NEIGHBOURS FED UP WITH POT HOUSE

For Third Time In Three Years, Seafair House Site Of A Grow Op

Residents of a Seafair neighbourhood have seen it before, but now enough is
enough.

Last Friday, Richmond RCMP swooped down on a notorious house at 8440
Fairbrook Cres., near No. 1 and Blundell roads, where they arrested a young
couple for growing marijuana in the rental property.

It was the third time since 1999 the house has been used to grow B.C. bud.
This time more than 400 large plants were found.

What made this case disturbing for neighbours was seeing a seven-year-old
girl watch her parents being arrested by a squad of police officers who
entered the home with weapons drawn.

The property does have a poor history, according to Christopher Lee,
property manager at Louwin Management.

When he was contacted Monday, Lee did not know police searched the home
last week and found it had been converted into a grow-op.

"We did check the references and everything was fine to us," Lee said,
adding he last inspected the house about a month after the new tenants
moved in at the beginning of May.

A neighbour, who asked not to be identified, said the people who set up the
grow op were quite brazen.

One neighbour witnessed a person apparently tampering with the B.C. Hydro
electricity meter on a sunny Sunday afternoon while pretending to clear out
leaves from the gutter. Another saw people unloading marijuana plants into
the home.

"We want a normal family to live in that house," one neighbour said. "We
don't want thugs and gangsters to live on our street."

Citizens in the area are so fed up with marijuana grow ops that they intend
to take their case to local politicians.

Property manager Lee wishes neighbours had informed him of their concerns.

He said he is reachable around the clock and could have taken care of the
problem quickly by giving the tenants 24 hour notice of an inspection on
the grounds that something illegal is taking place inside the house. And
without the help of neighbours, managing a property can be challenging.

"Things like this can happen to any property anywhere," Lee said. He
intended to inspect the home again later this month.

He noted there had been no problems with a previous tenant who had been
living in the home for two years prior to the most recent tenant's arrival.