COUNCIL PAYS FOR DAMAGED HILLSIDE HOMES.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera and David Bloom Daily News Staff Writers

Accepting responsibility for actions of more than 30 years ago, the City Council paid more than $4 million for six Tarzana homes that were damaged in the Northridge Earthquake.

Now city engineers are in the process of tearing them down, even though two of them were not damaged badly enough to be red tagged.

The homeowners have gotten their money and long ago moved away, leaving the city stuck with the south-of-the-boulevard property - which it intends to turn into a greenbelt because the land isn't stable enough to support any buildings.

City records show that the City Council agreed to purchase the homes after the steep bank on which they were built collapsed in the Northridge Quake.

The advice from City Attorney Jim Hahn's office to the council was that the city was liable because it had approved a grading plan for the hill in 1961 and also authorized a street widening lower on the hill that destabilized the slope, the records show.

It's a case of the past coming back to haunt the City Council, said Councilman Marvin Braude, whose district includes the Edleen Drive site.

``The city is really faced with a double whammy of policy and fault in this issue,'' Braude said. ``It's responsible like any other owner to correct damage and prevent threats to life and limb. . . . The lawyers are telling us that it would be a prudent investment to make to prevent further litigation.''

Taxpayers are being asked to foot a swelling tab, which could climb past $4.4 million when the council considers authorizing the expenditure of $174,000 to tear down the remaining two houses. The first four were torn down last year.

The expenditure also would cover tearing out the foundations and swimming pools at the sites of the first four homes and landscaping the lots as a greenbelt.

James Jimenez, who lives two doors from the ruined houses, said the work needs to proceed as soon as possible. Not only are winter rains imminent, but loiterers are using the remaining two houses as a place to paint graffiti, start small fires and get into other mischief, he said.

``It's a safety issue as well as a liability issue,'' said Jimenez, an attorney. ``It's really a $174,000 investment vs. a landslide and further liability.''

Funds for the demolition and landscaping work would come from the city's reserve. City officials said they are seeking quake damage repair funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but such money may take years to arrive, if it ever does.

Councilman Michael Feuer raised a concern about the source of funding for the work at a time when the city is badly strapped for cash.

``There's no question we have to act quickly,'' Feuer said. ``The only question is the source of funds. Is there any other source besides the reserve?''

Ronald Morhar, whose home at 18801 Edleen Drive was one of the first four homes to be demolished by the city, said he was content with the settlement and thought it was only fair for the city to pay to demolish the remaining two damaged homes.

``The city should be responsible, and it should take care of it since it was the city's fault this happened in the first place,'' said Morhar, who has since purchased homes in Westwood and Woodland Hills.

For residents, the anticipated council approval of the final expenditure will mark the end of a worrisome nightmare made precarious by living on a ridge vulnerable to slippage. But for the city, the decision is just another in a series made to avoid litigation over a mishap hailing back to the '60s.

The city was forced to purchase the pricey homes, averaging between $500,000 and $750,000 each, after homeowners filed two lawsuits which claimed a street widening project approved by the city in the early 1960s destabilized the hillside and ultimately damaged the homes.

``The city's attorney went over it, the engineers went over it and they felt the city shared some responsibility for what happened there, and that they were liable,'' said Braude, adding that city regulations and standards for building on hillsides were not as tight as they should have been in the sixties.

``If we didn't settle, the costs in court would have been greater. I think it was a prudent settlement in the taxpayers' interest.''

Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the settlement and the additional money spent to demolish the homes means taxpayers will have less money to spend on other city projects.

``It's something that unfortunately happens too often where the taxpayer is called upon to right a wrong,'' Fox said. ``The taxpayer unfortunately becomes the deep pockets when these situations are resolved.''

Braude said other factors like storms as well as homeowner's practices of watering their lawns also contributed to the landslides.

The owners were partially at fault, said Braude.

``There's no question about that, but how much it was their fault, how much it was the builder's fault, how much it was the city's fault, how much it was building and safety's fault is very difficult to assess,'' he said.

Aides to the city attorney said Hahn would not comment on why the city agreed to assume liability for buying the homes because he wasn't familiar with the case.

They referred all questions to Deputy City Attorney Leslie Pinchuk, who refused to answer any questions regarding the case, claiming attorney-client privilege.

In their lawsuits, the families said the problems started in 1961 when the original developer was granted city approval for a grading plan that even the city's own engineers expressed doubts about.

Records show that the city's engineering geologists at the time said the grading plan did not solve the hillside stabilization problems that had been identified earlier.

Recently, in a report to the City Council asking for the money for demolition, the city's engineers acknowledged that the slope on which Edleen Drive rested was unstable prior to the development that was approved by the city.

``During the Northridge Earthquake, a crack opened up through the middle of the pad that severely damaged the houses and indicated that the slope below the residences was unstable,'' the engineers wrote.

When asked about the Edleen Drive homes, Robert Hancock, the city's geotechnical engineer on the case, refused to answer questions about the Edleen Drive houses and referred questions to Braude's aide Bonnie Kopp.

Kopp referred questions on why the city originally approved the grading to Pinchuk who refused to answer questions.

But city records show that the problems with the grading were further aggravated when in 1961 the city also required the builder to widen Brewster Street, which runs along the hillside 75 to 100 feet below the six homes that the city ultimately had to purchase.

Santa Monica attorney Richard Norton, who represented all six of the homeowners in their suits against the city, said the widening of the street by 10 feet was a fatal mistake that rendered his clients' properties ultimately unusable.

``If you take a 10-foot notch out of the hill then the rest of the material wants to slide so that the equilibrium is eradicated,'' Norton said. ``The city's liability for the original cut is why they had to pay.''

Compounding the problem in the summer of 1961, the city approved a plan that called for creating a buttressing wall at the bottom of the hill, stripping much of the unstable soil off the hillside, court records show.

In June 1964 the city approved the developer's slope work and accepted Edleen Drive and the Brewster widening soon after, records show.

By 1978, the homeowners started having problems. The hillside began to sag, with surface soil creeping down toward Brewster, the court records said. Then in the rainy winter of 1992-93, the buttress wall failed, and land sliding became apparent.

According to Norton, the buttress wall - described as an earthen dam of compacted dirt - was smaller than required by the city and didn't hold up.

The 6.7-magnitude quake on the morning of Jan. 17, 1994, was the coup de grace for the properties, causing sliding so severe that the city condemned four of the houses.

``These homes had already suffered a lot of damage because of the landslide,'' Norton said. ``Then the earthquake came along, and they were basically devastated. It looked like a war zone, but that wasn't a result of the earthquake, it was a result of the landslide.''

Five Edleen Drive homeowners filed claims against the city shortly after the earthquake, and the city, without recognition of any responsibility, settled the case out of court, giving the homeowners $3.5 million.

The city paid an additional $700,000 in a settlement with homeowner Marvin Hall, who filed his claim a year after his neighbors but had a similar case against the city, Norton said.

The city's General Services Department, which manages city-owned buildings, spent between $60,000 and $80,000 to demolish the four homes, remove the debris and pay for dump fees, said director of tenant services Bill Koenig, whose department could not afford to pay for the remaining work and went to the city council for more funds.

On Nov. 19, the council's Budget and Finance Committee recommended spending the necessary $174,000. If the full council approves the motion, the funds will go toward removing the final two homes, plus the foundations, swimming pools and retaining wall of all six homes.

The most expensive portion of the project will involve grading the hill appropriately so the water doesn't flow off the parcel and cause further slippage, Koenig said.

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Photo

PHOTO (color) Graffiti covers a Tarzana home abandoned since the '94 Northridge Earthquake.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News