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NORTH SALT LAKE -- A $5 pancake breakfast is a pretty good deal. But you would need to sell 40,000 of them to pay off a $200,000 home.
Still, you have to start somewhere.
"We're just hoping we can get some money to get our neighbors out of there," said North Salt Lake resident Stefanie Christiansen.
Christiansen is talking about the Springhill Drive neighborhood of North Salt Lake, where a slow moving landslide has been eating into homes and foundations for years.
We're just hoping we can get some money to get our neighbors out of there.
–Stefanie Christiansen
"It feels like kind of a cancer. Everyday something new happens and you're just waiting for the time when you will have to leave," said Andrew Merryweather, who lives in the neighborhood.
That's where the pancakes come in.
Residents and volunteers held a fundraiser Saturday morning to raise money for families to move away. With as bad as the area has become, home prices have plummeted.
No one in the Springhill neighborhood can sell their home and many have simply packed up and left it behind. That's what Christiansen plans on doing.
"We will probably move within this next year," she said. "We have tried to get FEMA help. We're still waiting on that, but that is a long shot."
Insurance policies don't cover the landslide, either, leaving many families with mortgages for a worthless house.
It feels like kind of a cancer. Everyday something new happens and you're just waiting for the time when you will have to leave.
–Andrew Merryweather
"It's put us in a really hard place," said Merryweather. "This is our first home. We didn't see the problems at first that you see now."
A few homes have already been demolished. Others have separated walls, windows moved from their frames and buckled foundations.
"Until you're in this situation, you just don't understand," said Christiansen. "Day by day, you're worrying if things are going to fall in on you, where you're going to go, what you're doing to do. We can go downstairs and see a wall buckled in the morning that wasn't there the night before."
City engineers have said it looks like the landslide is now moving around some homes instead of through them. But even then, homeowners know no one is going to buy them.
"It's just sickening," said Merryweather.
Email: acabrero@ksl.com
