Mike Smyth: Grow-op nightmares — Could they get worse with legal pot?

Debbie Piete was delighted when she found the perfect tenants for a house she owned in Prince George.

The professional working couple with two young kids seemed like a landlord’s dream: Problem-free tenants who would take good care of the property.

But a few Easter Sundays ago, just as she was getting set to serve holiday dinner for a large family gathering, she got an unexpected phone call.

“It was the RCMP,” Piete told me. “They said they raided the house the night before and discovered a large marijuana grow-op in the basement. I was shocked.”

For Piete, it was the start of a long and costly process to fix the damage in the house and hopefully rent it out again or sell it.

“The first thing you realize is your insurance is void because it doesn’t cover criminal activity,” she said. “I was on the hook for everything.”

That included gutting the basement of the home, repairing the damage and remodelling.

Then there was extensive testing required to ensure the home’s air quality was safe and there was no danger from mould, pesticides or unsafe modifications to the home’s electrical system.

After racking up a bill of $35,000 — not including all the forgone rental income she lost while the home was empty — the house was once again safe to live in.

But now the property had a stigma attached to it. When the house was put up for sale, Piete was required to disclose its history as a drug house on mandatory property-condition reports.

“The value of the house goes down,” she said. “And the reports must be filed with the bank, who are then reluctant to finance the property purchase.”

Marijuana grow-op houses are a common problem around the province and can be a nightmare for the both buyer and the seller of the home.

For property owners victimized by a dope-growing tenant, there may be a temptation to keep the home’s drug history a secret, said Chilliwack realtor Kim Parley.

“That’s a really bad idea,” he said. “You could have a situation where someone buys a home and then the neighbours tell them, ‘Gee I’m surprised you bought this place because it was a grow-op.’ The seller could be in a lot of legal trouble. It can get really ugly.”

Now that marijuana is legal in Canada, the situation could get even more confusing and risky for buyers and sellers, warns Trevor Hargreaves, vice-president of government relations with the B.C. Real Estate Association.

“The landscape has changed dramatically,” Hargreaves said, pointing to new federal regulations that make it legal for people to grow up to four marijuana plants in their home.

“You have one level of government saying it’s OK and legal now to grow cannabis and then a patchwork of municipal governments all with different rules and regulations about how marijuana grow-op homes must be reported and remediated.

“And then you have a provincial government with no standardized regulations for the whole province. There’s an urgent need here for clear policy guidelines.”

A recent study by the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health warned that even within the federal four-plant limit, legal indoor marijuana cultivation can produce health risks in a home.

They include indoor air-quality hazards, accidental poisoning from pesticides and fire hazards from lights and electrical wiring.

“There are currently no provincial regulations for how a property should be remediated after it has been used to produce drugs,” Hargreaves said. “It’s time for the provincial government to harmonize policy and increase consumer protection in B.C.”

The real-estate association is lobbying the B.C. government to adopt a new five-step process for remediating drug properties.

It starts with the discovery of drug cultivation, which would trigger a report to the Health Ministry, and then an inspection of the property by an environmental health officer.

The homeowner would then be required to repair any damage and remove any health hazards, followed by a second property inspection.

The final step would be provincial designation of the home as fully remediated and safe, with any land-title notices removed from the property before it’s rented or sold again.

Liberal MLA Laurie Throness says the NDP government needs to step in.

“Police have estimated there are 20,000 grow operations in British Columbia and there will be many more now that cannabis has been legalized,” the opposition critic said.

“Because most banks and insurers refuse to provide mortgages and insurance for homes previously used as grow-ops, we risk these homes being left vacant or continuing to be used for illegal activity.”

Throness introduced a private member’s bill in the legislature calling on the NDP government’s New Homes Registry office to develop provincewide remediation standards for former grow-op homes.

“Premier John Horgan needs to take swift action to ensure we are able to safely bring these homes to market,” Throness said. “With the way things currently stand, thousands of homes will be unavailable to buyers because of past and future grow operations in B.C. In the midst of a housing crunch, this is simply unacceptable.”

Hargreaves said he met last week with B.C. Solicitor General Mike Farnworth and urged him to take action.

“He’s shown interest in this, but it’s a process they’re just starting to look at,” Hargreaves said.

It could be a complicated process, too, since the reporting, inspection and certifying system could involve officials in law enforcement, housing, health and environmental protection.

All the more reason to get on with it, as legal at-home marijuana cultivation ramps up.

“It should be a priority for a government keenly interested in housing,” Hargreaves said. “In a province where supply and demand is an issue, dealing with this challenge now could certainly add to the inventory of homes on the market.”

I’d say the government has been slow to react on this one, and it’s too bad that the spring session of the legislature is over. This one should rise on Farnworth’s to-do list in the fall.

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