Targeting Highest-Risk Housing

When documenting health hazards in homes to get “ammunition” to advocate for community-wide solutions, it is helpful to start with the highest risk homes in your community. This is where you will probably find the most powerful documentation of serious health risks to support your healthy homes advocacy. This fact sheet describes some practical ways to target highest risk housing.

Rental housing is more likely in general to have substandard conditions (and related health hazards) than owner occupied housing. Absentee owners tend to know and care less about poor conditions than owners who frequent their properties. And some landlords have financial difficulty meeting basic upkeep needs. You are also likely to get more political traction by addressing rental housing, because lawmakers and officials tend to be far more reluctant to impose requirements on owner-occupants.

Older properties are more likely to have maintenance problems and health hazards. For example, pre-1950 homes are at substantially higher risk for lead paint hazards than newer homes. Table 1 shows the relationship between the age of home and the likelihood that lead-based paint is present on different surfaces. The percentages cited in this table actually underestimate the greater risk for older homes because the older the home, the more highly leaded the paint tends to be and the more coats of lead paint will have been applied to surfaces. A later section of this fact sheet describes practical ways to determine the age of a building.

Low-income, minority and immigrant-occupied housing is also associated with higher risk. Table 2 shows the relationship between lead poisoning, income and race/ethnicity within broad housing age categories. Other data show that many immigrant communities have higher than average blood lead levels. Minorities also have higher rates of asthma (and higher asthma hospitalization and death rates) in the US.

Properties with visible evidence of exterior deterioration, such as deteriorated paint, broken windows, water damage, roof or gutter problems, structural problems, etc., are logical ones to investigate further.

Properties with documented code violations constitute another high-risk group. Information from code inspection reports, housing court records or other public records can provide you with specific properties with the types of violations associated with health problems.

Properties owned by irresponsible landlords. In some communities, just a few notorious slumlords own scores of hundreds of substandard properties.

Properties where tenants have reported certain kinds of problems to you or another agency (such as a tenants' rights group or legal services organization) constitute a target group for further investigation.

Properties in areas with known higher incidence of lead poisoning or asthma are likely to have hazards. Lead poisoning or asthma data may be available from your health department at the neighborhood, census tract, block group, or block level. Other units in multi-unit buildings or complexes where a sick child resides in one unit also are likely to contain similar hazards. However, re-documenting hazards in specific properties where they are already known to exist – such as the homes of known lead poisoned children – provides little new information.

Determining the Age of a House/Building

First, you should check official records with your local tax assessor or register/recorder of deeds office. In some cities it’s enough to simply have the property address; in other cities you need additional owner, taxpayer or lot information to obtain this.

Tax Assessor
The tax roll for every property should be located at your local city hall, municipal building or county courthouse. This document should list each person who owned the property, and the assessed value of the property. Sometimes the tax roll information includes records before anything was built on the lot. The year the property’s value jumped may indicate when a house was built on a previously empty lot.

Register of Deeds
This office will have a tract index, title transfer records or a grantor-grantee index for all houses, or in other words, a listing of transactions involving the property. These documents often reveal the year the property was built.

If this information is not readily available from official records in your jurisdiction, talk with a local real estate agent who sells residential property in your community. They are likely either to have access to a real estate database that includes the year built for all properties or to be able to give you a good estimate for when a building was constructed simply by looking at the property. Many of their customers insist on knowing the date of construction.

If the above methods fail you, here are some techniques to estimate a home's age if its building date is unknown. The information below was adapted from the Chicagoland Home and Building Inspectors’ website.

Toilet: A toilet tank or lid usually has the date of creation stamped inside. A toilet tank or lid without a date stamp means that it was probably manufactured after 1990. This method works only if there is an original toilet tank in the home.

Sink: Raised numbers on iron fixtures or numbers stenciled in white on the underside of bath, kitchen, and laundry sinks indicate the date of manufacture. This works only if an original sink remains in the home.

Gas shut-off valves: Gas shut-off valves on water heaters and furnaces often have the original municipal inspection tag attached. If it is still there, it should have a date (often handwritten) with the approval date for gas meter installation. This is helpful only if the water heater or furnace is original.

Breaker box: Look for dates on labels of the electric breaker box. If the “UL” symbol is on this tag, look below for the month and year of approval – usually a date within five years prior to installation. This method will not help if the breaker box is not original.

Water heater: Most water-heater labels note their manufacture date, although some note the date the warranty expires. Yellow energy-efficiency stickers for the TPR (Temperature Pressure Relief) valve first became mandatory about 1970. In newer properties this is likely to be original equipment, but in older buildings original water heaters may have been replaced.

Heating and cooling units: Most furnaces’ and air-conditioning units’ manufacture date is on an attached label. In older homes, furnaces are much more likely to be original equipment than are air conditioners – which were very rare until after World War II.

Sliding glass doors: The home was built prior to 1960 if sliding glass doors are not made of tempered glass.

Rafters: Manufactured trusses became popular in the late 1960s. Rafters with center-to-center measurements that exceed 24 inches suggest that the home was built before 1960. Full 2” x 4” rafters, also known as rough-hewn rafters, often exceed 24-inch centers and were common prior to 1945.

Fireplaces and chimneys: Spalling (loss of brick surface material due to moisture infiltration) usually indicates a house is more than 40 years old. The lack of a chimney damper generally means that the home was built prior to 1940. A chimney without clay tile flue liners was most likely built before 1945.

Water supply and waste pipes: Galvanized water-supply pipes were phased out in most locations in favor of copper between 1965 and 1975. Cast-iron waste pipes were replaced in most areas between 1970 and 1975.