In Longmont, contamination of rental housing by methamphetamine usage is a growing issue, and one which carries a variety of consequences for landlords, leasing agencies and local renters.
The Longmont Housing Authority, or LHA, has seen meth contamination come up at nearly all of its nine affordable housing properties in the last few years, according to Longmont’s City Manager Harold Dominguez.
The process to remediate meth contamination in a rental unit is costly for the LHA in terms of money, time and, sometimes, in the other renters it displaces.
LHA doesn’t perform tests for meth contamination based on hearsay or complaints from other residents in the building. Instead, tests are administered when a building manager or LHA staff member suspects meth usage in a unit, or when an LHA resident gets arrested on charges of meth possession, LHA’s Regional Property Manager Lisa Gallinar said.
When meth contamination remediation becomes necessary, LHA hires a licensed testing company to determine the level of meth contamination in the unit, then hires a certified decontamination to clean it. The process can involve one or more cleanings and retesting until the apartment is fully decontaminated, Gallinar said.
Depending on the damage caused to a unit during the meth decontamination process, LHA often has to hire a contractor or restoration company to reconstruct the unit.
Although LHA bills the residents of the contaminated units for all of the services necessary to get the unit back to its original, livable condition, the organization hardly ever receives such payment from the person responsible, Donminguez said. As a result, the payment lands on LHA, specifically, out of the operational budget LHA allocates to each of its affordable housing buildings.
Marketplace variables like inflation and supply chain issues further threaten the meth contamination remediation process, which can take months to complete and cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, Dominguez said.
“Prior to supply chain, staffing issues and the Marshall fire, this could be done in four to six weeks,” Gallinar said. “Recently, this has been taking longer, six to nine months, as the same contractors we use are being contracted to do mold and asbestos testing for the homes involved in the Marshall fire.”
While most of LHA’s units have their own HVAC systems — which prevent the contamination from spreading into the building’s other units and common areas — not all do. In buildings with shared HVAC systems, when one unit becomes contaminated, the decontamination and reconstruction process may have to take place in other areas of the building and subsequently displace other renters, Dominguez said.
Although LHA has policies in place to put affordable housing residents in temporary housing in these instances, residents still have to pay the amount of rent per month that they agreed to pay in their lease during the time they’re displaced, Gallinar said. However, it can be tricky for LHA to find such accommodations for their residents — a difficulty that is compounded by the population of people who lost their homes in the Marshall fire taking up more temporary housing than normal, she said.
According to Dominguez, residents who are removed from their rental units due to meth contamination is “something we’ve seen in other private residences in the community … We’re hearing about it from most landlords,” he said.
Recently, Dominguez heard from a Longmont homeowner who had to uproot their family because they rented their basement to someone who used meth, causing the contamination to circulate from the basement furnace around the entire house, Dominguez said.
“This is not only something that only exists in affordable housing,” Dominguez said. “We’re seeing market rate rentals have the same issues and I think everybody is struggling with it.”
In addition to displacing individuals and families, increasing instances of meth contamination in Longmont’s rental buildings threaten already high rental values — which is an issue for all renters.
“(Meth contamination in rental units) is an issue that is impacting affordable rents for folks, because as the cost burden (for LHA, landlords and leasing agencies) increases, they have to come up with the money somehow,” Dominguez said. “And it takes units away because they’re out of production … So in a time when people need housing, it’s a challenge.”
Colorado’s Fair Housing Law doesn’t allow affordable housing agencies like LHA to deny potential renters unless an applicant has a police history of possessing or cooking meth. As a result, LHA has been unable to come up with prevention or resolution strategies to the meth contamination issue in its buildings, Gallinar said.
The issue of meth contamination “is an ongoing battle and challenge for us,” Dominguez said.
