Meth contamination stuns homeowners

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The minute Jason and Lauren Hardy saw the pristine house, they knew their four-month search for a place they could call their own had come to an end.

The house had four bedrooms and three baths – a perfect size to accommodate the young couple, their toddler and, they hoped, at least one more child. The previous owners had completely remodeled and repainted it. They could see a nearby park from the deck. And it fell into their $180,000-to-$200,000 price range.

“We loved it,” said Lauren Hardy, a stay-at-home mother of a 2-year-old. “It stood out to us. It was perfect.”

They signed a contract to buy the house for $185,000, and about a month later, on March 13, 2010 – after having the house inspected and mitigated for radon – 26-year-old Lauren and 28-year-old Jason were the official owners of their first house.

They immediately began to make it a home.

And then, while Lauren was hanging blinds in the basement, she saw the two syringes in a window well.

The Hardys never moved in.

In a scenario that few homebuyers expect, the Hardys discovered they’d bought a house contaminated by methamphetamine. In this case, the contamination apparently came from people using, not manufacturing, meth. No matter; several samples taken from the house tested positive for meth contamination, and not willing to expose themselves to it any more than they already had, the Hardys haven’t entered it since.

Now, they’re stuck with a $1,114-a-month house payment on a property they can’t occupy, while facing enormous cleanup costs. All their belongings remain in the house.

“This is a familiar story to us,” said Colleen Brisnehan, environmental protection specialist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “It really is ‘buyer beware.’ ”

It isn’t that lawmakers haven’t tried to do something about meth contamination in buildings and other property, including cars. Colorado has set standards for meth cleanups, requires sellers to disclose meth use at a property and allows buyers to opt out of contracts for meth-contaminated homes.

But a number of issues still make it difficult for homebuyers to ascertain whether they’re about to purchase a place where meth was made or used.

• A place where meth has been used is defined as a “drug lab” by the Colorado health department, but not by law enforcement, Brisnehan said. In the Hardys’ case, El Paso County sheriff’s deputies made two meth-related arrests at the house in 2009, including one where the suspect admitted using the drug. But the information never went beyond the deputies’ reports, because there’s no policy or requirement to do so.

• There is no comprehensive database of properties where meth was used or manufactured.

• Sellers can be unaware of meth use or manufacturing in the house, or they can simply plead ignorance, Brisnehan said.

Whether stronger regulations or better enforcement would have helped the Hardys is questionable, because so much seemed to slip through the cracks with the house at 1335 Piros Drive.

The house, built in 1989, went into foreclosure in July 2009.

The bank that serviced the mortgage, Wells Fargo, took ownership and turned it over to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which guaranteed the loan.

Around that time, neighbors were reporting suspicious activity at the house, with people coming and going at all hours of the day. One neighbor called the Wells Fargo office in San Francisco to complain.

No one acted on the complaint. Jason Menke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, says their records show that neighbors called twice in July 2009 to report the property was “not secure,” and Wells Fargo passed along the information to the VA.

The VA did not return phone calls seeking information.

In June 2009, sheriff’s deputies went to the house to check on a complaint about barking dogs and arrested a woman for possession of drug paraphernalia.

About three months later, deputies were called to the house again and encountered the same woman, who admitted she had been “partying heavily the past few weeks,” according to the report. Deputies found meth in the master bedroom and another bedroom. The house was in shambles.

In January 2010, the VA sold the house to a limited partnership, Bridge to Prosperity, for $126,000. Bridge to Prosperity then pumped about $40,000 into fixing it up, with the intention of selling it. William Hal Nabors is listed as the registered agent for Bridge to Prosperity, and his wife, Verna, said they had no idea drugs had been used in the house, so they didn’t have it tested for meth. Consequently, they had nothing to disclose to the Hardys.

“It really shocks me to hear this,” Verna Nabors said. “There were no red flags, or we’d have had nothing to do with it. We would never have purchased the home if there was any trace of meth.”