THOUSAND OAKS : Homeless Man Wins Reprieve Over Shack

The homeless man whose house-on-wheels was to be towed off a Thousand Oaks street won a 24-hour reprieve Tuesday morning because the two-story, one-ton structure was too ungainly for city equipment.

The new deadline for removing it from Foothill and Sunset drives is today.

If it is still there at 8 a.m., a private contractor hired by the city of Thousand Oaks will haul the towering creation of David M. Russell to the city impound yard, said David Pimentel of the Public Works Department.

In an effort to preserve Russell’s dream, however, a neighboring towing firm said workers Tuesday evening would try to tow the sturdy house of scraps to a site where the 41-year-old man could find peace.

“Dave’s a good guy,” said Todd Campbell of Conejo Valley Towing and Transport. “We’re going to see if we can move it down the street first. We want to give it a test run and see how easy it is to move.”

The structure, which began as a small lean-to on shopping-cart wheels, grew in layers as the months went by, finally reaching its current dimensions--about 10 feet long, 9 feet wide and more than 15 feet high--in a parking lot behind a technology firm.

But the city said the patchwork of discarded materials violated building codes, so workers towed it off the parking lot and against the curb last Thursday.

Now the city says the bulky shack must be removed because it poses a traffic hazard.

“He’s obviously a talented carpenter. . . . We just want to make sure we don’t just summarily move it and destroy it,” Deputy City Atty. Jim Friedl said.

Even with his housing future in doubt, Russell busied himself Tuesday with raking leaves from the gutters along Foothill and Sunset: property owned by the city that might destroy his home.

“Anyplace we stay in we leave as clean or even better than it was before we got there,” Russell said.