Buffalo sued over downtown lead poisoning

The lawsuit claims the city failed to adequately enforce a law requiring inspections of rental properties for lead paint.

Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, head of the Partnership for the public good. Photo by I’Jaz Ja’ciel.

This story was updated at 2:11 p.m. on July 11, 2024 to include comments from the City of Buffalo.

Tenants and community organizations are suing the city of Buffalo, claiming it is failing to enforce rental inspection laws aimed at reducing lead paint in the city’s aging housing stock.

The inspection law, enacted in 2020, was passed in response to the large number of children whose blood was found to have elevated lead levels. City inspectors have conducted relatively few inspections since then, according to the complaint.

“By failing to enforce the law and fail to inspect and regulate rental housing in the City of Buffalo for decades, they are failing to provide a clean and healthy environment for the city’s tenants,” Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good, told Investigative Post.

Each year, about 450 children under the age of six in Buffalo are diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels, with children living in predominantly Black neighborhoods 12 times more likely to be poisoned by lead than children living in white neighborhoods, according to the complaint. The city of Buffalo had three of the state’s four ZIP codes with the highest percentage of children tested with elevated blood lead levels, according to state Department of Health data for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.

Children poisoned by lead suffer neurological damage, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, hearing and speech problems, lower IQ and reduced life expectancy, the complaint says.

“There is no safe level of lead, and the damage caused by lead poisoning is irreversible,” the complaint said.

The complaint was filed Wednesday night by four community organizations — the Partnership for the Public Good, People United for Sustainable Housing, Housing Opportunities Made Equal and the Center for Elder Law and Justice — as well as four individuals, representing themselves and thousands of others in a class action for “all individuals who live or apply to live in properties subject to the city’s rent inspection law.”

“Each of them is susceptible to the consequences of an unhealthy living environment and is vulnerable to harm from ingesting lead from chipping and peeling paint,” the lawsuit says of the tenants, particularly young children.

The complaint, filed in state Supreme Court, asks the court to compel the city to conduct inspections of rental apartments, as required by its own proactive rental inspection law, checking for lead paint hazards and other health and safety violations. also asks the courts to declare that the city’s failure to fully enforce the law “violates the rights of the most vulnerable in the City of Buffalo to a safe and healthy environment,” as guaranteed by the New York State Constitution.

“Buffalo families routinely live in homes that are unfit for human habitation,” the plaintiffs said in a statement. “In this lawsuit, tenants describe their daily lives 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.”

City officials declined to comment.

“The city does not comment on pending litigation,” Catherine Amdur, commissioner of licensing and inspection services, said in a statement to Investigative Post.

Amdur noted, however, that Mayor Byron Brown had previously announced that the city would add seven new inspectors to the program this fiscal year.

“This brings the PRI team to a total of 10 people,” Amdur said in a statement.

There are approximately 36,000 rental units in single- and two-family homes in Buffalo that are covered by the city’s proactive rental inspection law, and thus subject to interior and exterior inspections every three years, according to the lawsuit.

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In the four years since the rental inspection law went into effect, fewer than 5,000 homes have been inspected, the lawsuit says. Only 293 homes were inspected in 2023 and about 200 in the first quarter of 2024.

The lawsuit comes five months after 39 community organizations – including the four groups that filed the complaint – sent a letter to Brown and Amdur, demanding that the city enforce the rent inspection law. The letter says a similar program in Rochester has proven effective in reducing lead poisoning.

Amdur later said in a report to City Council that the city could not afford the program and needed to be revised. She noted that homeowners were not paying fees for the inspections, which she said were time-consuming.

Investigative Post has covered lead poisoning in Buffalo extensively over the past decade. Here’s a sample of our coverage:

In response, local advocates and health professionals have urged the city to increase funding to meet the program’s requirements.

“We have known about the harmful effects of lead paint for over 100 years. It is long past time for the City of Buffalo, home to some of the oldest housing stock in the country, to take active steps to ensure that rental property owners in our city are complying with protective measures, as well as ensuring the basic health and safety of our city’s youth,” the spokesperson said. health professionals wrote to the Mayor and the Council.

The Partnership for Public Good also asked the city to increase funding to support the rental program.

“We asked for this very explicitly at the city budget hearing,” Ó Súilleabháin said.

The council increased rental registration fees to help fund the inspection program, and the city increased funding for the program.

“They did increase the budget. However, they said: ‘We are going to put money into this year’s budget to hire new inspectors. But it is going to take time, and then they will have to be trained,'” Mr Súilleabháin said.

The city shows no sense of urgency, she said.

“They added this funding, but they have not disclosed how many additional inspections (they) might do each quarter of the year, when that will happen (and) what neighborhoods will be targeted,” she said.

Amdur has also previously said that Erie County — not the city of Buffalo — bears the primary responsibility for preventing lead poisoning in Buffalo and Erie County.

In response, a spokeswoman for the county health department said that while Erie County receives county and state funding for lead poisoning prevention, inspection and enforcement, the issues raised by community groups are focused on a municipal program.

published 12 hours ago – July 11, 2024