Carolina Business Articles

Meth Explosion

Surge In Methamphetamine Use Leaves Property Managers With  Physical, Legal And Financial Mess

By Allan Richter

      When North Carolina authorities raided a 300-unit apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., and arrested a resident for producing the highly noxious drug methamphetamine, the dwelling's fee manager was faced with a legal and health entanglement that months later still has not abated.

      We had no idea this was going on, said Adam Ford, vice president of operations at Crosland Inc., the raided property's fee manager. Like a lot of issues, you don't pay particular attention to the details until you have to, and that was very true in this case. We didn't know how to deal with this right out of the gate.

      As the use of methamphetamine - commonly referred to as meth - increases across the country, more property managers are faced with challenges relating to the drug, particularly the financial, legal and health implications stemming from meth labs being set up and dismantled on their properties.

  An Explosive Problem

      Apartment complexes, hotels and other sites attracting transients are havens for the growing meth problem: Half of all clandestine meth labs are found on rental properties, according to information from the National Multi Housing Council and National Apartment Association.

      Meth labs are portable and they can be small, so an apartment is an easy place to hide them, said Barbara Vasallo, the National Apartment Association's vice president for government affairs. In an apartment, you're kind of unknown. There's a level of privacy involved.

      Nationally, the number of meth labs seized by federal officials rose from 6,700 in 1999 to more than 9,900 in 2004, according to data from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The drug reaches far beyond the borders of its western, rural origins, and it knows few demographic or economic limitations.

      Anyone who has a recipe and some lab equipment can manufacture it, so there's the potential to make a lot of it, Vasallo said. [Meth] is a hot drug on the streets, and it's addictive after the first use.

      Meth users can snort, smoke, inject intravenously or orally ingest the drug for a hit.

      Ford, the North Carolina property management executive, said he was surprised a meth lab was operating at one of his company's higher-end, more upscale apartment complexes. He declined to identify the property.

      This was one of our ‘A properties, Ford said. In the media, I think the majority of reports have been out of rural areas. Our perception was that this was a lower-income demographic issue. It's probably more our perception than perhaps reality that it's an issue for lower income people.

  Detecting Meth

     Despite the speed with which meth has spread Ð and all the publicity surrounding it - many property managers are still unfamiliar and unprepared to detect and deal with the drug.

      Our members have not necessarily been instructed what to do, Vasallo said. It's not as though there are drug dealers on the corner [with] bags of coke. It's something that's much more clandestine. There aren't a lot of signs there is criminal activity going on, so it takes a property owner by surprise.

      Regardless of the concealed nature of cooking meth, property managers can look for signs of meth use on their properties. Cooking meth - also called crystal meth, ice and glass, among other names - involves the assembly of readily accessible household goods, like lithium batteries, coffee filters and aluminum foil.

      Some of its ingredients - pseudophedrine, ethyl and grain alcohol, paint thinner, vinegar and cooking oil and others - are just as common and seemingly innocent. But when cooked, the combination of ingredients creates volatile compounds that can explode.

      Strong odors like the smell of ether, ammonia, acetone, other chemicals or the strong scent of fuel are clues meth production is taking place, according to information provided by the Boulder County, Colo., public health department.

      Suspicious behaviors like blacking out windows, paying rent with cash and dumping excessive trash including items like beakers, neon-stained coffee filters, over the counter drug containers, empty blister packs and glass containers also imply meth is being produced on a property, according to the health department's information.

      Ford and residents at the Charlotte property didn't recognize any signs of meth use until authorities arrived to make an arrest. He said property managers should be aware of signs indicating meth is being produced on their properties. Catching the problem sooner than later is important, he said. Crosland employees now receive detailed information on what to look for and how to respond.

      The more manufacturing or cooking that's done within a unit, the more chemical residue is created and the more physical damage is done, Ford said. We're in the business of providing a habitable place for people to live, and that's compromised from an illicit drug operation taking place in one of our units. That's not good for marketing our property, and that's not good for our residents.

  Cleaning House

      While detecting meth may not be straightforward, the cleanup process can be just as challenging - because from hiring cleanup crews, to abiding by local statutes, to comprehending hazardous waste testing - so much must be considered, said Colleen Brisnehan, an environmental protection specialist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

      It can be very confusing for the property managers, she said. Understanding the cleanup requirements can be really overwhelming.

      The environmental effects of meth cannot be easily contained. Its highly toxic by-products, like phosphine gas, are prone to seep into carpeting, wallpaper and other porous surfaces. They can easily contaminate the hallways and other public spaces where unknowing residents can fall ill from fumes or burn their skin on chemical residues sticking to walls.

      No national standards for remediation exist, and cleanup requirements differ from state to state and municipality to municipality. Checking in with the local health department or buildings department to determine if local programs exist for guidance or are in fact mandated is important, Brisnehan said.

      Information from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's meth lab guidance report suggests cleanup should include airing out the property, gross cleanup, removing visibly contaminated items like toilets and sinks, detergent-water washing, treating ventilation systems, encapsulating or sealing interior surfaces with oil-based paint, removing personal belongings and paying attention to plumbing.

      Properly trained and equipped law enforcement and hazardous cleanup teams, not the property's typical maintenance crew, should handle the remediation, said David Austello, public affairs specialist with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He said having untrained people attempting to decontaminate the toxic area could be deadly.

      Brisnehan said property owners arc typically responsible for hiring contractors to decontaminate the unit or property. She said some states provide lists of contractors for hire or contractors certified particularly for meth lab cleanup.

      Remediation expenses on average cost between $2,000 and $3,000, according to information from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Those costs don't include testing or losses in rent from being unable to rent out the unit. Cleanup expenses for the Crosland unit in Charlotte are likely to cost more than $5,000, Ford said.

      He said he isn't optimistic the resident involved with cooking the meth will be able to foot the bill. Further, the cleanup and decontamination of the apartment is likely to take more than two months, he said, making the unit uninhabitable - and useless as a revenue generator - for the foreseeable future. He said he is concerned about the long-term implications of the situation.

      There are always questions about what continued liability the owner may have and what marketing issues or challenges may arise as a result of a cleanup, Ford said. We haven't seen what the cleanup entails, but if there are people in Hazmat suits working in and around the unit, it raises questions from existing residents and from prospects of what exactly has gone on. They wonder if there is some continuing safety risk.

  Clearing Up Confusion

      The Crosland unit in Charlotte has already been unoccupied for nearly six months and has yet to be cleaned.

      Ford said the company has hired a contractor for the cleanup, and the unit is scheduled to be cleaned in the next couple months. He said the newness of the problem for property managers and public and health officials has contributed to the confusion.

      Quite honestly, depending on the municipality, the local health departments may be dealing with this for the first time or haven't dealt with it very often, Ford said. People you potentially look to for guidance and experience may not have that yet.

      Following the arrest at the Crosland property, Ford said the company was at odds with the health department over whether to immediately shutter the apartment with new locks for the decontamination process or to begin the 30- to 45-day eviction process, mandated by the state's housing laws. Crosland executives opted to begin the eviction process for fear of being held liable for violating the terms of the lease.

      In 2004, North Carolina officials enacted legislation giving property managers guidance detailing the cleanup and decontamination process. But Ford said state legislators failed to ensure community safety and health standards coincide with landlord tenant laws - a major problem when deciding how to handle decontaminating a meth lab.

      The bottom line is we want to help, and we want to clean up, Ford said. But we're stuck based on our lease obligations, and we won't violate those. Leases are the holy grail of property management.

  Lacking Legislation

      Nationwide, inconsistent or nonexistent state and federal legislation guiding multi-family apartment owners and managers dealing with meth labs and the aftereffects on their properties leaves many property managers exposed to lawsuits, said the National Apartment Association's Vasallo.

      How clean is clean after there's been a meth lab in a unit? she said. That's the central issue because it's a liability issue for our members. If they don't make a unit clean enough, down the line there could be liability if someone becomes ill from exposure to the residual contaminants in meth. Property owners want standards. If you look at lead-based paint and asbestos - the two common ones - there are national standards.

      By her last count, Vasallo said 40 states had either considered or adopted preventative laws aimed at regulating sales of over-the-counter pseudophedrine, while fewer than 20 states took up the cleanup-standards issue.

      State laws help, but they also confuse the issue, said Eileen Lee, the National Multi-Housing Council's vice president of environmental issues. For example, the post-cleanup acceptable contamination levels vary in different states. Some state standards address only the residual meth level while others set acceptable levels for meth-related chemicals like mercury, lead and corrosives.

      Well-informed people disagree as to what an acceptable level is, Lee said. If you're a national management company and you develop a plan for dealing with this, you need to be informed what the state requirements are.

      Some states have enacted laws mandating managers or owners to fully disclose a property's use as a meth lab to prospective buyers or renters. More states are mandating such disclosure after managers complete their decontamination efforts. These mandates might stigmatize a property without offering any public health benefit, Vasallo and Lee said.

  The Road Ahead

      Ford said Crosland is taking matters into its own hands, and executives have met with officials to improve legislation and remedy the clash between health and safety concerns and landlord tenant laws.

      As you're going through [this experience] you hope people who are first through the door try to work for the larger cause, he said. If it's an isolated incident or perceived as an isolated incident, there is not the energy to make some changes. If everybody [responds like] that, we'll never get anywhere. We feel it's important to invest the time to communicate what we've gone through so the process can get smoothed out because we might be the ones who go through it the next time.

      Despite Crosland's arduous and time consuming experience with the meth lab on its property, Ford said the company and its executives have learned some valuable lessons.

      It's a time sink for the property management staff, but it is like any other issue, he said. It's a steeper learning curve than we would have hoped. In dealing with it, though, I think it will be handled more quickly and less painlessly next time around.