Man at Odds With City Over Shelter : Thousand Oaks: David M. Russell, who is homeless, may lose his makeshift house-on-wheels because of code violations.

A homeless man who once spent three years secretly living in the attic of a Thousand Oaks office building is on the verge today of losing his second makeshift dwelling, a two-story house-on-wheels he erected from trash-bin scraps.

David M. Russell, 41, who has lived on the streets in the Westlake area of Thousand Oaks since 1978, has until 8 a.m. today to move the patchwork of wood and metal beams--replete with two refrigerators, a television and two microwave ovens--that is parked at Foothill and Sunset drives.

Until Thursday, the 15-foot-high, one-ton structure had been taking shape under a palm in the parking lot behind a technology firm at 2301 Townsgate Road. But the city of Thousand Oaks informed the firm that the ramshackle home violated building codes, so workers towed the structure onto the street last Thursday.

If it is not removed today, the city will have no choice but to haul it to the city’s impound yard, said David Pimentel of the city Public Works Department.

“I guess I’ll be the Grinch after this,” he added. “The irony of the thing is the man has got talent . . . I don’t know why he’s not using it somewhere, why he’s not working for someone.”

That had been Russell’s plan, sort of.

Born of unchecked energy and two discarded file cabinets, the skillfully crafted jumble of discarded wood and wire slowly evolved in Russell’s mind as a prototype for a cabin in a houseboat or schooner that could be produced on a mass scale, he said.

Finally, the rough and tumble of the business world, which he had shunned since dropping out of a pre-dental program at UCLA, seemed less daunting and maybe even worth a try. “I got to thinking, why not?” Russell said.

Others encouraged him, as well.

“He seemed to us like a homeless person who was trying to better his life, trying to do something good with it,” said Phil McMillin, controller of PDX Technologies Inc. “He wanted to try to get it commercialized.”

Before learning that the growing structure violated building codes, McMillin and others had allowed him to work and live in the parking lot “because we were trying to be good Samaritans.”

So was Russell, he said. Russell would clean up garbage and do other small jobs, as he had for other area businesses. “He was trying to earn his keep,” McMillin said.

Russell, who is commonly seen pushing his shopping cart along Townsgate Road, was philosophical after reading Pimentel’s posted warning as rain began to fall Monday evening.

“It’s Square 1 all over again,” he said, voicing little confidence that the city could tow the structure without damaging, if not destroying, it.

“I’ll go back to where I started, which is where I am now, at this moment, at the mercy of the weather,” Russell said.

His mother, Eleanor Russell, 68, of Seal Beach said the former high school wrestler has “got so many talents, he could have been anything he wanted. But he won’t conform to our society.

“He’s not lazy. He works all the time, but only doing what he wants to do. He won’t take orders. He just wants to do his thing,” she added.

This time, his thing has drawn wide notice in its Westlake neighborhood.

“When I saw it, I thought it looked like somebody was building a float for the Rose Parade,” said inspections supervisor Buck O’Shea of the city Building and Safety Department.

“Isn’t this a beauty?” said Scott Cameron as he drove by. “It’s the Winchester House on wheels.”