A Notorious Neighbor Leaves City in Quandary

It took Denise Cross less than a day to realize that Angel Gonzalez was not the tidy, personable neighbor she had hoped for when she moved to idyllic-looking Calle Quebracho last year.

“Our first night sleeping in the house, we were rudely awakened at 6 in the morning,” Cross recalled. “He was chopping up a piano and throwing it out on the lawn. Then he threw the ax out in the street and told all the neighbors to go get it. Then he sang at the top of his lungs.

“I thought to myself, ‘Welcome to the neighborhood.’ ”

For the past year and a half, the residents of this modest street have lived through a suburban nightmare.

Neighbors and authorities say that Gonzalez, the former owner of a Thousand Oaks hair salon, frequently walked the streets with a machete, chopped up countless pieces of furniture on his lawn, smashed panes of glass on his driveway, set fires in his living room and was responsible for numerous other disturbances, going in and out of jail.

While behind bars, Gonzalez, 39, allowed his home to become a haven for vagrants, who burned the remaining furniture to keep warm, painted the backyard shed fluorescent pink and fought and drank until dawn almost every night, neighbors said.

He even penned a letter to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department to inform authorities that his new tenants were welcome.

“The people living in that house were not the typical middle-class types you see on Calle Quebracho,” said Ventura County Fire Capt. Kirk Brown of Fire Station 34, a block away from the notorious abode. “We knew the place was going to burn sooner or later. It was a bad situation.”

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Last June--only a day after the city declared the house unfit for habitation--a suspicious blaze engulfed part of the place. When officials tried to reach Gonzalez to force him to make repairs, they received some unsettling news: Gonzalez is on the lam.

A judge issued a $5,000 bench warrant for Gonzalez last year after he failed to appear in Ventura County Municipal Court on a probation violation. In the past 18 months, he has been convicted six times of minor crimes ranging from jaywalking and drug possession to vandalism and failure to pay child support, court records show.

Now Thousand Oaks housing officials are considering what may be their only option for cleaning up the house on Calle Quebracho once and for all: buying it and fixing it up themselves.

However, when the issue was raised in a recent City Council meeting, Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski questioned whether the city should enter the business of purchasing single-family homes. The council agreed that the city should speak to nonprofit housing groups about helping out with the property.

“Obviously, we’re concerned about the safety and habitability of the house,” said Thousand Oaks housing manager Olav Hassel. “The owner has disappeared. Neither the city nor the trustee has been able to reach him.”

Gonzalez defaulted on his home loan, and the property has been scheduled for a trustee’s sale three times since May, according to Deputy City Atty. Jim Friedl.

But each time, Fleet Mortgage of Wisconsin withdrew the property from the county’s foreclosure list. Gonzalez is still the owner. Officials with the mortgage company could not be reached for comment.

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Whether Thousand Oaks buys the home or not, city officials hope to convince the company to sell it soon. If the city decides to use public housing money to purchase the site, city officials would then have to sell it to a low- or moderate-income family, Hassel said. Because of its current condition, the house would probably cost about $160,000 to purchase and repair, he added.

David Marshall, who lives directly across from the dilapidated, boarded-up house, said he recalls when it was the envy of residents on Calle Quebracho.

A mason owned the house before Gonzalez, Marshall said, and the man made an impressive array of improvements, including a cobblestone driveway and detailed woodwork throughout the interior.

“Then Angel bought it,” Marshall said. “It only took him about two months to trash the entire place.”

Marshall, a Chicago native, said he had met his share of eccentrics in the Windy City. But Gonzalez’s frequent outbursts surprised him--and made him concerned for the safety of his three children, he said.

“Huge pieces of ash were floating from his chimney and hitting my roof,” Marshall said. “It was nuts. I thought the neighborhood was going to burn down.”

When Gonzalez began throwing small explosives onto the street, Marshall confronted his neighbor. Gonzalez effusively apologized, saying it would never happen again, Marshall said. But the weird behavior continued.

Gonzalez began to walk the street and sing loudly at 10 p.m. every night. When neighbors asked him to stop, he moved the act to his backyard.

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Many neighbors on the street decided to keep their children inside, fearful of Gonzalez. And when he went to jail, his strange friends continued to trouble residents.

“It was just a house that was creating problems for everyone in the neighborhood,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Patty Dryer, who helped residents organize a Neighborhood Watch group. “Strange goings on. People urinating in the streets. People stealing firewood from homes.”

Cross, who moved to Calle Quebracho with her husband and two children, said she seriously considered moving out after that awful first night.

“The Realtor didn’t tell me about that,” she said.

But Cross likes Thousand Oaks and Calle Quebracho, despite her scary introduction. She plans to stay put--unless Gonzalez comes back.

“We looked high and low for a place that was safe and quiet, and lo and behold, this is what we got,” Cross said. “What an experience!”