Judge orders owner, tenants barred from Lakewood home over meth-contamination concerns

A judge in Jefferson County last week barred a woman and her tenants from accessing a Lakewood house that was once home to a methamphetamine lab after she allegedly failed to test some living areas for drug residue.

Jefferson County Public Health requested the restraining order close to a year after an inspector found traces of meth in the kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and elsewhere in the rental property owned by Phyllis Phillips.

“(Phillips) continues to rent out units on the property to vulnerable tenants who face grave public health consequences from methamphetamine contamination,” the department wrote in its April 3 request for the order. “Continued access to a methamphetamine-affected property creates a hazardous threat to public safety and a very real and direct threat to the health of the individuals currently residing there.”

The property near Colfax Avenue and Kipling Street is one of at least four used to accommodate clients of the nonprofit Ange De La Mer Alternative Medicine Foundation, where Phillips serves as board president and whose programs include affordable and emergency housing.

Jefferson County has also asked District Court Judge Meegan Miloud to order Phillips to pay a $100 fine and either finish cleaning up the house at her own expense or demolish it.

Phillips could not be reached immediately for comment Friday.

The meth residue was found by an inspector hired by Phillips in May, according to documents filed by the county. Amounts found were dozens of times higher than what would require cleanup by a licensed contractor under state law.

Phillips paid for the decontamination of the property. However, in January, the county wrote in a letter that more testing, and possibly more decontamination work, needed to be done before tenants could return.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment wrote in March that a previously unreported bedroom and RV, both occupied, also required inspection, as did other parts of the property, since the home was found to be permitted as single-family rather than a multi-family dwelling during the cleanup process.

At least three people were said to be living on the property at the time, according to the state.

The Jefferson County Board of Health ordered the immediate testing and cleanup of the property along with the removal of tenants March 18. But the county wrote in its request for a court order that a new tenant had been reported on the property April 1.

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Wednesday.

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