Lead Safe Certificate

Lead Safe Certificate Law continues to underperform

June 2024

Auditors Report Slides June 2024 (thanks, Signal Cleveland)

DRAFT For Review Report to Lead Safe Advisory Board City of Cleveland (thanks, Signal Cleveland)

Jun 28, 2024 WEWS. Cleveland struggles to make rental properties lead safe

Jun. 30, 2024. cleveland.com. Time to clean house at the Lead Safe Advisory Board to put Cleveland babies first. "Nearly eight months ago, The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com editorial board recommended that, 'Cleveland’s faltering lead-safe effort needs a recharge - and radical rethinking' (Nov. 1, 2023). Restructuring the city’s Lead Safe Advisory Board can help with that 'radical rethinking.' ”

Fischer also expressed concern only 20% of landlords who have already received a lead safe certificate are renewing on schedule, when they hit their two-year termination of their certificate.

"That's really troubling because the whole theory of this ordinance is that once you get a property lead safe that you continue to renew that certificate to insure that the lead safety is present," he said.

March 2024

Mar. 27, 2024. cleveland.com. Children’s well-being is at stake in Cleveland’s lead-safe refresh, version 3.0: editorial. "The good news is that Cleveland is still trying valiantly to recalibrate its approach to making Cleveland rentals lead-safe by 2028 -- this time by creating a special section in the city’s Housing and Building Department that will take a case-management approach to helping noncompliant small landlords navigate the bureaucracy, financial and other challenges. The bad news is that all signs point to cratering landlord compliance, especially among smaller landlords. Meanwhile, hundreds of Cleveland children continue to test annually at elevated lead levels in their blood -- 316 last year, compared with 257 in 2022, cleveland.com’s Courtney Astolfi reports, although the higher number could reflect more robust testing.

October 2023

• September LSHB meeting, fur flies but no media. CWRU leaks a Fischer statement. Then, Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer blows the whistle on the certificate program. WEWS picks up on the story and the cat's out of the bag

• Cleveland’s faltering lead-safe effort needs a recharge - and radical rethinking: editorial https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2023/02/cleveland-has-tried-the-carrot-approach-to-get-landlords-to-deal-with-lead-now-its-time-for-the-stick-editorial.html

January 2023

Jan. 30, 2023. cleveland.com. Four out of five rentals have yet to comply as Cleveland’s lead-safe law enters next chapter. "Two years into the city of Cleveland’s efforts to proactively fight child lead-poisoning, roughly 80% of rental units haven’t been certified as lead-safe. Meanwhile, the city has begun testing its landmark 2019 lead law in housing court, issuing a handful of citations to negligent property owners in hopes of finding the right approach to enforcement.

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