Not the Most Ideal of Renters

"These are people [renters of her property] I'd be friends with. They dressed well, they presented themselves well, they have an online company -- what's where they told me they make their income. The website looks legit."
"[They -- Alberta Health Services -- said] my property had been condemned, and did I know about this incident that occurred on the weekend."
"I kind of thought someone was pulling a prank on me. And then he went into the details and I was absolutely shocked."
Jennifer Schwitzer, rental property owner, Edmonton, Alberta

Health authorities deemed this house in southwest Edmonton uninhabitable last month after an ambulance call led authorities to a suspected fentanyl lab in the basement. Owner Jennifer Schwitzer paid more than $10,000 to have the interior cleaned. POSTMEDIA NETWORK

"I think the myth is that people in the downtown core are the ones who are 'causing' the problem."
"[But] the people downtown don't have the money to put together a lab, for example. That's a very suburban thing ... the inner city tends to be much more the victims, if you will."
Marliss Taylor, director, harm reduction program Streetworks

Two well-dressed 25-year-olds, prospective renters of a new house in a new housing development in the suburbs of Edmonton, claiming to have just returned from a prolonged holiday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, looking for a house to rent. The house owner, with 16 years of experience in renting property took an instant like to the couple. They made application in late August for the house rental, to move in on the first of September. The house owner, Ms. Schwitzer, ran the usual background checks.

Their references checked out well, and she made the decision that they would be ideal renters. What could go wrong? It took a month after that decision to find out exactly what could go wrong. Mind, what happened to Jennifer Schwitzer is also happening to other property owners across Edmonton where police have conducted raids on fentanyl labs. Investigators publicized the issue, to make it public knowledge that in one neighbourhood $1-million worth of drugs, including heroin look-alike fentanyl was seized.

At yet another private house that was rented out and contained yet another lab, Edmonton police on a raid at the large house outside St.Albert, discovered the largest fentanyl pill cache in Canadian history so consequently the larges seizure took place accordingly. And according to Mike Wiebe, of haz-mat cleanup company Rapid Response Industrial Group, it is in newer neighbourhoods with unfinished basements that his company mostly cleans up fentanyl contamination.

 But Ms. Schwitzer was aware of none of this when she decided to rent to the two normal-in-appearance and evidently well-adjusted couple who expressed interest in her rental  house. And now she is aware that though statistics indicate deadly overdoses to be concentrated in the city's core, it is in the suburbs where those who produce the drugs construct laboratories for their thriving businesses. In those rental houses production and processing takes place, in the city's suburbs.

It seems that an ambulance was called by someone at the rented house on October 6 when the male renter overdosed. Obviously taking too much of his own medicine. He failed to recover from that fatal overdose. His fiance was in the house at the time, along with another person unknown to Ms. Schwitzer. Which was when she discovered that the house she had rented out to the nice couple was the shell where they existed to produce illegal drugs.

It cannot have been very comfortable, the only furniture was a bed, a couch and some chairs, a game system, computers and a few dishes in a kitchen cupboard. The paramedics of course reported what they had found and the police entered the scene. And they called on the health authorities who declared the house uninhabitable. And all it took was a month for the house to become contaminated with drug residue to produce that unsafe environment.

Cleanup crews work at a house in southwest Edmonton that health authorities deemed uninhabitable due to a fentanyl lab in the basement. The owner said she rented the house to a pair of new tenants in September. By early October, one of them had overdosed and died. Edmonton Journal

Inspection of the house revealed that there was drug residue in the basement, the air circulation system, kitchen cabinets and upstairs bathrooms. Alberta Health Services advised Ms. Schwitzer she would be required to hire a remediation company to clean up her property before it could be declared habitable again. That cleanup cost her $10,200. Crews clad in special haz-mat suits sprayed a solution to break down fentanyl on house surfaces.

The carpeting and basement wall panels required replacing. The furnace had to be cleaned. And she was required to attend court in an effort to evict the remaining tenant. Opioids have been linked to 477 accidental deaths in the city of Edmonton since January of 2016. And yes, the highest concentration of overdoses take place in the city core.