CLASH recommendations to Council

Cleveland City Council: Health, Human Services and the Arts Committee

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

To the Chairman and Council Members

Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing (CLASH) welcomes the opportunity to make recommendations to the Committee regarding the HUD Inspector General’s Report on Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority’s failure to comply with HUD’s Lead Safe Housing Rule.

Recommendation 1: Cleveland Department of Public Health should conduct a program to test 100% of children between the ages of 0-6 years of age who are living in CMHA units built before 1978. It is clear from the HUD IG report that no one knows how many lead poisoned children are currently residing in CMHA units. Child lead testing for CMHA tenants should be provided on site and at times that are convenient for families. CDPH has resources (two mobile vans) and the influence among private health providers to assure the speedy implementation of this plan.  CLASH is willing to provide volunteers to assist with outreach and management of these health testing events.

Recommendation 2: Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority should provide access for third party lead safety advocates access to CMHA properties and use of community spaces to provide lead safety information to tenants. CLASH is willing to organise Lead Safe Resource Fairs at CMHA locations for a range of non-profit service providers to answer tenants’ questions and provide information. Further, CLASH will work with our partners at the US EPA to present EPA’s Understanding Lead presentation to tenants at CMHA properties.

Recommendation 3: Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority should provide training of all maintenance and management staff in the Renovate, Repair and Paint training so that on site employees will know how to identify lead hazards and how to use lead safe practices. CLASH will work with our partners at the US EPA to bring these training resources and materials to CMHA employees.

Recommendation 4: Council should take steps to make Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority subject to Cleveland’s Residents First and Lead Safe Certificate laws (Codified Ordinances 365). A key factor that triggered the HUD IG investigation is the fact that that HUD itself has failed to enforce its own Lead Safe Housing Rule on public housing authorities. Bringing CMHA under the jurisdiction of these city ordinances will create complementary source of oversight of CMHA practices going forward.

Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing has worked tirelessly to make Cleveland Lead Safe since 2016 when we worked with Councilman (now Judge) Jeff Johnson to introduce a lead safe certificate law that never got a hearing in City Council. When CLASH’s Citizen initiative in 2019 in the passage of the Lead Safe Certificate Program on July 24, 2019, CLASH understood that passing the law was “the end of the beginning” of our efforts to make Cleveland Lead Safe.