Sliding Fortunes : Homeowner’s Mansion Slips Away, Then New Home Is Robbed

Two months ago, Allen White was comfortably ensconced in his million-dollar mansion in the hills above Sherman Oaks.

But that was before the lot that holds the two-story, streamlined structure--complete with a Japanese meditation garden--began sliding down the steep grade behind it. Worried city officials banished White from his home of 15 years, afraid the house might suddenly tumble down the hillside.

The woes of a man who had considered himself an “insulated CEO type” were just beginning. Still to come were two burglaries and the memorable night he was held up at knifepoint--in his own bedroom.

“My life is a complete disaster,” he said.

The corporate consultant now leases a house on Cedros Avenue but, often unable to concentrate on business, returns to his hapless home on Longbow Drive to hunt for signs of further slippage and research a nearby development that he believes triggered the slide.

“This gaping hole has opened in the earth, swallowing my deck and coming up to the edge of the swimming pool,” said White, a ponytailed 51-year-old. “The pool is on the verge of sliding down the hill.”

Now, an irregular fissure from two to 10 feet wide and about 30 feet deep slashes through White’s back yard. Land beyond the crevice has sunk about five feet, and cracks in the cream stucco of the house indicate that the front of the lot is on the move too, White said.

It is not known whether other homes in the neighborhood are affected.

White said he never had problems until a developer started grading the hillside below his home to create a pad for a 6,000-square-foot, two-story house on Vista Haven Road. Fill had been used to bolster the hillside when the neighborhood was built in the 1960s, city officials said.

The home builder, Bernard Weitzman, said that the fissure developed as a result of water leaking from White’s pool. “Mr. White is way out of line,” he said.

Geological experts hired by Weitzman’s contractor are preparing reports on the slide. City officials will review the reports to decide what, if anything, can be done to stop the slippage, said David T. Hsu, a geotechnical engineer for the Department of Building and Safety.

White bought the house as a place to raise his daughter, Vanessa, as well as for entertaining international business guests. Full orchestras would play for parties on the multitier redwood deck.

The problems began in mid-August when his pool man noticed the pool was losing water. White also smelled gas and soon learned that pipes had broken beneath the deck, where the fissure, at that point unseen, was growing.

White contacted city officials, who heard the noise of cracking rock during an inspection and ordered White to vacate the house within four hours.

“It might all of a sudden just slide down,” Hsu said. “There’s always the possibility there.”

Officials also ordered the contractor to stop grading the lot below.

White, meanwhile, settled into the leased house on Cedros. Then his fortunes really started slipping.

Burglars broke in on Aug. 24 and stole goods worth more than $12,000. Two weeks later, as White relaxed at home, three men suddenly appeared in the bedroom and demanded money from White and a friend at knifepoint. No one was seriously injured and the robbers escaped.

Last week, he discovered that burglars had also ransacked the falling Longbow residence, taking statues, paintings, suits, hats, computer equipment and business records.

“Here’s a little guy who lives in the summer in Geneva and has never been a victim of crime,” White said. “All of a sudden, everything is stolen and I’m robbed at knifepoint.”

But the house remains the true trauma.

As the ground slips, bills for lawyers and geologists mount. He had hoped to sell the house, but that option, of course, now seems distant, White said.

“This is like a Laurel and Hardy movie,” White said. “I teach meditation, and without that I would have gone crazy.”