Buffalo Groups and Residents Want More Lead Paint Inspections

There are holes between the bricks and in the corners of the window sills. Bricks are falling off the back of the house. The kitchen floor is missing in large areas. The kitchen cabinets are detached from the walls.

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And on her wooden porch, there is chipped and peeling lead paint, she said. Her granddaughter tested positive for a “very high level of lead” in her blood when she was 2. The Erie County Health Department determined it came from her playing on their porch, Oatmeyer said.

Oatmeyer is among four Buffalo residents and four community organizations that filed a petition with the state Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking to force the city to fully implement its proactive rental inspection law, which was intended to protect rental residents from lead paint and other health and safety hazards.

They claim that the city’s failure to enforce the PRI law violates the rights of its most vulnerable residents to live in a clean and healthy environment, as guaranteed by the New York State Constitution.

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“During these years of living in an environment with mold, lead paint, leaks, dampness, and other poor conditions, my family’s health has suffered. One of my daughters developed asthma,” Oatmeyer said in court documents. “She had never had symptoms or breathing problems before. She was a healthy, active child, but has now required an inhaler for the past two years.”

“If the proactive rental inspection law had been fully implemented, the landlord would not have been able to rent this home, with its numerous code violations and lead hazards, in the first place unless repairs were made,” Oatmeyer added.

The city does not comment on pending litigation, Buffalo spokesman Michael DeGeorge said.

In court documents, tenants describe living with leaky roofs, collapsing ceilings, mold, broken windows, rotting floors and exterior doors that don’t lock. Their children and grandchildren suffer from lead poisoning, asthma, persistent headaches and nosebleeds, among other things, they said.

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“We’re not asking for anything new. We’re simply asking that the city of Buffalo live up to its own standards,” said Steven Haagsma, an education specialist with Housing Opportunities Made Equal, which filed the petition in court.

Other organizations that filed petitions with the court include Partnership for the Public Good, PUSH Buffalo and the Center for Elder Law and Justice, which represents city residents on a pro bono basis with the law firm Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford.

Other city residents who filed the petition are Krystal Cruz, Denita Adams and Victoria Ring.

None of them attended Thursday’s news conference at HOME’s offices on Main Street for logistical reasons, such as lack of transportation or child care, organizers said. Another was working.

Since at least the early 1990s, Buffalo has ranked among the worst cities in the country for childhood lead poisoning, due to its aging housing stock and concentrated, segregated poverty.

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The Erie County Health Department has designated nine ZIP codes in the city as communities of concern because of high rates of lead poisoning in children.

The Buffalo City Council unanimously passed the PRI Act in 2020, which requires interior and exterior inspections of 36,000 rental homes in the City of Buffalo every three years, at an expected cost of $2.1 million per year. The program sends building inspectors into single- and two-family rental homes not occupied by their owners to check for lead paint hazards, as well as functioning utilities, mold, asbestos, rodents, water damage, broken windows, rotting floors and other unsanitary conditions.

The city has issued fewer than 5,000 certificates of compliance since 2020, representing about 1.2% of rental units covered by the PRI, said Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good.

City officials said earlier this year that funding for the PRI was a problem and that inspections were taking longer than expected.

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To raise funds for the program, the city in May doubled the rental registration fees paid by landlords.

The rental registration fee is now set at $50 for single-family homes, up from $25, and $100 for two-family homes, up from $50.

Mayor Byron Brown announced in his May 1 State of the City address that seven new inspectors — for a total of 10 — would be hired as part of the city’s 2024-25 operating budget, which began July 1.

The Rental Registry Ordinance, approved by the City Council in November 2020, created a database of all non-owner-occupied single- and two-family rental units in the city. Data collected includes the name and address of the owner and telephone numbers where the owner, or an agent of the owner, can be reached. The registration is renewable annually.

Before the increases, rental registration fees generated about $1 million a year, officials said.

The decision to increase the registration fee follows criticism from local community groups and residents earlier this year — including PPG — who called on the city to inspect far more rental properties, as required by its local PRI law.

The PRI program also relies on $1 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan, which will run out by the end of 2026.

Governor Kathy Hochul has proposed a new initiative aimed at preventing lead poisoning in children.

New York State’s rental registry and proactive inspections to identify lead hazards involve multiple agencies, including the State Department of Health, Division of Housing and Community Renewal, and the Department of State.

There is also the Erie County Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program, which is responsible for managing cases of childhood lead poisoning in Erie County. The program addresses the risk of lead exposure and prevents children with lead poisoning from further exposure. The program conducts investigations and provides information to parents or guardians of children under the age of 18 who test positive for lead in their blood.

The state provided about $2 million in grant money to run the program.

City officials said Buffalo is not the government agency with primary responsibility for combating lead paint or lead poisoning. The city plays a supporting role to state and county partners.

The city has been saying for about a decade that lead poisoning prevention is the county’s responsibility, Ó Súilleabháin said.

Community groups said Thursday that the city is largely responsible for building safety in general in Buffalo. It’s up to Erie County to inspect buildings after children tested positive for high levels of lead in their blood.

“The simplest way to look at it is that the (Erie County) Health Department is responsible for the health of the people. The (city) Permits and Inspections Department is responsible for the health of the buildings,” Ó Súilleabháin said.

“We need to inspect these buildings before kids test positive for lead to make sure they’re up to code so they’re safe for kids and we’re not just dealing with the consequences of kids being poisoned by lead, but we’re dealing with things upstream,” said Sarah Wooten, PPG’s director of community research.