Drywall could turn neighborhoods into ghost towns

SUN CITY - Thousands of people in Florida are thinking about abandoning their homes, and it has nothing to do with the mortgage meltdown. They can’t live in a house with Chinese drywall, and can’t sell it either.

“Instead of having 30 to 35 people living on this street you're going to have 10 people left,” complained Ron Iannazzi, who took us on a tour of his neighborhood in Sun City, where 16 out of 20 houses on his well-kept cul-de-sac tested positive for the drywall that the Consumer Produce Safety Commission is investigating.

Iannazzi’s home is one of those affected.

A few miles down the road, Roy Glaum’s neighborhood has the same problem. The ritzy condo development where he lives has four units in each building. At one point, they were worth about $500,000. Today, it’s hard to say what they’re worth.

"Would you buy a home with toxic gasses in it that's going to take 100,000 to 200,000 to fix?” Glaum asked investigative reporter Doug Smith. “Who's going to do that?"

Retirees who cashed in their nest egg now own homes that smell like rotten eggs. Even if they can live with potential health risks, like Roy Glaum is doing, they can't ignore another complication: expensive appliances with copper tubing are corroding and conking out.

“The seniors being on fixed incomes,” Glaum added, “we're in deep, deep trouble.”

Across the Florida, Chinese drywall could be in as many as 35,000 homes, but those estimates will probably go up. Experts say there's a whole group of homeowners who know they have Chinese drywall but won't come forward. At this point, nothing good can come from it.

“They turn to the insurance company and they say, 'Get lost,'” said U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, who has met with people forced to abandon their homes.

“People can't afford two homes, and their pediatrician is telling them to get the children out of the house,” Sen. Nelson said, speaking at a recent conference in Tampa on the drywall problem.

Rob Turner is the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser. His office is adjusting the value of homes with Chinese drywall and cutting their taxes.

“It's about a 50-percent reduction in the value of the improvement of the homes that have been affected by this toxic drywall,” Turner said, explaining that Hillsborough County will test homes for free.

Turner agrees that a tax break is only temporary relief for a much larger problem.

“There has to be a deep pocket somewhere that will make whole the homeowners that have been financially hurt,” Nelson argued. “Personally, I think that the deep pocket's going to have to be the Chinese government.”

Retirees in Sun City say it’s hard to wait for the solution to Chinese drywall to come from behind the Great Wall.

“If the fix isn't found soon,” said Glaum, “we'll have more and more foreclosures.”