Efforts to Raze Burned House Turn to Ashes in Legal No-Man’s-Land

The most eye-catching thing about Jackie Bernstein’s hillside neighborhood in Woodland Hills is not the view of the San Fernando Valley spread out beneath Maury Avenue.

The street’s most arresting feature is the burned hulk of a house that sits abandoned in a weed-choked yard alongside expensive, well-tended homes.

Although properties considered eyesores by neighbors are common in many communities, this one has prompted more than a routine across-the-back-fence squabble.

The property has been burned out for nearly two years--since the house fell victim first to an arsonist and then to a dispute involving the federal government and the City of Los Angeles that has delayed its repair.

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Bernstein, who lives across the street from the charred two-story house. “We’ve gone out of our minds trying to get this cleaned up.”

House Continuing Headache

Maury Avenue homeowners contend that the house has been a continuing headache for them since firefighters extinguished the flames shortly after midnight on July 23, 1984.

Residents claim that they have repeatedly had to pressure authorities to board up the house’s windows, drain its backyard swimming pool and remove its front yard weeds. On one occasion, the weeds caught fire and endangered a neighboring house, they say.

They charge that the eyesore has prompted two families to move. “They’d had it,” Bernstein said.

“I just tell guests that it’s a weird story and it’s getting weirder,” said Ralph Holanov, a 20-year resident of the neighborhood whose home overlooks the rear of the gutted house.

“Everybody wonders how long it will go on without being condemned and torn down. I figure the condemnation order is on some government desk and will eventually work its way to the top of the pile.”

Los Angeles officials say they wish it was that easy.

Building Inspectors Reply

City building inspectors have been trying since last July to have the abandoned home torn down, said Alan Wendell, an administrator with the Department of Building and Safety.

Officials ordered the owner to either repair the house or remove it. When nothing happened after nine months, the city decided on April 7 to send its own demolition crew to Maury Drive, Wendell said.

But city procedures give property owners a chance to appeal demolition orders at a pair of building and safety hearings before the crew is actually dispatched. The appeals process generally means a 180-day delay to the demolition, which can be put off indefinitely if a property owner goes to court after that.

Property owner Irving Sofen plans to appeal.

Sofen, a Granada Hills investor, said he got the property six months ago after he foreclosed on a second mortgage obtained as collateral to a loan he made to the owner of the home at the time of the fire.

According to Sofen, however, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is actually calling the shots on the house.

The federal agency holds the first trust deed for the property because it has assumed the liabilities of the failed National Bank of Carmel--the bank that loaned the homeowner money to buy the house.

Anxious to Make Repairs

Sofen said he is anxious to repair the gutted, $300,000 structure. But he said he is unwilling to spend money on it unless the FDIC will sell him the damaged structure “at fair market value.”

He said the federal agency has not responded to his purchase offer. The loan assumed by the FDIC on the burned house was for $450,000, but “the land is not worth that amount,” Sofen said.

FDIC officials, who stepped in to assume a reported $17.8 million in loan losses when the Carmel bank was declared insolvent on May 8, 1984, declined to discuss what their next move on Maury Avenue will be.

“All I can tell you is we have a lien on the property,” said Kathryn Callant, an FDIC bank liquidations specialist in San Francisco.

Others speculate that federal officials are waiting for resolution of a dispute over an insurance claim from the fire. Sofen said the structure was insured for $600,000 to $650,000.

‘It’s a Hot Potato’

“It’s a hot potato. It’s in litigation up to its ears and I can’t comment on it,” one official of Allstate Insurance Cos. said Thursday. The insurance company has not paid the claim from the fire, another company official said.

Los Angeles City Fire Department investigators said Thursday that they concluded that the blaze was set by an arsonist, but gave no other details of the case. Inspector Ed Reed said the arson report is being kept secret because of “possible criminal prosecution.” He said no arrests have been made.

Larry Porush, whose family lives next door to the damaged home, said investigators were more talkative to neighbors after the fire.

“The fire inspector showed me the tracks of gasoline inside that house,” Porush said.

Although the neighborhood pitched in to help fight the fire until firefighters arrived, residents were stymied by the aftermath, he said.

“Nobody knows who should handle this house now,” Porush said.