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SALT LAKE CITY -- Potential home buyers and renters now have a powerful new tool to alert them about homes contaminated with meth.
Gov. Jon Huntsman signed a bill requiring the seller of a home to disclose whether the structure was ever contaminated by meth.
There are hundreds of homes along the Wasatch Front which were contaminated when people cooked meth inside. Now, both potential buyers and renters will know whether or not a property is clean.
The full extent of the problem was first exposed in an award-winning series of stories by KSL 5's Debbie Dujanovic.
The I-team uncovered a troubling pattern: cops, who'd cleaned up home meth labs in the early days of the epidemic were coming down with life-threatening, even fatal illnesses, years later.
Another trend: people buying homes had no idea it was once a meth house.
Jaimee Alkinani said, "There was no laws when it happened to us. It was a nondisclosure state."
State lawmakers just passed a bill requiring property owners to disclose to potential buyers or renters if a structure was contaminated by meth.
Two years after they moved out of their Kearns home, the Alkinanis are still dealing with the fallout. They moved out after our meth test results alerted them that the $140,000 home was still contaminated with meth. Now they can't sell it, and no one can live there. "Now it's a nightmare," Alkinani said. "The house is closed to entry. No one can go in it except the thieves who have gone in and stolen everything out of it. We still don't know what we're going to do with our house. We don't have the money to clean it up."
Worst still, Jaimee's son, McKinley, struggles with respiratory problems, asthma-like symptoms. She said, "Is that from the meth? I don't know, but it was his room that was the highest level of contamination."
Alkinani says she's grateful to know the new law should help families avoid what they've gone through. She said, "I think it's about time. I think it's great."
The law specifically states it's up to the owner, not the Realtor, to make the disclosure if a structure is contaminated.
E-mail: jdaley@ksl.com
