All that Kristi and Justin Keller wanted was a home to call their own, where they could someday raise a family of their own. After years of saving their money for a down payment, they found a nice split-level home in Cannon Falls, that appeared to be just what they wanted.
It was an attractive home with 6 acres of land; a place they envisioned would be a wonderful place to raise a family. The icing on the cake was that it was close to the school where Kristi worked, as an elementary school teacher, about 50 miles southeast of Minneapolis.
Kristi says they made sure that the foundation was solid, the basement was dry, the roof was in good shape, and the house was structurally sound. It all check out. No major problems. So, in December of 2006, they signed paperwork from the seller, that contained a disclosure statement about meth labs. “No” was checked off on the form. It was all good.
Within a few days of moving in to the home, Kristi began noticing some things about the house, that struck her as being strange.
A window had been painted over with black paint.
A shed had vents in it and it locked “from the inside” and there were fuel tanks, that Kristi couldn’t make sense of.
Krista says she began researching the Internet for answers, but it was a discussion with a neighbor that provided her with the truth. Kristi and Justin’s new dream home had been used as a meth lab for years, but it had never been busted. It was something that Kristi and Justin had never considered. Neither one of them knew anything about drugs and none of the many books they bought about buying a house had warned them about buying a former meth lab home.
Within a few hours of talking to her neighbor, Kristi and Justin left their home, in fear of getting sick from the chemicals that remained in the house. Kristi then called the police department and the sheriff’s office to ask if the home had a drug history. The answer was “no”. The only problem that police noted about the house is that there had been three complaints about the house. All of them involved domestic disputes. Nothing was ever mentioned about drugs.
One police report noted that during one of those disturbances, one of the owners of the house threw a baggie at them that they said contained meth. A note about the incident noted that the substance inside the bag tested negative for methamphetamine. Deputies of the Goodhue County Sheriff’s office said they always suspected that the previous owners may have been involved in something illegal, but they never had enough evidence for a search warrant or an arrest.
The seller’s disclosure form, which became required by law in Minnesota in 2005, read “Seller is not aware of any methamphetamine production has occurred on the property.” The disclosure holds sellers liable to the buyer for the cost of the meth lab clean up and attorney fees, if it is determined that the seller lied about the property. But, sellers who lie on the form can not be charged with criminal penalties, under the state’s law.
In June of 2008, the Kellers had their home professionally tested by an environmental testing company for a cost of $1,500. Those tests showed that their home was highly contaminated. They took the matter to court and a judge ordered the previous owner to pay them $100,000, of which, they have received nothing. The previous owner’s lawyer says his client doesn’t have the money to pay them.
The meth lab clean up bill, according to an estimate they received, is $30,000, a cost they aren’t willing to pay. They are too afraid of what’s unknown about the long-term health effects of living in a home that is filled with chemical contaminants. They are talking to their legislators about their home buying experience though and asking that changes be made to the current law.
One option they are considering is making it a crime for a seller to lie on a disclosure form. Another option, they’re considering, is to make sure that real estate agents know about meth labs. Minnesota Representative Doug Magnus does not want to require that a home be tested for meth before it’s sold though, because the testing cost so much. He is considering having the septic systems tested for meth, as a way of determining if a home was used as a meth lab, because he says it’s less expensive.
In the meantime, Kristi and Justin are left with few options. The option they are considering taking is letting the home fall in to foreclosure, an option that will ruin the good credit they once had. The Kellers, like other innocent families who unknowingly buy a contaminated meth lab home, just want to leave their experience in the past so they can regain their strength to begin again.
Meth Lab Homes comment:
If a test had been required on the home before it was sold, this unfortunate experience would never would have happened to the Kellers and others like them, who are essentially victims of the meth lab epidemic in America. The cost of the testing, $1,500 that was paid by the Kellers should have been paid by the seller before they were allowed to put the property up for sale. Sellers can always add the cost of testing to the sale price of the home. With a “clean bill of health” on their home, it would make it alot easier for them to sell their house, as well!
Source:
“Meth turns MN dream home into nightmare”, CBS Channel 11, http://cbs11tv.com/national/home.meth.Minnesota.2.643326.html, 1/31/08, accessed 8/28/09
Read the latest update to this story:
Loading tweets...
another old meth home buyer
Tests are not a fool proof method of learning about a home’s possible former meth lab history. Testing usually is done, one square foot per wall. If the they don’t hit the “hot spot” on a wall a room may be declared clean when it may in fact have toxic residue.
There are cases where not all rooms in a home were tested and since the home had been “professionally cleaned” disclosure was not required when the home was sold. In one case a new family moved in and their small child occupied what turned out to be a toxic room that was never tested.
Does testing include soil testing? Most meth cooks have to dump their waste somewhere and the outside soil, or crawls space most likely will be toxic. What about children, pets, gardeners playing in leftover haz-mat chemical?
Ask neighbors that have lived in the area for 20 years about a home’s history.
It definitely should be a criminal act not to disclose any meth lab history on a property, “professionally cleaned” or not. A person should be able to live in a home they bought. A home is the largest purchase a person will make and they have a right to quiet enjoyment of their home. They should not have to to bear the financial/emotional burden of filing and waiting through a lawsuit to rescind a contract.
Meth Lab Homes
If I hired an industrial hygienist to test my house and they didn’t test several areas in every room, they wouldn’t be getting any of my money. Professional testing by an IH, to determine if the home is a former meth lab, is usually much more extensive than what you’ve described.
You’re right that disclosure may not be required after the home has been decontaminated, depending on the regulations in the state. Every state has different standards. Some states don’t have any standards, which is really scary. For states that have strict standards in place, like TN, a decontaminated home is probably cleaner than some non-meth-lab homes.
You’re also right about that soil can become contaminated, when meth lab cooks dump their waste chemicals on the ground. I don’t believe that soil testing is a part of any state’s testing standards though.
Neighbors are often a good resource for information about the history of a meth lab home. However, many times neighbors only learn that a neighbor was making meth, after they get busted. So, neighbors may or may not know what’s going on in their neighborhood.
In most neighborhoods, everyone minds their own business and barely knows who is in their neighborhood except that they “always wave” or they’re “private people”. But, if your neighbor always seems to working in their garage or their barn or on projects in the basement, see if they’ll let you see the masterpieces they’ve been working on. If they won’t, it’s time to wonder about what they might be hiding.
Considering how many people lie about the history of their home, there definitely have to be some changes made. Relying on someone to disclose that their home was a former meth, when the police don’t even know about it, is “slim to none”. I don’t that the answer to it is to slap criminal charges on someone though.
Law enforcement agencies are already overburdened chasing down criminals and court cases already take too long to resolve due to the backlog of cases they have to hear. And if someone got sent to prison for disobeying the disclosure law, where would we put them? Our prisons are already full to the brim.
What I’d like to see is a stipulation that every home meet nationally approved standards that insure the public’s health, before the home is sold. The seller of the house would be responsible for the testing cost, which they could easily recoup by tacking it on to the sale price of the house.
You’re right that innocent people should not be the ones to get punished by the meth lab home situation. The way things are now, innocent people are paying emotionally, financially, and with their health for crimes that they didn’t commit. That’s wrong, on many levels. They are the victims, who should be protected.
Brian J.
After reading this story the only evidence indicating that a former meth lab existed was a claim made by the neighbor and it seems highly dubious. The only way the neighbors could know about a lab is if they witnessed the house being raided or if they witnessed the lab themselves while tweaking with the cooks. The police records indicate no drug bust at that location and if the neighbor was involved he wouldn’t be flapping his lips about it.
A while back the DEA ran a series of experiments to find the contamination level that resulted from the various productions methods employed in clandestine labs as well as the ability to remove surface contamination from a variety of materials. They took samples from multiple locations in the building, cooked up some meth then took more samples. In case you’re thinking the DEA is adding to the contaminated home problem please note that the houses and apartment building were scheduled for demolition and donated for this study. They determined contamination in the usual method, measuring the amount of methamphetamine per sq cm. They also tested a building where no production had occurred but where several grams of meth were vaporized inside to replicate the effect of drug users merely consuming the drug. This building showed contamination levels just as high as the buildings where meth was produced. Although the small size of this study prevent a definitive conclusion it would appear that testing may not be able to distinguish between a homes that had a lab from one that only had users.
If I was these people I’d stop stressing over it and just move back in.
jonathan
Brian,
My wife and I bought a home which wad tested for meth residue after our two-year-old son, my wife and myself were having strange health side effects. The levels were so high it only took three weeks of living in these chemicals to recognize we had a problem. I agree with your statement about meth cooking and usage producing same amount of levels. In our state, law enforcement is only required to report the property to the state’s EPA database if the house is specifically busted for production and not simply meth usage. If these tests are true, than properties having any meth production or usage should be reported because they pose a significant health risk to buyers and anyone having any contact with the property. If you were these people, or us, it would be foolish to move back in because of the health risks especially if you have a young child.