3 condos still mired in muck of '97 slides

There is nothing about these houses that resembles homes. They've stood abandoned for three years now, tilting downhill, a tourist attraction: Seattle's Leaning Condos of Lakeview Boulevard East.

Graffiti has been sprayed on stucco. Christmas trees have been dumped in a driveway, cheap red and green lights still strung around them. Trash - a soup can, a Mickey's Malt Liquor bottle, an old hooded sweat shirt - is everywhere.

People will not soon forget a series of storms that swept through Seattle after Christmas 1996. Hillsides became saturated and began to slide, taking with them soil, trees and houses. The three houses of the 1515 Lakeview Boulevard East Condominium Association joined others in creaking off their foundations, and on Jan. 3, 1997, at 6 a.m., their residents were given five minutes to evacuate.

While most of the homes damaged in the slides have been fixed or torn down, these three remain in limbo. Slowly, time is destroying them.

For the three sets of owners, who say they moved into houses they had been told could survive any weather, there is no relief in sight.

"It gets more and more discouraging every day," said Penny Fukui, who owns the house at 1519 Lakeview Blvd. E., the one leaning the most. "At this point, we don't know what to do."

In August, a King County Superior Court judge blocked a suit filed by the owners arguing that the city bears some responsibility for the slide. They say the city should help pay, because officials approved the condos, which were built more than a year before the present owners moved in. The ruling has been appealed, and it is up to state appellate judges to decide.

(The three owners in the condominium association are also suing the engineers and general contractor. They settled with the developer for an undisclosed amount.)

As long as there is legal action, nothing will be done to the houses, which have shifted but don't appear to be sliding anymore. They will not be torn down. They will certainly not be fixed up. But there is still a mortgage to pay, regardless of whether the owners will live there again.

The debt is building.

"Right now, we're making it on a day-to-day basis," said Bob Ferguson, owner of 1515 Lakeview Blvd. E. He had to sell a car and get a second job to pay the bills.

"If I had to find a price for all this has cost us, it has to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," he said. "How would you feel if you have to pay for a house, but you can't go home to it?"

But someone is clearly living there. A dozen times now, the three sets of owners have called police to rid their homes of squatters. Things will be quiet for a while, but eventually, people return. Fukui is afraid to go there alone. The inside of her house has been completely trashed.

The top two floors are a whirlwind of debris. But it is the ground floor that has taken the worst abuse.

In a bedroom for Fukui's daughter, doors have been torn off, walls covered with graffiti. The floor is littered with old clothes, papers and pornography. There is a strong smell of urine.

Neighbors say they do not notice people going in and out of the houses.

The area around them is part of a greenbelt with an intricate network of trails connecting several colonies of homeless people.

Michael Donohue, director of the Pacific Arts Center, a nonprofit organization that uses art to reach troubled teens, has his office across the street. He said many of the people living in the woods around the condos are teens, runaways who have drifted into Seattle and found a hard life.

For a lot of these youngsters , Donohue said, the condos are a perfect refuge from the weather, a place to crash, to party and to hide. As far as the city is concerned, the condos can just fall down the hill.

It may sound harsh, but in practical terms, this is policy. Alan Justad, spokesman for the Design Construction and Land Use department, said once the city determined the buildings would not pose a hazard if they fell, officials decided not to monitor their stability.

"If there is a danger to property or the public, we'll step in," Justad said. "Frankly, there are a lot of hills in this city that are in motion. But at least with this one, we have no reason to believe there's been a change."

When Superior Court Judge Robert Alsdorf dismissed a lawsuit by the condo owners against the city in late August, he reinforced officials' belief that the city is not culpable for damage. Earlier last summer, another judge dismissed similar claims brought by owners of homes in Magnolia. The city has fought these suits vigorously.

"In our society, people are allowed to use and enjoy their private property," said Sean Sheehan, director of the city's tort-claim section. "The city cannot tell you that you may not use your property. The duty to comply with the codes is on the applicant, not the city."

The owners want to live there again. They've commissioned studies to see if the earth can be made safe for a house again. They've drawn up plans, met with architects, solicited estimates. All told, to rebuild could cost up to $1.8 million.

That's to rebuild, not renovate. Too much has happened there for anyone to want to go back to those homes.

"I can't go in there without smelling all the kids who didn't take baths, who used our toilets even though they don't work," Ferguson said. "It's not the place I bought, not the place I lived in and enjoyed and wanted to be retired in. It's just a building I have to pay for."

John Zebrowski's phone message number is 206-464-8292. His e-mail address is jzebrowski@seattletimes.co.