Trailers Parked on Playground Irk Encino School’s Neighbors

The San Fernando Valley’s newest trailer park has popped up in an unlikely place: the middle of an Encino neighborhood.

Los Angeles school officials have converted an abandoned playground into a parking lot for some of the 1,016 trailers they are acquiring for use as classrooms to relieve crowding at various schools.

About a dozen of the trailers are on the site now, prompting nearby homeowners to complain that their neighborhood is being converted into something of a slum.

“We’re all up in arms about it,” said Ken Raich, who has lived in the area for 13 years. “We’re afraid that next we’re going to have kids breaking in and hobos coming down off the freeway to sleep.”

The trailers started showing up last fall at the playground behind the Hesby Street School--located between the Ventura Freeway and Ventura Boulevard--after the Los Angeles Unified School District leased them to create 508 portable classrooms for overcrowded schools.

Hesby Closed 7 Years Ago

The trailers are not needed at Hesby School. That school’s 16 permanent classrooms were closed about seven years ago and turned into offices for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

School officials say some of the trailers are being shipped directly from the factory to crowded campuses and bolted in pairs to form a single room that can handle up to 30 students. Others are going to a district-owned bus yard in Bell for storage.

Dozens of others have been shipped to Encino.

“We needed a central place that was fairly secure and that was the best location,” Mel Ross, deputy director of building services for the school district, said of Hesby Street School.

But homeowner Scott Wallenberg, whose second-story bedroom window overlooks the trailers, disputes the “best location” description.

‘They Keep Piling Up’

“We woke up one morning and looked out and there was a dozen of them,” Wallenberg said. “They just keep piling the trailers up. They stack them up next to our house.”

Residents say they have complained about the trailer storage to school officials, city officials and every other official-sounding person who will listen.

“I get phone calls about them and I tell the neighbors that the trailers won’t be here permanently,” said Jean Nelson, a secretary in a school district office housed in Hesby Street School’s former classrooms.

“They’re moving them in and out all the time. They’re out of our sight at the back of the playground. But they’re unfortunately not out of the neighbors’ sight. Optimistically, they’re going to be out of here by next fall.”

Brad Rosenheim, an aide to city Councilman Marvin Braude, said he plans to investigate whether the city has the power to get the trailers moved before then from the school district-owned property.

Authority May Be Limited

“We want to see what control we have. My guess is our authority is going to be rather limited,” Rosenheim said this week.

Ross said no additional trailers are scheduled to be delivered for storage to Encino. Those there now will probably be removed by the end of the school year and placed at crowded schools, he said.

Resident Jill Raich said she can’t wait for trailer moving day.

“They’re sitting here when they could be taking care of students. It doesn’t make sense,” she said.