CLEVELAND — Cleveland city officials are pushing for new methods and renewed focus to tackle lead-paint hazards in residential homes.
In 2019, the city pledged to be lead-free within a decade, but the latest report from the Cleveland Department of Public Health has amplified these concerns, revealing that 11 children have been poisoned by lead in homes that were previously certified as lead-safe. This has led city officials to reassess their approach to lead safety, with the Building and Housing Commission pivoting their inspection methods to prevent future incidents and the mayor signing an executive order.
Since 1978, lead-based paint has been banned in homes across the US, but it still poses a significant risk in Cleveland. An estimated 90% of the city’s housing stock contains lead paint.
“There’s so much conversation around lead because there's so many poisoned children,” said Sally O’Toole, director of building and housing for the city of Cleveland.
In 2019, the city passed an ordinance requiring landlords of homes built before 1978 to obtain lead-safe certification every two years. But Sally O'Toole, director of Building and Housing for the City of Cleveland, says CDPH’s recent report has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the testing methods used to issue these certifications.
“We found that 11 children living in homes that we had previously declared as lead-safe are now lead poisoned. That is 100% unacceptable,” O'Toole added.
O'Toole explained that homeowners could receive lead-safe certification through either a clearance exam or a lead risk assessment, which is more thorough.
“A lead risk assessment is a more detailed analysis. The person conducting it has to have greater skills than a lead clinics exam technician,” said O’Toole.
The new findings have led building and housing to prioritize risk assessments moving forward, and they announced that during a City Council committee meeting on Monday.
"Under the existing ordinance, it calls for both risk assessments and clearance exams and so we are pivoting toward requiring risk assessments," O'Toole stated. "We are going to be working with city council, because we’re likely going to change the legislation, but administratively, we plan to start pivoting immediately.”
City council members discussed a list of approaches to tackling lead safety and concluded that it would take lots more discussion to decide on the best solutions. When the topic of risk assessment arose, council members had mixed reactions.
Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer expressed her support for the shift toward higher standards, saying, “I’ve been in support of those higher standards for years. I’m in support of them now.”
However, Councilman Kevin Conwell voiced his reservations, stating, “I need to see the risk assessment first, cause you can write policy from the risk assessment if it has changed.”
The city council will continue discussions on lead safety to create new legislation. O'Toole stressed that improving lead safety in Cleveland requires a multi-pronged approach and that this shift is just one step in a larger strategy.
“We’re trying to tackle a problem that no one’s been successful in tackling, and to do that well, we need to continually look at data, and we need to iterate as needed,” she said.
On Monday, Mayor Justin Bibb signed an executive order to accelerate progress in reducing lead poisoning across the city by shifting focus from temporary lead-safety measures to long-term abatement. The order emphasizes improving public disclosure of lead risk assessments, creating clear pathways for property owners to achieve lead abatement, and reducing year-over-year lead poisoning rates.
It includes risk assessments as the basis for lead-safe certifications, better code enforcement targeting high-risk properties, and enhanced public access to data on lead hazards. The order also provides resources for relocating affected families and assisting property owners in meeting lead safety standards, with the goal of significantly reducing lead exposure in Cleveland homes.
