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As the Federal Strategy for the Elimination of Childhood Lead Poisoning
emphasizes, making U.S. housing lead-safe is the key to eliminating lead
poisoning as a public health problem. The presence of “significant
lead hazards” in 25 million housing units calls for a broad set
of primary prevention tools and strategies that reach beyond raising awareness
and educating parents about day-to-day behavior changes. Many cities and
states are pursuing effective ways to prevent and control lead hazards
before a child is poisoned; programs and policymakers in other jurisdictions
need easy access to information about the multiple opportunities available
to advance prevention for lead safety and healthy homes.
Through Building Blocks for Primary Prevention: Protecting Children
from Lead-Based Paint Hazards, the Alliance has identified and assembled
a comprehensive collection of strategies that merit consideration by state
and local governments and others in position to reduce lead hazards in
housing and thereby help meet the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating
childhood lead poisoning. In contrast to case studies that comprehensively
analyze a single program, this project scanned the landscape to identify
and describe innovative and promising strategies at the “building
block” level. Building Blocks produced concise summaries
of individual strategies from which cities and states can select based
on their needs and political and economic realities. Building Blocks’
primary audience is state and local health departments, who will be able
to directly implement some strategies, and, for other strategies, to coordinate
or encourage needed action by other government agencies, community-based
organizations, and the private sector.
The
online edition of Building Blocks is currently available.
Three essential ingredients for making the U.S. housing stock lead-safe
are:
1) a work force trained and qualified to perform the spectrum of activities
to identify, control, and prevent lead hazards,
2) the financial resources to cover the cost of lead safety measures,
and
3) motivation by property owners to address lead safety and control lead
hazards.
While HUD and other federal agencies have worked diligently to build
workforce capacity and increase financial resources, increasing property
owners’ interest and motivation has not received the same concerted
attention. In truth, it is difficult to imagine how the first two goals
can ever be achieved unless property owners are moved to take lead safety
more seriously.
The Alliance worked with a powerful and diverse team of partners—two
state agencies, five local health departments, and ten community-based
organizations—to motivate disinterested landlords to increase private
sector investments in lead hazard control by way of stepped-up enforcement
of the federal disclosure law. The project developed and tested a number
of strategies to leverage the federal lead hazard disclosure law to convince
owners of high-risk properties to invest the additional resources that
are needed to prevent and control lead hazards. Four strategies to leverage
the disclosure law came out of this project:
1) Tenant Education,
2) Outreach to Landlords,
3) Systems Change, and
4) Document/Report Disclosure Violations.
Through the implementation of these strategies, project partners reached
out to cooperative landlords and worked with them to improve compliance
with the disclosure law. They also offered resources for lead hazard control,
such as LSWP training, and identified and reported the worst offenders
to HUD and EPA for enforcement.
The Community Environmental
Health Resource Center (CEHRC) was a collaborative enterprise
of the Alliance and local advocacy groups from across the country working
to protect children at highest risk from environmental health hazards
in their housing, schools, neighborhoods, and communities. The goal of
CEHRC was to help community-based organizations build their capacity to
empower residents, catalyze corrective action, and expand economic opportunities
by providing access to tools for identifying and controlling environmental
health hazards that cause lead poisoning, asthma, and other health problems.
CEHRC provided training, technical assistance, and other support to local
groups as well as mechanisms for local groups to share experiences, develop
strategy together, and learn from and support each other.
Local advocates see environmental sampling as a powerful tool for their
organizations: for mobilizing their communities to action, changing power
relationships with landlords and local agencies, building capacity in
their communities, and helping to win specific advocacy outcomes. Community
leaders have identified a wide range of advocacy objectives that could
be advanced by documenting health hazards: from strengthening code enforcement
and enacting local laws and ordinances, to forcing landlords to correct
code violations and winning more block grant funds for housing rehab.
By the end of March 2005, with the support of HUD, CEHRC facilitated
the testing of 3,300 homes and played a major role in achieving significant
policy change objectives in several cities across the country.
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