Brooklyn's south shore, you might not immediately guess at the recent struggles its residents have endured. The streets are relatively clean, the rows of one- and two-family homes often well maintained, the living-room-carpet-size lawns conscientiously mowed. But Canarsie, a middle-class neighborhood that is home to many city and health care workers, has weathered two waves of misfortune in six years. A year ago this month, still struggling to regain its footing from the blows of the mortgage crisis, it was flooded in some areas by Hurricane Sandy. In the course of a day, Canarsie suddenly had underwater basements to go along with its underwater mortgages. "The water came up from Jamaica Bay, came over the Canarsie Pier, and rushed right down the streets and into the houses," said Neal Duncan, the president of the United Canarsie South Civic Association, whose basement on 93rd Street filled to a depth of 41 inches. To make matters more challenging, many residents" losses were not covered by insurance. "The mortgage crisis is only getting worse in Canarsie, and it's been exacerbated by Sandy," said Angella Davidson, who manages the foreclosure prevention program of the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of East Flatbush. People who already were struggling to pay their mortgage are now falling further behind, because they're using money that should be earmarked for their mortgage to replace boilers and Sheetrock. And Sandy has forced people who were not in foreclosure to face potential foreclosure. As of June, more than 10 percent of one- to four-unit properties were in foreclosure in the 11236 ZIP code, the bulk of which is in Canarsie, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Still, nonprofit groups like Neighborhood Housing have helped keep some in their homes, often by renegotiating loan terms. What Canarsie has going for it as it tries to recover, brokers say, is an established reputation. "It's not a poor neighborhood, and it's not a forgotten neighborhood," said Paul Schwartz, an associate broker at Fillmore Real Estate. Certainly it's not the suburbs, but it's a real solid, well-known, well-liked New York neighborhood whose residents are beyond loyal. One such loyalist is Monya Jackson, who teaches surgical technicians how to assist in the operating room. In 1998, in part to stay close to her mother, who lives nearby in East Flatbush, Ms. Jackson paid $143,000 for a two-family house on East 94th near Flatlands Avenue. "I love Canarsie because it's so diverse," she said. I'm African-American, but there's a synagogue on the corner, and I've got Jewish neighbors, and there's a pastor down the block. Everyone is very attentive to each other. Two years ago Ms. Jackson and her husband, Kenroy, planned to move because their daughter, who has cerebral palsy, was getting too heavy to carry upstairs. Their neighbors, a fond bunch, talked them out of it. Now, she said, her family must finally move on. And she knows just where she will relocate: Canarsie. "It really feels like a neighborhood in the classic sense," she said, "and my mom and I feel really safe here." Canarsie is bounded on three sides by water: Jamaica Bay, and Fresh Creek and Paerdegat Basins. Along its Paerdegat shore are arrayed yacht clubs, an athletic club and the nonprofit Sebago Canoe Club. The pleasant adjacent blocks, known as the Paerdegats, are lined with orderly rows of attached red-brick homes, many of them two-families. The greenest section is within Seaview Village, from around East 98th to 108th Street, south of Avenue L. The houses from East 105th to 108th are mostly detached and tend to have the largest backyards and the most suburban ambience, said Jean-Paul Ho, the broker-owner of Brooklyn Real Property. Seaview Estates, a five-building gated condominium with a swimming pool and a tennis court, is on 108th at the neighborhood's southern edge. Large houses built in the 1910s and 1920s can be found above Flatlands Avenue. Many were subdivided during the Depression, Mr. Ho said. Rockaway Parkway is a bustling commercial corridor lined with Jamaican bakeries, jerk chicken shops, cellphone stores and a few shuttered storefronts. The Canarsie Plaza mall on Avenue D has a BJ's wholesale club, a Planet Fitness and a PetSmart. Next door, the Brooklyn Terminal Market sells plants, fruit and West Indian produce like sugar cane. Canarsie's population has changed over the years. Home in the 1960s and 1970s primarily to middle-class whites, it has since drawn many people of Caribbean heritage. Some 80 percent of its 83,693 residents are black, according to census figures, while Hispanics account for 8 percent, whites for 6 and Asians for 3. Houses are mostly one- and two-families, attached, semidetached and detached, said Mr. Schwartz of Fillmore Real Estate. Mr. Schwartz said one-families were selling for an average of $350,000 or so, a tick above last year but still down from 2007, when the average was $400,000. As for two-families, he said, "We have smaller ones to monster ones, ranging from the low 400s to about $600,000." In 2007 the range was $450,000 to $725,000. Mr. Ho says one popular type of two-family is the 1960s-era "Waxman split-level," a three-bedroom unit over a one-bedroom rental with a separate entrance. These are selling for around $550,000, he said, up a bit from last year's range of $500,000 to $525,000. Properties typically sell in 60 to 120 days. "Canarsie has not recovered much from the mortgage crisis," Mr. Ho said, "but you can feel it in the volume of transactions. Nothing was selling last year, but now the activity is there. A search on Streeteasy.com found 129 properties for sale and 6 for rent. One-bedroom rentals were listed around $1,200 a month. Canarsie Park, 132 acres by the waterfront, has been handsomely redone in recent years. Improvements include a fitness trail with exercise stations; a cricket field where the Mayor's Cup Cricket Tournament finals have been held; and a snazzy $2.13 million skate park, where skateboarders from all over the city gather to shoot videos for YouTube. The second of two playgrounds is also under construction. Canarsie Pier, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, is a lively gathering spot where the sounds of stereos and gulls mix with the jingle from a Mister Softee truck. Fishermen catch fluke and bluefish while families picnic or set forth on ranger-led paddle trips to the nearby island of Canarsie Pol. Three public elementary schools in Canarsie scored B's on their most recent city progress reports: Public School 115 on East 92nd Street; No. 272 on Seaview Avenue; and No. 276 on East 83rd Street. P.S. 114, on Remsen Avenue, got a D. Of two public middle schools, Intermediate School 211 on East 100th got an A while I.S. 68 on East 82nd got a C. At the High School for Medical Professions on Rockaway Parkway, SAT averages in 2012 were 386 in reading, 380 in math, and 393 in writing, versus 434, 461, and 430 citywide. Many Canarsiens board the L, the area's only subway, at its terminus at Rockaway Parkway, near the northern edge of the neighborhood. Some residents take the BM2 express bus, which reaches Lower Manhattan in about an hour. The Belt Parkway hugs the southern edge of Canarsie. Drive times are about 45 minutes to Downtown Brooklyn and an hour to Lower Manhattan. In the 1950s and 1960s Canarsie became both more populated and less soggy, as marshes were filled in to provide land for houses and apartment complexes, according to the Encyclopedia of New York.