COLUMN ONE : Battling Nightmare Neighbors : Tempers rise and property values fall as homeowners fight to clean up the eyesore next door. The law offers little relief against fetid swimming pools and towers of trash.

Trashers. They’re the neighbors from hell who can turn a pristine landscape into a festering eyesore.

They don’t clean their swimming pool. It fills with algae, and clouds of mosquitoes hover over putrid water. They disembowel cars in their front yard. They heap old tires, tattered clothes and broken vacuum cleaners into a junk pile that kills a once-green lawn.

It only takes one trasher to sour a neighborhood, send real estate prices plummeting and set homeowners at one another’s throats. No one knows how many trashers wreak havoc in Southern California neighborhoods, but every year city and county agencies field thousands of complaints and spend precious resources battling blight.

“If taxpayers were to become aware of the hidden costs associated with nuisance property, they would be shocked and outraged,” says longtime Santa Ana neighborhood activist Jim Walker. “We are talking about literally millions of dollars spent yearly.”

Even harder to reckon is the emotional cost.

Dave Flynn, who lives in Huntington Beach, has a neighbor whose yard is so strewn with debris that he and other neighbors eventually sued her. Flynn, an easygoing, comfortably well-off owner of a sign business, isn’t given to threatening language--until the woman who owns the home in question is mentioned.

“If it was legal to kill her, I would,” he says.

Ugly urban versions of the McCoy-Hatfield feud are played out across hedges and over chain-link fences with escalating intolerance. On one side are people who revel in the American reverence for exercising property rights, right or wrong. On the other are those whose misgivings grow as the neighbor they had dismissed as merely eccentric starts to collect scrap metal--on the lawn.

Not in my neighborhood, you say? That’s what David Pulsifer of Santa Clarita thought.

The Massis were Pulsifer’s neighbors--one house away--and his poker-playing, softball-tossing, bowling buddies in a middle-class tract 30 miles north of Downtown. They attended each other’s parties, celebrating New Year’s, Christmas and Halloween. Vicki Massi was Pulsifer’s friend. Her daughters baby-sat his three kids.

Then Vicki Massi got a divorce and a boyfriend moved in. Almost immediately, busted photocopying machines, kitchen pipes, beach umbrellas and bicycles began to stack up in her yard. At times the pile towered more than 10 feet, blocking a spectacular view of the San Fernando Valley.

Worse, the junk sparked an invasion of cockroaches; the Pulsifers’ beagle, Freckles, and neighborhood cats began retrieving dead mice. Pulsifer would put items out for trash collection--doors and window frames damaged by the Northridge earthquake--and wake up to find them in Massi’s yard.

When Massi and her boyfriend ignored Pulsifer’s polite requests to remove the junk, he cried for help. Pulsifer, a utility supervisor, called the city code enforcement department. He wrote letters to members of the City Council, attaching a copy of a petition signed by 65 neighbors. He wrote and phoned Mayor Jo Anne Darcy.

He and his wife, Catherine, also called the county health department, the vermin-control program, the sheriff and the county fire marshal. Then they called the newspapers. They’ve spent three years calling for help, spending an average of 10 hours a week making calls and writing letters.

Why is it taking so long?

Because Massi was “unwilling,” said Darcy, who also is a senior field deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. “We have been after them for two years. They do a little, move things around so you think they are going to make the effort and we leave them alone. But they are just pack rats. They have turned it into a junkyard; it’s a nightmare for those neighbors.”

Extreme cases of trash-hoarding often have the earmarks of obsessive-compulsive disorder, said Dr. Alexander Bystritsky, an associate clinical professor at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and director of the Anxieties Disorder Program. “These people are afraid to throw things away because they believe there may be something important. It’s usually not realistic.”

Residents who get into fights with trashers--even when the problem is a modest one--often realize, with growing frustration, that they have little recourse.

Most of the time, officials say, orders from public agencies will prompt cleanup. But when the offender is recalcitrant, the problem can drag on. Laws have no real teeth. Agencies can fine property owners or, in the case of the fire department, bill for necessary work such as cutting overgrown weeds. If the homeowner continues to flout the order, the case is turned over to the district attorney or city attorney.

However, it’s usually a long road to court. In the San Fernando Valley, where the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department receives about 10,000 complaints about neighbors each year, fewer than 1% reach the city attorney, said Bill King, a department supervisor.

“You need patience, because the law is designed to provide time for the violator to comply, and sometimes that seems excessive to the person who has to put up with the nuisance,” said Tom Stevens, a principal city inspector.

Lack of staffing complicates the response. In a cost-cutting move, Los Angeles reduced city building and safety personnel almost 10% in two years. The number of Los Angeles County health inspectors dropped almost 20% in the same period. Orange County’s staff of zoning code enforcement inspectors has been trimmed 60% since 1988.

“There are not enough health, building and safety inspectors to go around, and that’s because there’s no funding,” said Bonnie Kopp, a deputy in Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude’s office.

The poor economic climate and, in some cases, increased mixing of cultures have contributed to fraying relations, experts say.

“People today are not as tolerant of neighbors. If you treasure your space, you get more and more upset about people who make it unpleasant for you,” said Melanie Greenberg, deputy director of Stanford University’s Center on Conflict and Negotiation. “In the early century, you expected a certain amount of noise and intrusion. Over the decades, as people started putting up more boundaries--cocooning more in front of the TV--there was less emphasis on community and more emphasis on family.”

One person’s minor peeve becomes another’s major passion. Scott Sullivan grits his teeth every time he drives by his West Covina neighbor’s yard, which has become a repository for what he angrily calls “car carcasses,” autos in various states of disassembly.

Sullivan, a bottled water delivery man, used to live in a Montebello apartment. He saved his money and bought the home where he lives with his wife and three children.

“I didn’t move here for that,” he said in disgust. “It just cheapens the area. It’s just something you don’t want to see. You know it’s going to worsen--the grass around (the cars) turns into weed stocks, parts of lawn don’t get water. It’s a rotting piece of metal now.”

If he could figure out whom to call, Sullivan said, he would. Instead, he seethes as he drives by. “I gotta look at it every day. That bothers me.”

Several blocks away, the neighbors have another problem: a homeowner has stopped tending the yard. A large tree has toppled into the back yard and rests on the gray rock roof of the ranch-style home. The water in the swimming pool has turned into a slimy green-brown stew.

“Mosquitoes flourish on that water,” said Balbir S. Dhillon, a county environmental health specialist as he peered over the fence.

For those who live nearby, the ill-kept home is a slap in the face.

“It makes me feel kinda mad--we put so much work into our yard. We have a little fountain that we make sure is always clean,” said one homeowner, who asked that her name not be used, fearing her remarks could ignite a feud.

The woman said she’d chosen her house with painstaking care after her 4-year-old son had been hit by a car outside her former La Puente home. The accident left him in a coma for three weeks. He cannot walk. She worries about the neighbor’s pool because her son, now 11, is allergic to mosquito bites.

“We searched so much,” she said. “I was picky about the house, picky about the back yard, the neighbors.” She sighed. “My other neighbors have pools and they are sparkling clean.”

*

This problem developed fairly quickly. In Huntington Beach, David Flynn’s misery germinated more slowly. It was almost four years ago that he moved into the quiet Huntington Harbour neighborhood, where homes fetch $450,000 to $3 million. At first he thought Elena Zagustin, who lived across the street, was merely odd.

Believing she was impoverished, Flynn said he offered to help clean up her house, where old dishwashers and decrepit cars sat in the unkempt yard. But he said Zagustin, an engineering professor on leave from Cal State Long Beach, rebuffed his offer.

Flynn quickly learned that he had moved into a tony neighborhood where one of the yards had a long, troubled history. He tried to ignore the junk in Zagustin’s lawn. When the nearby supermarket remodeled, Flynn said, he woke up to see portions of the old store, even chunks of concrete, plopped on the lawn across the street.

“You know what’s embarrassing--every single person who visits says, ‘What’s that ?’ ” Flynn said. “You cannot have anybody come to the house and not have to explain. It would be like opening a toxic waste site in the end of a cul-de-sac.”

Zagustin’s attorney, Dale Peroutka, said his client did not want to be interviewed. He said he did not believe her home posed “any health hazard. She just doesn’t maintain her yard to their exquisite standards. I’m not saying they are wrong or right--it’s a conflict, a difference in personalities.”

Flynn decided that no government agency had a club powerful enough to prompt Zagustin to clean her yard--a goal of his neighbors for more than seven years. In fact, Zagustin’s Huntington Beach code enforcement file is the fattest in the city’s history and includes records of 21 inspections and four criminal complaints.

Flynn learned of a 1989 Oakland case in which a resident teamed up with others in small claims court and successfully sued a problem property owner. So Flynn and two dozen neighbors sued Zagustin for emotional distress in small claims court. They were awarded $90,575 last summer. In December, a Superior Court judge upheld the decision and increased the judgment against Zagustin to $110,000, plus more than $6,000 in attorney fees.

Although they have not yet received the money, it was a victory for the neighborhood. But it was not a solution. Zagustin cleared out her front yard, covering the weeds with concrete, and began piling garbage and debris in the back.

“We just want her to move,” Flynn sighed. “We don’t want her to clean up, because she’s not capable of keeping it clean. We just want her to move--you are never going to fix this woman.”

That’s the way Vicki Massi’s neighbors on Drasin Drive in Santa Clarita feel about her.

Massi seems to reflect both defiance and shame when she talks about her conduct. She’s been cited scores of times by dozens of agencies. She has been forced to clean up, and yet waves of debris flow back to fill her yard. When city officials told her for the umpteenth time in February to remove the junk, a Ping-Pong table appeared atop the heap facing Massi’s neighbors. On it, in bright orange spray-painted letters was: “Nice try, Worms!”

Massi believes most of the stuff piled in her yard is useful and feels that her neighbors are harassing her for having a yard that doesn’t blend in with theirs.

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” she said. “I am so tired of these people around here. If they could only see themselves--it’s just sick. Their lives are so small and petty and boring that all they do is look out the windows. I don’t look out the window at them.”

Massi couldn’t look out most of her windows, until recently. Old chairs, hats, tables, pieces of china, boxes of silk flowers--all carefully culled from trash cans and Dumpsters--filled her house from floor to ceiling. Most rooms were impassable; others could only be reached by narrow passageways chiseled among the towers of boxes and dunnage.

Now, under an order from the district attorney’s office, Massi has launched yet another cleanup. When a longtime friend visited recently, she exclaimed: “Vicki, I never knew you had a living room.”

Even under orders to clean up within 45 days, Massi feels a powerful pull to return to the streets, cruising for treasures. Now, however, she only goes out under cover of night, hidden from her neighbors’ hostile stares.

“You get kind of a rush like alcohol would give an alcoholic or a gambling person gets from a casino,” she said. “When you find something, it’s exciting and when you are able to have this thing--that feels tremendous.”

There are no such shivers for her neighbors, only bleak questions.

“How am I going to sell my home?” Catherine Pulsifer asks. “Would you buy my house?”

Countering a Neighborhood Nuisance

If you have a nuisance neighbor, here are several measures to take:

* Contact officials: Call your city council representative or county supervisor and ask for the aide who routinely handles such complaints. Let the aide know your problem and make sure to get the aide’s name. Find out which agencies the aide will call on your behalf and the names of people at those agencies who will handle your complaint. Many agency officials say complaints coming from city or county representatives are given priority.

* Deal with the right agencies: Make sure you understand which agency is most appropriate for your complaint. Several agencies handle certain complaints; call them all. Officials say the more agencies that are involved, the more likely you will see a speedy resolution.

* Be familiar with procedures: Agencies handle complaints differently. For non-life-endangering problems, for instance, the county health department will mail a letter, asking for correction. If the agency hears nothing further, it will assume the problem was addressed. The city’s building and safety inspectors, on the other hand, will try to inspect the problem within 72 hours.

* Keep track: Keep a log of your calls (dates, names and agencies).

* Take pictures: When possible, photograph the problem, such as junk in the front yard. Date the pictures.

* Check with others: If your neighbors are concerned too, perhaps you can make multiple calls. The more people involved, the more likely your problem will be addressed.

SAMPLE PROBLEM: AGENCY TO CONTACT: Cars parked on lawns Building & Safety Weeds or uncleared brush Fire Debris or junk in yard Health, Building & Safety, Fire Noisy parties Police or Sheriff Loud machines in home Building & Safety Rodents and vermin Health