Two months ago, Cleveland housing officials said the city was ticketing 277 property owners who had failed to get a lead safe certificate after an inspection showed unsafe levels of the toxin in their rentals. 

To date, about 4% of those property owners have proven to the city their homes are safe to rent, Sally Martin O’Toole, the director of Building & Housing, said during a meeting Thursday. 

And a handful more are awaiting review from the city on whether their rental can receive a lead safe certificate, as required by legislation passed in 2019 for rental units built before 1978.

“We’ve seen some positive momentum, we were happy about that,” Martin O’Toole told members of the city’s Lead Safe Advisory Board, which monitors progress of the law. 

The city has struggled to get landlords to comply with the law. Currently about 24,000 rental units in Cleveland have lead safe certificates – about half the number of units on or applying to Cleveland’s rental registry. Martin O’Toole said the city plans to ticket more property owners who have failed to comply with the lead law, calling the first 277 tickets the “low-hanging fruit.”

Martin O’Toole told the Lead Safe Advisory Board Thursday that 17 of the ticketed properties went on to apply for a lead safe certificate.  

Most ticketed property owners – 196 – had not paid their tickets as of June 10, while 33 had, she said. 

Lead safe law staff to move under Department of Public Health

Four city staff members charged with administering the lead safe law will soon move to the Department of Public Health instead of the Building and Housing department, officials said. 

The staff are responsible for processing landlords’ applications to become certified under the law. The application includes paying for an inspection to prove their rental unit doesn’t contain lead hazards.

Dr. David Margolius, the director of Public Health, said the move comes because his department has historically been responsible for investigating lead poisoning cases after they happen. Now, it will also be tasked with preventing them. 

“Through this experience over the last couple of years, we’re like, you know, it really is a public health program,” Margolius said. 

Margolius also said the move is an opportunity for a “clean start” for the program, which Signal Cleveland previously reported was not on pace to meet its goal of total compliance by 2028 and had struggled to process applications.

New applications for getting lead safe certification did tick up at the end of 2024, after changes to lead testing rules by Mayor Justin Bibb last fall. But the number of kids who are lead poisoned in Cleveland has stagnated since 2019.  

Margolius said legislation to move the staff members into his department will be introduced in July and heard in committee in August. 

Under the new workflow, the Building and Housing department will still be in charge of ticketing landlords for lead safe violations, Margolius said.