We told you last week that Cleveland City Hall is shaking up its efforts against lead paint in rental homes. Here’s another angle on the city’s fight against lead.
Cleveland prosecutors have been filing criminal complaints against landlords they accuse of not following orders to clean up lead hazards after children have been poisoned.
So far the city has charged 62 landlords over known lead hazards, according to city press secretary Marie Zickefoose.
Twenty-two defendants have been convicted, she said. Thirteen have cleaned up the lead hazards in their properties and been cleared by the city health department. The court has imposed a total of $20,000 in fines and additional community control sanctions that require landlords to fix up their houses.
On the prevention side, the city says landlords have cleaned up 10 properties after prosecutions for failing to obtain lead-safe certificates.
Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition sticks up for anti-lead paint work
The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition – which includes nonprofits and philanthropies – says it is still committed to working with City Hall, even after Mayor Justin Bibb questioned the effectiveness of current anti-lead efforts.
Bibb signed an executive order retooling the city’s fight against lead paint after news that children were poisoned in 11 rental units that had been certified as lead safe. That statistic so alarmed the mayor that he decided to act, his office said.
But the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition’s executive committee isn’t keen to jump to conclusions.
“It is difficult to assess the situation involving the 11 children who tested positive for elevated lead levels in certified properties based on the information provided,” the committee told hundreds of coalition members in an email Friday. “We believe it is premature to link cases to a failure in lead safe methods when unrelated factors, or a combination of causes, could be the issue.”
The differences in viewpoint between City Hall and the coalition – explained here – are fairly technical. But those differences could have implications for how millions of dollars are spent fixing lead hazards in homes.
