Property Owner Gets Reprieve : Van Nuys: A building and safety panel extends a deadline to correct code violations on a residential lot, despite many complaints.

One thing is certain about the Van Meter residence in Van Nuys, where assorted structures and motor homes sit on a mostly vacant lot, concealed by a wooden fence bearing two weathered signs that read: “For Sale by Owner. Principles Only.”

The city of Los Angeles declared last March that the property is in substandard condition and gave absentee owner Douglas Van Meter, 54, of Grants Pass, Ore., 30 days to bring it up to building and safety codes.

What’s also clear, four months later, is that the neighbors can’t agree on whether they object to the property at the corner of Peach Avenue and Vanowen Street as a blight, a health hazard to Van Meter’s 87-year-old mother who lives there, or, as some complain, a lure for vagrants, drug peddlers and prostitutes from the Sepulveda Boulevard “corridor” nearby.

“We’ve lived with the problems he’s created over the last five years, and we haven’t appreciated it,” Jack Scrafield, a Neighborhood Watch representative, told the Los Angeles Building and Safety Commission at a public hearing Tuesday in Van Nuys. He added that he had gathered 116 signatures of nearby residents on a petition to deny Van Meter’s request for more time to clean up the tract.

By contrast, Butch Knarr, who told the commissioners that he manages an apartment complex next door, said the Van Meters--including Douglas’ brother, William, 63, who lives on the property with his mother and an elderly male friend--are “very good neighbors. They put a fence up--and, as for the eyesores, he took care of all these problems.”

The commissioners voted 5 to 0 to go along with the recommendation of a city inspector, James Boller, to grant the Van Meters an extension to Nov. 30 to comply with the city’s order to bring the property, zoned R-1 and R-3, up to code.

The hearing was the latest chapter in a clash between the Van Meters and nearby residents who complained to the city Department of Building and Safety that the property is unsightly, hazardous and detrimental to the neighborhood.

On March 27, the department said these components of the Van Meter property violated the city code: a garage and workshop that had been converted into a dwelling unit, a guest house not properly maintained, use of travel trailers as dwellings, storage of vehicles that are “commercial, abandoned, unregistered and inoperable,” a hazardous gas-heated sauna room, a metal storage shed and a poorly maintained covered parking area.

Lewis Snow, a planning and land-use consultant who represents the Van Meters, told the commissioners that safety hazards have been eliminated--a gas line to the sauna was disconnected and a swimming pool dismantled. He added that Douglas Van Meter has been preoccupied with Oregon property in which he has “invested his life’s savings” and is making a “good-faith effort” to comply with the city’s order.

Don Schultz--saying he spoke only for himself and not as president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn.--agreed. “I’ve known Bill Van Meter for about four or five months,” he said, “and I suggested he put the property up for sale and that he might get more money for it than he thinks he can. I’ve seen a change these past four months. I ask the department to show a little heart and give them more time.”

For his part, Douglas Van Meter said before the hearing that his parents bought the property in 1936 for $1,200 and that it served as his boyhood home.

Later, he told the commissioners that his mother, Marjorie, a retired elementary school teacher “cried this morning. She’s cried a lot lately. She’s concerned about losing her home.