You know how life throws you hardballs when you are not looking? I have had my share and I am reeling from another one but getting through it. We've been talking about water issues and recently I have been working hard to solve a residential water issue - sewage and property easements.
Now to tell you this story, I have to give you a mental picture of the place and some ancillary stories - but I like to do that anyway, right?
I don't deal with issues of 'this' nature, but if you live, you learn. The story begins in the nineteen twenties in Hollywood. Film making was still considered evil and those who were the creators of this medium were thought of as a wild bunch. Rife with decrepit old men messing with the youthful and debauchery running rampant. Los Angeles had lots of City officials who were more like this model. There were Sherifs and Deputies who did unthinkable things. There were politicians who stuffed their pockets and threw the poor out in the street.... gee, it sounds like today! Maybe the characters and their positions have changed... but the model still thrives!
Movies and oil made Los Angeles. Then land speculation. In the twenties in many parts of the nation, the stock market was the big wonderbus. Where you have money to be be made, watch for the feeding frenzy! In the frenzy, some get big gulps most of the lesser get eaten or die from their wounds.
I knew this wonderful lady. I met her when she was in her nineties. As a small child I loved old people because they had so many things to talk about and I loved to listen. Gina made her living as an artist, a painter, and I loved to listen to her talk about the time she made it rich in the stock market before it went bust. Young and pretty she decided, like so many, to invest in the stock market. For a personal reason, she decided to pull out all of her money and travel - ONE month before the crash. She left the US and had fun in Havana, Cuba and Pre-Mao China with her wealth. She wasn't like the Huntington of the railroads that speculated on the growth of California. She wasn't t like the oil and gold moguls either. She just made enough to go off and enjoy life and still have enough for her old age. What a concept!
The Railroads (thanks to Huntington) brought folks to California after the Gold Rush. My grandmother used to describe her experience of visiting her grandmother in Los Angeles, as a journey which ended in the smell of orange blossoms and the sweet taste of orange juice.... an exotic fruit exported to the Midwest. So many in in the Midwest had problems with goiters distorting their necks because of a lack of iodine, or had rickets from a lack of calcium, and others with bleeding gums and scurvy from a lack of vitamin C. In California, iodine was inhaled from the ocean breeze, there were native and imported fruit that grew well in the climate, and the dairy industry found a huge niche. Life seemed so bountiful that a Health Industry flourished offering health to the rich of the Midwest and they brought their artisans to build their homes and design their gardens.
Well, around that same moment in time the Hollywood Hills was being developed and subdivided. It's tough to live in the hills. The southwest mountain ranges and in particular, the Southern Californian mountains, have a geology that is made up of decomposing granite. It's the kind of geology that is prone to mudslides. ~Things like this never stopped developers! ~ So many look at hillsides and think of the flatlands of the Midwest.
Little streets wind up the hills, and even today, folks from other parts of the country come to tinsel town, risk their lives (narrow roads and lots of tourists) to get a shot of themselves with the Hollywood sign, blurry behind them (..or the the sign is in focus and the tourist is not... this momentary gesture depends a lot on who is shooting the picture). You know... they MUST notice the houses that are still lumped in heaps and surrounded in 'caution signs' from the 2005 rains and mudslides... you'd think!
"Oh, honey... Let's move here... look at the view!" (shake rumble crash)
The houses built on the disintegrating mountainside, had problems with sewer lines and electrical power grids and fresh water.... oh, yes, scrubland fires, too. All those who lived there, agreed to work with each other with easements for sewer and water and gas. DWP pumped water up and the Sanitation Department caught the sludge on its way down the hills. And Southern Cal. Gas Company is the most patient and responsive quazi- governmental entity I have encountered in the nation. People in the Hollywood Hills (note* old people who had lived there a time) just put up with exposed cast iron or clay sewer lines. People put up with the eroded and undermined roads from rains -> which were never fixed - we kids played under the 'caves' in the hillside. People put up with a lot of problems just for the view.
The majority of the plots were not nicely cut into squares. Many were pie shaped and their frontage narrowed as the road to their plot followed the curve of the 'draw.' And if the developers did cut them into squares, the angle of the so called large lot was mostly at a 60 degree angle ... or more... and not usable as a grassy yard for throwing footballs. Maybe, chasing the cheese, perhaps....
This other person in my story, who will remain nameless, is a young person, getting a degree in business from a respected university in the community, and is trying to be a developer. A rich developer. This person has said that 'they' have bought, rebuilt, and sold other properties in the area. 'They' have done very nicely in this time of low interest rates and rising house prices. 'They' have invested a lot in a house that was subdivided from a normal sized plot. The house is at the narrow end of a pie shaped lot... at the bottom of the hill. One should always be careful investing in a house which is at the bottom of the hill, and at the apex of houses in the area. ~sigh..
This 'person' as I have said invested in this property and spend a lot of money just to sell and attempted to ignore the situation, and the culture of the area, and the easements, and to forge ahead in an old community that has lived there since the plots were divided. Sometimes, making a killing in the market is not a good idea... and it's all about timing.
I have spend two months investigating how to fix 'this person's' property, the sewer line that runs through it, and to make the community happy in the end. However (dam! if there isn't a "however!!!"), this young person is determined to make the killing. The Health Department, the neighbors, and the history of the house looms like a nasty monster because 'they' want to make a killing. The evidence for 'their' misconduct is strong, and I have not been able to dissuade 'them' from their course. I have exhausted all angles and the one left does not make them 'happy.' ~ sigh~ 'They' do not want to go they way of history and tradition...
Reminds me of a time I got into my grandmother's old - old car... we are talking 1940 something or another.... I got in and it was hot. I said I wanted the window down on my side and she said that I couldn't do that. We were picking up speed down the street. I looked at the handles and said to her as I turned to look at her, "See I CAN open the window!" At which point she screamed and reached over to close the door before I fell out into rushing traffic.