A House Without a Home : City Workers Haul Away Residence-on-Wheels Built by Transient

As onlookers winced, the two-story house-on-wheels that transient David M. Russell had hewn out of scrap wood tilted crazily before thumping onto a trailer to be hauled to a Thousand Oaks storage yard.

“The whole thing gets down to legislating and micro-managing others’ lives,” said the former UCLA dental student as his makeshift home was hauled away by city workers Wednesday morning.

Russell, now homeless for the second time in 18 months, previously had lived secretly in a three-room attic apartment of a nearby office building for three years before being evicted in 1993.

And Wednesday, resilient to the end, the 41-year-old busied himself with weather-proofing the one-ton structure even as a city crew prepared to take it away from him.

“I just can’t stand it,” said Diane Bennett, who watched as the iron forks of a five-ton front-loader gingerly angled Russell’s handiwork toward the trailer. “I’ve watched him build it and have become very attached to it.”

Until last week, the 15-foot-high patchwork of wood and ingenuity had been taking shape under a palm in a parking lot behind a technology firm on Townsgate Road.

But workers rolled it off company property and to a street curb after being told that the ramshackle shelter--fitted with two small refrigerators, a television and two microwave ovens--violated building codes.

Concerned that it posed a traffic hazard on the street, city officials finally made good on their threats and hauled the ungainly structure to an impound lot, leaving Russell to face winter without a home.

“It’s a no-win situation for us,” Public Works Supt. Mel Henson said.

Russell was alternately impassive and flustered by his sudden change of fortune.

“It’s a damning system,” he said. “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”

The structure, which began in March as a one-man lean-to and grew as Russell wheeled it from business park to business park, is as much a testament to unfettered dreams as a casualty of nonconformity.

“I just can’t understand why he wants to live like that,” said his mother, 68-year-old Eleanor Russell of Seal Beach. “He doesn’t want to take orders. He wants to be his own man, his own boss. . . . But you can’t always do that.”

Though born of need, Russell’s jumble of trash-bin scraps soon became in his mind a prototype of a schooner cabin or a houseboat that could be produced on a mass scale. Then it was hauled off Wednesday morning, recoverable only if Russell can find $800 in impound fees.

“I’ll get on,” he said as he gathered four shopping carts full of possessions. “I’ll just go back to where I was before, with nothing, except whatever skills I’ve picked up.”

Which are not inconsiderable, according to several observers. “He’s obviously a talented carpenter,” said Deputy City Atty. Jim Friedl. “I can’t see why he’s not doing this for somebody, holding down a job.”

Asked by an admiring critic why he did not ply his skills on the job market, Russell nodded toward his two-story creation. “This is my job,” he said.

As word spread of Russell’s impending loss Wednesday morning, employees drifted out of neighboring businesses to watch city workers figure out how to move a dwelling locals call the Winchester House or Pee Wee’s Doll House.

“It’s his baby. He birthed that thing,” said Antoinette Yates, 30, an employee of a local firm.

Wendy Lay, 30, took to the airwaves on a local radio station to reach anyone who might have a vacant lot that Russell could use temporarily.

But the move began. Careful to minimize damage to the bulky structure, Henson coordinated the labors of front-loader driver John Tregaskis and forklift operator Ed Foster.

“I hate to do something like this,” Tregaskis said.

Well-kempt and well-mannered, Russell has long befriended people throughout the Westlake area, raking leaves, gathering shopping carts and pulling weeds.

And Wednesday, as his home was trucked away, he turned to his well-wishers--including members of the loading crew--and said without irony, “Thanks, everybody, for your help, for the season’s blessings that have come my way.”