GROW HOMES NOT GOOD NEIGHBOURS

Grow-Op-Free Areas Impossible To Find

Realtor and developer Bill Coughlin was tired of horror stories from
clients who found drug farms surrounding their suburban homes.

The last straw was a client who bought into a nice neighbourhood only
to discover the home directly behind him was a grow-op.

"He was devastated," Coughlin recalls.

"Then beside him became a grow-op, across the road was a grow-op,
around the corner was a grow-op. He said, 'Bill, get me out of here.'
And I said, 'There's nowhere in Canada I can put you [and guarantee]
no grow-ops.'"

His client's not alone. A 2004 Fraser Valley Development Institute
survey of 104 Valley families found 70 per cent felt personally
affected by grow-ops. At least a dozen have been busted near
Coughlin's own Mission-area home.

So he tried to create a grow-op-free community. In 2004 he began
developing a gated subdivision on Chilliwack's Valleyview Road where
buyers had to sign a contract stating they'd forfeit their home if
they harboured grow-ops.

But some realtors balked and buyers got cold feet. The developer
needed financing to go forward, so Coughlin had to make concessions
and the contract was dropped.

Some provisions remain: The gated community has easily visible hydro
meters, sewer pipes at the front of properties so the strata can
check for chemical effluent, a ban on foiled windows, security camera
hook-ups at the gate and in a private park behind the homes.

Coughlin laments the fact that individual interests trumped the
creation of a truly drug-home-free neighbourhood, but he plans to try
again in Abbotsford and Mission with more secure backing to allow him
to hold out on the contract.

"The Canadian way is we have no care as to what goes on next door,"
he says."To me, that is destructive of community."

Best For B.C. Bud

Top 10 B.C. jurisdictions with the highest volume of
marijuana-cultivation police files opened in 2003:

1. Surrey: 441 cases

2. Vancouver: 335

3. Coquitlam: 297

4. Kelowna: 260

5. Burnaby: 218

6. Chilliwack: 204

7. Prince George: 189

8. Richmond: 180

9. Langley: 170

10. Ridge Meadows: 152

Source: University College of the Fraser Valley study, Marihuana
Operations in British Columbia Revisited