The city failed to perform proper lead paint oversight not just in public housing but also in thousands of private sector buildings where the rent is subsidized with taxpayer dollars.
Department of Housing Preservation & Development Commissioner Maria Torres-Spring on Tuesday — out of the blue — announced that it had conducted a top-to-bottom re-examination of its lead paint program and discovered numerous areas where federal regulations on inspection and abatement weren’t followed.
The department is responsible for overseeing and inspecting 40,000 private sector apartments that receive federal funding, mostly via the Section 8 program that subsidizes rent for low-income renters. That includes 4,000 apartments with children under 6.
On Tuesday HPD for the first time admitted it has failed to follow federal regulations regarding lead paint inspections. The department’s statement did not spell out how many children lived in the apartments where these failures occurred.
The re-inspection was ordered by Torres-Springer in July shortly after the city and NYCHA signed a consent decree with federal prosecutors admitting they’d failed for years to perform required lead paint inspections in public housing.
NYCHA admitted from 2012 through 2015 it simply stopped doing annual lead paint inspections required by local law and federal regulations, and through most of 2017 used untrained workers to inspect and clean up lead paint from apartments.
Landlords are responsible for annual lead paint inspections in private apartments with young children, but HPD must inspect all apartments when they become vacant. Commissioner Torres-Springer insisted that HPD has been performing these initial inspections and if peeling paint was discovered, landlords were ordered to clean it up.
But on Tuesday HPD admitted it did little to no follow-up on these apartments to make sure landlords actually cleaned up the problem.
Since 2016, they say they’ve found 186 apartments and 15 1- or 2-family homes with children under six where these follow-ups never occurred. Since June they re-inspected these units make sure the lead paint was abated.
They also did no follow-up in the common areas of 2,300 buildings with 3,645 households. All of these areas are now being re-inspected with the city hoping to finish up by mid-November.
In announcing the re-inspection Tuesday, the department used vague bureaucratic language, stating that “process enhancement needed to be made to ensure owner adherence to all federal guidelines for lead paint removal.”
Torres-Springer initiated the re-examination of its Section 8 units in July shortly after Mayor de Blasio announced a more aggressive effort to combat lead poisoning both at NYCHA and in private apartments.
“We took swift action to make necessary improvements, and will continue to work with our agency partners to drive lead exposure in our city even lower.” Torres-Springer said.
Since 2012 the federal Centers for Disease Control has recommended public health authorities perform an environmental review to discover the source of lead when a child registers a blood-lead level of 5 micro-grams per deciliter. But from 2012 through 2017, the city used a 10 micro-gram standard to trigger an investigation.
As a result, the city didn’t check the apartments of 825 young children living in NYCHA who’d registered lead levels the CDC considered of concern.
On Tuesday, HPD said the Health Department notified them about five children under six living in Section 8 apartments who’s tested for what the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene deemed elevated blood lead. That includes two years when DOHMH was using the 10 micro-gram standard.
“New York City has the strongest lead regime in the country, and HPD is committed to rigorously enforcing those laws and regulations to ensure that residents have the protections they need and deserve,” Torres-Spring said. “We will continue to examine all of our programs and take swift action to improve, where needed, our efforts to drive lead exposure in our city even lower.”
