Couple Pays the Price to Save Home

From their two-bedroom bungalow nestled high in the Hollywood Hills, Michael and Erin White have a commanding view of the San Fernando Valley as it stretches out beyond the Hollywood Freeway and Universal City.

But since last year’s El Nino rains chewed away a portion of the hillside surrounding their Pacific View Drive property, the couple have had little time to enjoy the rarefied air or the scenic vistas.

They have been focused on saving their biggest investment: the home that Michael paid $190,000 for in 1986 and that the pair are now spending $200,000 in loans and personal savings to rebuild.

The couple said they had flood insurance, but since the damage was from rain that caused mud to slide from under their home--and not into it--the insurance company refused to reimburse them.

As the bills stacked up, the Whites have stayed above water with the help of family and government loans.

“If I had known that it was going to be as difficult as it was, I don’t know if I would have done this,” said White, a Los Angeles County Superior Court clerk.

“We thought we had a chance to save it, and I didn’t want to look back and say we didn’t try,” added his wife, Erin, a former court clerk who now works for Calstart Inc.

Some might consider the work a lot more trouble and expense that it was worth. But the home in which the Whites exchanged wedding vows was a labor of love.

“The house was like a dream come true for me and I put everything I had into it,” said White, who scraped together a down payment with the help of his mother and his part-time job as a musician. “I worked my butt off to keep the place.”

The couple knew El Nino could pose problems and had been preparing for the deluge by repairing drains and placing tarps on the hillside. But they did not anticipate its fury.

The elements pummeled their house. Sheets of rain cascaded off the roof like a waterfall, White said.

By the time the storm subsided, tons of dirt had fallen from underneath the home--leaving a mini-canyon that dropped 25 feet from their bedroom.

The Whites, who were spending nights on their living room floor on plastic air mattresses, spent $31,000 in loans and savings just to shore up the hillside.

Then came the next series of crushing bills: $5,500 to remove dirt from neighbors’ driveways, $4,800 for a soil engineer, $6,000 for a structural engineer, $2,500 for a building plan, $2,000 to pull city permits, $50,000 to grade the hillside and $51,000 to Femme Fatale Development, which Monday brought in a giant crane to sink steel caissons into the bedrock.

The Whites say things should be back to normal in several months and say they are hopeful they can cover the debt with lots of help from relatives, the Small Business Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Sometimes you buy something with your heart and not so much your head,” White said. “Maybe we’re idealists, but if you’re going to live in Los Angeles, there’s no better place. And we know because we lived here all our lives.”