To the editor:
It's estimated there are 50,000 former grow-up properties across Canada and those are only the ones they are aware of.
It is said that ex grow-ups can be a major hazard to the structure, the grounds and neighbours. Whether there's one plant or a number of plants, it's all kind of lumped in together as a grow-up.
Owning or being talked into buying one of these places could mean a loss of 95 per cent of the market value in trying to sell in the future. A place that is marked will be required to be inspected, at someone's cost with no guarantee that the next buyer will get insurance or even acceptance for a mortgage. NO matter what we do in trying to get rid of the hazard in fixing it from the ground up and having it fully inspected, it will always be marked for life.
You can have houseplants with a pool or hot tub attached to it, with a greenhouse or barn with 50 tomato plants and a large garden growing in it and a shed full of the same products used in a grow-op. You can sell it, get a mortgage and insurance no problem. You can have asbestos or a flooded basement for three weeks while on holidays and you can fix it, but you can't fix a grow up. Is it not the size of the crop and time that causes the most damage?
Don't get us wrong, we're not for grow-ups in our home or neighbourhood, but if they are busted and not repairable, then condemn them. Don't pass it off to us. Are there not double standards happening here? You're willing to sell them, give them a mortgage with higher interest and insurance at higher cost, being high risk, but on the other hand, you say they're not fixable and a hazard to the public.
We have this irremovable mark on our investments and a hazard in our neighbourhood as being permanent. Then should it not be that our property assessment value, be based on this grow-op stigma, be set at a reduced market value?
Rob Grantham
100 Mile House