POT-FREE HOUSING: YOU GROW, YOU GO

Buyers For Proposed Development Would Sacrifice Privacy For Security

A proposed gated community in Chilliwack wants to be the first in Canada to
pot-proof its homes.

The Promontory Park scheme will require buyers to forfeit their homes if
they're ever used for a marijuana grow-operation.

Property developer Bill Coughlin said people in the Fraser Valley have
all-too-often bought their dream-home, only to have a nearby grow-op turn
it into a nightmare.

"The community is being held hostage to criminal activity," said Coughlin,
who is also president of the Fraser Valley Development Institute, a
developers' group.

In 2003, Chilliwack had more than 200 marijuana grow-ops, the
second-highest in B.C. after Prince George.

That figure has more than quadrupled since the late 1990s.

"Communities are being held hostage by the environment that's created by
having illegal grow-ops, and with the threat that someone steals the crop,
with guns blazing and people getting shot, right next door," said Coughlin.

Living next to a grow-op in the Fraser Valley would immediately lop $50,000
off the property value, he said.

Among the anti-pot measures proposed for Promontory Park are central hydro
meters that can be monitored by the strata council, a ban on basement
suites and a ban on foil-covered windows.

A 24-hour camera will photograph visitors and pictures will be forwarded to
the RCMP.

"As you enter on to this property, you are giving up the right of privacy,"
Coughlin said.

Owners will have to sign a 'Not-In-Our-Neighbourhood' clause, agreeing to
forfeit their homes to the strata council if they are ever used for a
marijuana grow-op.

"The goal is to have this covenant in place," he said. "The question will
always be, 'is it legally enforceable?'

"At this point we don't have an ironclad covenant that is going to
100-per-cent be guaranteed to stand up to challenges."

Coughlin said his lawyers have advised him that the rule would have to be
resolved in the Supreme Court of Canada.

At an open house next Saturday, Coughlin said he will ask people how far
they want to restrict their personal rights for added protection.

Coughlin said he hasn't met anyone who is opposed to the restrictions.

"They are going to pay a premium price to have that protection, because in
a normal sub-division they don't," he said. "If this can be a template, it
will catch on like wildfire across the country."

He expects young families and seniors to be interested in the 13
three-bedroom homes at Promontory Park that will be priced in the
$300,000-range.

Cpl. Sean Sullivan of Chilliwack RCMP, which has six full-time grow-op
investigators, said the test will be how the provision stands up in court.

"Obviously, losing your investment is the harshest penalty," said Sullivan.
"But, again, people are engaging in criminal activity.

"These marijuana grow-operations are dropped into middle- and upper-class
neighbourhoods, not just cheap rundown homes."

Grow-op expert Darryl Plecas said Chilliwack's grow-op problem is part of a
"disaster" in the Fraser Valley.

"They have a horrendous problem," said Plecas, a criminologist with
University College of the Fraser Valley.

If a house is used for a grow-op, the RCMP may have first dibs under
proceeds of crime provisions.

"It just goes to show you the point at which it's come to," said Plecas.
"People are just grabbing for whatever they can do to keep these out of
their communities."

Chilliwack already has a stringent anti-marijuana bylaw, with $10,000 fines
for landlords with grow-ops.