Recommendations to Governor Frank O'Bannon by IKE's Lead Poisoning Prevention Task Force

Finalized on April 26, 2000

Recommendation #5

Ensure that the new HUD lead-based paint regulations are fully and effectively implemented in Indiana with as little disruption in the availability of low-cost housing as possible.

HUD regulations adopted on September 15, 1999 are become effective on September 15, 2000. These regulations build on and greatly expand efforts to ensure that any housing that received federal HUD money adequately addresses the lead hazards. Nationally, the regulations will cover for the first time almost 2,500,000 dwellings with more than 20,000 in Indiana. And they are expected to cost housing authorities, developers and the federal government, $253 million to implement in the first year with an estimated present value of $564 million in the first five years.

Despite the high price tag, HUD estimates that these regulations will yield $2,650 million in benefits just in increased lifetime earnings of the young children who will benefit from the rule in its first five years. These benefits exclude the reduced costs to society for helping to manage children who have been lead poisoned.

IHFA and local housing authorities have a tremendous task on their hands to achieve compliance with these rules. IHFA is planning to offer four risk assessor and four abatement supervisor training sessions before September 15, 2000. This is an excellent step.

However, significantly more is needed. There are five significant implications of the rule that must be addressed by IHFA and the local housing authorities:

• The rule is complicated. It will take a significant and aggressive educational effort for both the agencies and their customers to correctly and fully follow the rule. The effort needs to go beyond getting people licensed to implement parts of the rule. It needs to help them understand the scope of the rule and how best to implement it. Without this understanding, they are likely to jump to costly or unnecessary conclusions that will hurt the federally subsidized housing markets.
• Compliance with the rule will require training for every one of the hundreds and, perhaps, thousands of maintenance workers and painters who will have to follow the detailed procedures laid out by the rule. The options for this training are very limited at the current time.
• The rule requires that the horizontal surfaces be sampled after every maintenance project to ensure that lead-based paint dust does not remain. This dust can be easily breathed or eaten by children and readily absorbed into the child’s blood. The state network of public and private labs does not appear prepared to quickly process the samples to ensure that federally assisted housing is ready for occupancy as quickly as possible. Until the test results are available, in most cases, no one is allowed to live in the residency.
• The rule is likely to discourage landlords from participating the Section 8 programs, especially the voucher programs, because of the training and testing requirements. If this happens, the available housing for low-income people who benefit from this program may become scarce. Without confidence that the State is going to make things work out smoothly, the disruption could be serious, especially for housing built between 1960 and 1978 that may have little lead-based paint in its interior.

The IKE Task Force believes that Indiana needs to:

• View the regulations as a valuable tool to help children and not as a federal burden to be met;
• Immediately evaluate IHFA staffing and resource needs to ensure it is able to efficiently educate itself and its customers on the regulations and to effectively monitor compliance;
• Mount an aggressive outreach campaign to help grant recipients understand the rule so they can make sound decisions to implement the rule in a timely and efficient manner;
• Encourage recipients to assume lead-based paint is present in homes built before 1978, especially homes built before 1960, to follow the HUD lead-based paint work practices, and use dust clearance testing to ensure the lead dust is not left behind;
• Coordinate with public and private labs in Indiana so they can quickly process dust samples;
• Closely monitor the effect of the rule on the availability of Section 8 housing and quickly respond to a reduction in availability before it becomes serious;
• Establish a clearance technician licensing and accreditation program based on federal guidance to reduce the need for costly risk assessments; and
• Work closely with local housing agencies to help them adopt a similar approach to lead-based paint and the HUD rules.