Couple Resent Being Looked Down On

The message came to Jeanne Strahl in a flash: Tranquility had vanished from the Encino neighborhood where she has lived for 38 years.

The flash had come from a camera pointed at Strahl from the balcony of a new apartment house that looms over her back yard at Milbank Street and Firmament Avenue.

“I was out in the back one evening, tossing a ball to my dog. They were standing up there taking pictures,” said Strahl, 69.

“They yelled out, ‘Here comes grandma! . . . Is she throwing the ball to the dog, or is the dog throwing the ball to her?’ ”

Embarrassed and humiliated, Strahl led her 15-year-old deaf and partially blind dog, Lucky, inside. It would be a long time before she would get the nerve to venture out to exercise Lucky again.

The back-yard incident two months ago underscored the unsettling impact that a new four-story apartment complex is having on one of Encino’s oldest residential neighborhoods.

The apartment was built under Los Angeles city rules that homeowners contend are far too permissive. The $2.3-million development turned out to be bigger, taller and more intrusive than neighbors had expected.

“I was born in Los Angeles, went to schools here and have lived here all my life,” said Strahl’s husband, John, a 73-year-old retired Lockheed instrumentation technician. “I don’t think the city of L.A. has done very well by us.”

The Strahls had expressed worries about the project last year, when several neighboring houses were demolished to make room for the apartment house. They had been assured at the time by developer Aaron Rosen of Sherman Oaks that their privacy would be protected.

Rosen pledged that the 20-unit complex would not have balconies overlooking the Strahls’ back yard. In May, 1987, Rosen told The Times that only bathroom and bedroom windows would be built on the north side of the apartment house next to the Strahls’ yard.

Instead, three balconies were built directly overlooking the Strahls’ home. Similar balconies also tower over the yards of two other Milbank Street homes.

Rosen could not be reached this week for comment. But the manager of his apartment complex denied that tenants bother neighboring homeowners from their balconies.

“The residents antagonize my people,” said the manager, who declined to identify herself or admit a reporter into the locked apartment building. “There’s definitely a clash here.”

Loss of privacy has sent one of the Strahls’ neighbors packing. Another says he may be forced to leave if the situation does not improve, and a third is preparing to sell and move, fearing that a second intrusive apartment house will be built behind her home on a lot that is next to Rosen’s apartments.

“The feeling around here is, if the first guy got away with building what he built, so will the next guy,” said Phyllis Embree, who placed her Milbank Street home of 36 years on the market three days ago. “Everybody’s really upset.”

Neighbor Dan Hrnjak said shouting and noise from the apartment house’s recreation room, which is a few yards from his bedroom window, often echoes through the neighborhood during early morning hours. “You have to hear it to believe it,” said Hrnjak, a 27-year resident, who plans to wait before deciding whether to move away.

Homeowners say they have often reported the noise, but Los Angeles police advised them that officers give disturbing-the-peace complaints a low priority.

Los Angeles officials, meantime, say that Rosen’s apartment was legally constructed. It is the correct distance from its property line and it is the correct height. Although the apartment’s building permit specified that it would be a three-story building, officials did not count the bottom garage level as a story because dirt is piled onto the walls, effectively raising the elevation of its lot.

Milbank Street resident John Unsinn said a developer planning the new apartment complex next to Rosen’s project has promised that his will be tasteful “garden apartments”-- although, Unsinn said, the builder has refused to show him the plans.

“We’re getting very nervous, truthfully,” said Unsinn, whose back yard apparently will be overlooked by both apartment complexes.

Los Angeles officials say the developer has not yet filed building plans or an application for a building permit.

Tough New Controls

But they concede that the Encino neighborhood is two blocks west of an area that two weeks ago was targeted for tough new controls over the height and density of future apartment and condominium projects.

Areas east of the San Diego Freeway in Sherman Oaks, Studio City and North Hollywood will be restricted to apartment projects that are no more than 30 feet tall under action taken Aug. 11 by the city Planning Commission. Apartment buildings can now be 45 feet tall, measured above “basement” garages.

Cindy Miscikowski, chief aide to Encino-area Councilman Marvin Braude, said the Encino area was excluded from the commission action because there did not seem to be a conflict between apartments and single-family homes there.

She said a zoning-law change sought by Braude would require apartment and condominium developers throughout the city to terrace new projects being built next to houses, stepping the upper stories away from neighboring homes.

That ordinance is expected to be submitted to the Planning Commission for review in October or November, she said.

If the ordinance is eventually enacted, it will probably come too late to regulate construction behind the Milbank Street homes, Miscikowski said.

It’s definitely too late to help Jeanne Strahl.

“They stare at me from the balconies when I go out to trim my roses,” she said. “They yell things like ‘we hate old people.’ I feel like a monkey in a cage--like I’m in a pit performing for them.

“We don’t know where to go. We don’t know what to do.”