ANAHEIM : Some Slide Residents Seek Condemnation

City officials will meet this week with several Anaheim Hills residents who have asked that their landslide-damaged homes be condemned so they can deduct their losses from their taxes.

Before agreeing to condemnation, city officials say they want the residents to understand that they will still be responsible for their homes and will still have to pay for demolition or repair.

“I think some (residents) are operating on the assumption that if the house is condemned, they can take a walk,” Fire Chief Jeff Bowman said. “That’s not the case, and that’s why we want to talk.”

Bowman said that the day of the meeting has yet to be determined and that it is unclear how many homeowners want their homes condemned.

But homeowner Gerald Steiner, who has been sending newsletters to other evacuated homeowners, said he and perhaps 12 other owners want their homes condemned. City officials say 33 homes have been damaged by the slow-moving slide, which began slipping Jan. 18, nine severely.

Steiner said Internal Revenue Service officials told him that he can apply his losses against taxes he paid in 1990 and 1991, his yet-to-be filed 1992 return and against returns up to 15 years in the future.

“Condemnation is a way for us to recoup tax we have already paid and use it as a down payment on a new home and allow us to get on with our lives,” Steiner said.

IRS spokeswoman Judith Golden cautioned that the circumstances surrounding each homeowner’s loss are different and advised that each homeowner affected should contact a tax attorney about his or her case.

However, she said, homeowners can claim as a loss only a portion of the actual financial stake they had in the house, not its paper value. For example, if a homeowner purchased a home for $300,000 eight years ago, it doesn’t matter that it was worth $500,000 before the slide. The homeowner can only claim as a loss the $300,000 purchase price, minus 10% of his or her gross annual income plus $100.

Steiner said some homeowners eventually want to move back into their homes and fear that condemnation will require them to tear the buildings down.

But Assistant City Atty. Max Slaughter said if a home is condemned, its owner has two options--demolish the structure or repair it--and the owner may board the home up until he or she determines which option to choose, so long as the home does not pose an immediate danger to others.

In other slide news Monday, Bowman said last weekend’s rains did not affect the slide, which was moving at a rate of less than one-tenth of an inch a day. He said 84 wells are continuing to pump about 200,000 gallons of water a day from the hillside.

Evidence of a slide actually surfaced last spring when several homeowners began noticing cracks in their walls and in their neighborhood’s sidewalks and streets. The city was called in June, and between July 1 and Jan. 17, the slide had moved about an inch.

But on Jan. 18, after 13 days of heavy rain had saturated the area, the slide accelerated. It moved more than 14 inches in two weeks in some spots, splitting the foundation of some homes, buckling walls, and displacing streets, sidewalks and sewer lines.