Buyers, beware of contamination
To Jonathan Hankins, his story is also a valuable public service announcement: “This could happen to anybody.”
Last June, for $36,000, Hankins bought a Freddie Mac foreclosure in tiny Klamath Falls, Ore., near the California border. Although the two-bedroom house appeared in local police reports as a place where arrests had been made for meth trafficking, Hankins says, there was no documentation of meth manufacturing.
Soon enough, Hankins and his wife, Beth, and their 2-year-old son, Ezra, began having multiple health problems. They all suffered from dry mouth. His wife and son had mouth sores and trouble breathing. He had nosebleeds and a severe sinus headache.
After three weeks, they moved out. They also spent $50 for a meth test and when the results from the lab came back they discovered the home had a contamination level almost 80 times greater than permissible under Oregon law.
“With all these foreclosures coming on the market, it’s sort of like land mines,” Hankins says.
From 1999 to 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported uncovering 21,000 residential meth labs. Their addresses are documented in the agency’s Clandestine Drug Lab Registry (justice.gov/dea/clanlab/index.shtml).
An analysis of state laws by Scripps Howard News Service found that Oregon is one of 28 states with a specific meth disclosure law pertaining to the purchase of a home. In several other states, once the property has been cleaned up, or “remediated,” the owner does not have to tell a buyer about meth contamination. Only 17 states have meth-specific laws requiring landlords to disclose meth contamination to tenants. And car sellers in 42 states don’t have to tell buyers about potential meth residue.
(Under Tennessee law, motor vehicles that are found to have meth contamination are impounded, with a notice submitted to the Department of Revenue. The vehicle’s certificate of title and any subsequent transfer documents will have the words “Methamphetamine Vehicle” on the front.)
Freddie Mac spokesman Brad German said in a statement the lender knew nothing of the Hankins’ house’s meth history: “The Hankins family chose to forgo a home inspection or any other environmental test and bought the home in ‘as-is’ condition.”
Hankins agrees he waived the inspection. He also points out that a meth test is not part of an Oregon home inspection. He hasn’t hired a professional to decontaminate his house because he was told it would cost more than the house was worth. Now Hankins may have the house torn down and the property excavated.
Experts are divided on the degree to which any contaminated home can be rehabbed, how much it should cost, and even how much meth exposure is truly harmful.
Garth Haslem, a Utah certified decontamination specialist, believes meth contamination fears are overdone and says he can clean up a 2,000-square-foot house with minor contamination for $3,000 to $4,000.
Patrick Berge, a program specialist with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, spent several years as a graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee cooking meth in a laboratory setting.
“Even with a controlled cook, you still get meth everywhere,” he says.
Asked if he would consider buying a home that had been contaminated by meth and then cleaned and declared safe, Berge laughs and says, “No. I would not buy a property that had a meth cook on it. Not even one.”
What matters, says Caoimhin P. Connell, a forensic industrial hygienist in Bailey, Colo., is whether the meth left behind rises to a level of “toxicological significance.”
Even smoking meth leaves a residue. For his own “academic amusement,” Connell says he tested five rooms in a cheap motel in Tulsa, Okla. All tested positive for meth, though only one had significant levels.
he Scripps analysis of state laws showed just 14 states require hotels to disclose meth contamination.
Through the website Change. org, which promotes social change by petitions, Hankins is expressing his frustration with Freddie Mac. Still, he’s not bitter.
“It’s an ugly situation,” he says, “but we feel blessed we got out when we did.”