CLEVELAND — More than 1,300 children in Cleveland tested positive for elevated levels of lead in their blood last year.
And the lead-poisoning rate for young kids hasn’t budged much since 2019, when the city enacted a law designed to make rental properties safer.
During a City Council committee hearing Monday, public officials and private-sector leaders acknowledged there’s still much more to do. The discussion went on for 3.5 hours, reflecting the complexity of the problem and the web of bureaucracy trying to solve it.
“We’re buried in hundreds of years of lead paint,” said Dr. David Margolius, the city’s public health director. “And we’re not gonna get out of it in just five years.”
The city is trying to crack down on landlords who aren’t complying with a law that requires them to get periodic inspections and file paperwork showing their properties are lead-safe — not free of lead, but free of hazards like peeling and chipping paint.
Now, Cleveland’s building department is issuing civil tickets to the owners of 278 properties that failed basic inspections — where testers swipe windows and floors for lead dust — and never followed up.
Officials are also combing through the city’s rental registry, which spans 50,000 to 60,000 units in a typical year, to see which properties aren’t on the lead-safe list.
As of Monday, 24,705 rental units are certified as lead-safe, said Sally Martin O’Toole, the city’s building director.
That’s somewhere between 25% and 50% of all rentals, from single-family homes to apartments in Downtown high-rises. That range is so wide because the city doesn’t know exactly how many rentals are out there.
“We have continued uncertainty about even some of the basic numbers,” said Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer, who sits on the city’s Lead Safe Advisory Board.
The city requires owners of rental properties built before 1978 to get an independent report showing their properties are hazard-free. Last fall, based on an executive order from Mayor Justin Bibb, the city imposed more stringent rules, requiring landlords to get detailed lead-risk assessments instead of basic dust-wipe tests, in many cases.
Cleveland recently cleared a backlog of 1,200 lead-safe certificate applications.
RELATED: Cleveland eliminates backlog of lead-safe certification applications
Tenants can use the city’s open data portal to look up their apartments or homes, to find out if the properties are certified as lead-safe. The city has also added information about lead to its building-department portal, a system for tracking permits and review processes.
‘We’ve really struggled to get dollars out the door’
“Our goal is not to lock up every landlord or sue every landlord,” Margolius said. “We really want to help property owners.”
There are tens of millions of dollars set aside for that work, from repainting and fixing porches to replacing wood windows and doors – all major causes of lead-poisoning in Cleveland. But that money has just been trickling out over the last few years, according to presentations from Monday’s meeting.
“I think that we’ve really struggled to get dollars out the door,” Maurer said.
The city of Cleveland has $13.3 million left out of $17.4 million in federal grants for cleaning up lead and fixing up homes. Those grants, from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, are set to expire this year. The first expiration date is May 30.
Officials cited staffing shortages and a backlog of repair and renovation applications as part of the challenge.
The city has asked HUD for permission to push back the expiration dates. But there’s tremendous uncertainty about the future of federal funding, at a time of spending cuts and shifting priorities in Washington, D.C.
“We are still waiting for approval,” said Tony Scott, the assistant director of the city’s community development department. “We’ve sought to extend and expand the grants. At this point, honestly, we have the foot to the pedal. If they tell us we can’t extend it, then we’ll have to deal with that.”
The city is also using federal pandemic-recovery money – both a direct infusion and cash passed along by the state – for renovations and lead clean-up. Some of that money is flowing through CHN Housing Partners, a nonprofit that is working through a waiting list of 174 properties.
Other money is going toward home-repair grants; incentives for landlords, once they get their properties certified; help for tenants displaced by lead hazards; screening and testing; and training people to conduct lead-risk assessments and construction.
The federal pandemic-recovery money, from the American Rescue Plan Act, must be spent by the end of 2026.
“I want to know why we’re not just standing outside of City Hall throwing money at people,” said Councilman Charles Slife, who represents West Park and other parts of the city’s far-West Side.
‘There is assistance for you’
The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, a public-private collaboration focused on ending lead poisoning, has $71.9 million left to spend, between funding commitments and money in the bank. The group has deployed roughly $20 million so far, including $7.7 million in direct grants, loans and incentives for property owners.
The coalition recently got rid of the caps and income limits on its grants. That means they’ll be able to pay for much costlier projects, like replacing windows and cleaning up homes that are rife with hazards. The partners are prioritizing rental properties and owner-occupied homes where kids live.
Ayonna Blue Donald, a member of the coalition’s steering committee, said there are several new programs rolling out this year. A screening initiative will work to get more kids tested for lead. Testing is down since the pandemic, with the sharpest drops on the East Side of the city.
RELATED: Coalition spending $1 million on lead testing in Cleveland, amid declining rates
A pilot lead-remediation program for childcare providers is already underway, with the goal of touching 24 facilities.
And a forthcoming relocation-assistance program will help tenants displaced by renovations and lead-remediation projects. It will pay for short-term lodging.
“What I would want tenants to know is that there is assistance for you,” Blue Donald said during an interview. “Even if you have a reluctant landlord, please feel free to reach out to our resource center for guidance. … If you’re living in a property that was built before 1978, it is automatically considered a lead hazard. So please don’t put yourself at risk. Or your children at risk, who are the most vulnerable.”
Maurer said Cleveland has made progress in moving away from a model where “the city used our kids as lead detectors” – becoming involved only after a child was poisoned.
But lead paint, which can lead to brain damage, behavioral problems and other long-term health issues, isn’t simple to eradicate. Especially in a city like Cleveland, filled with thousands of old homes.
“If this was an easy problem, it would have been fixed a long time ago,” said Blue Donald, who said the public and private partners are halfway into what they always saw as a decade-long effort, at least.
“We are really right in the middle of trying to solve this problem,” she added.
This story has been corrected to include up-to-date funding numbers from the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition.