Cleveland City Council Health, Human Services & the Arts Committee Hosts Lead Safe Cleveland Auditor Dr. Robert Fischer for Update 

Jan 30, 2023

Cleveland, Ohio (January 30, 2023) - Cleveland City Council hosted Lead Safe Cleveland Auditor and Case Western Reserve University Associate Professor Dr. Robert Fischer for a Lead Safe update at its scheduled January 30 Health, Human Services and the Arts (HHSA) Committee. The meeting is available for viewing at https://www.youtube.com/ClevelandCityCouncil. 

In July 2019, Cleveland City Council passed the Lead Safe Certification law to address childhood lead poisoning and Cleveland’s aging housing stock. Now a national model, the law requires that all residential rental units constructed before 1978 be proactively certified as lead-safe.

Dr. Fischer delivered a brief presentation during his time with the HHSA committee and fielded questions from the members. That presentation is available here.

Dr. Fischer compared Cleveland’s Lead Safe implementation to similar efforts in Detroit, Michigan, Rochester, New York, and Providence, Rhode Island. To date, Cleveland has achieved Lead Safe certification in 9% of rental properties. In comparison, the city of Rochester reached an 8% lead-safe threshold one year after launch. 

After seven years, Detroit reached a 15% lead-safe threshold, while Providence, Rhode Island reached a 20% threshold after the same amount of time. 

Cleveland would need to inspect nearly 4,000 residences per quarter to reach 100% lead-safe compliance in seven years. Data shared by Dr. Fischer at the HHSA committee meeting reveals approximately 1,000 residences are currently being inspected quarterly. 

During the question and answer portion of the conversation, a number of the committee members asked how to better implement the inspection process and how to convince more property owners to begin the inspection process. Council members acknowledged the questions they wished to pose might be better suited for another meeting with members of the Lead Safe CLE coalition, and representatives from the City’s Building & Housing and Community Development departments. 

To that end, Councilman Conwell raised the prospect of holding a meeting on February 9 to continue the conversation. Councilman Conwell stated, “Council is aggressively working to make properties lead safe. Our children need this, and we must not let a committee calendar delay that work.” 

Council member Rebecca Maurer praised the work of Lead Safe Cleveland but cautioned much work remains. She stated, “We’ve come so far in the fight against lead posioning, but we still have so far to go.”

Additional meetings of the HHSA committee about Lead Safe Cleveland will be shared in future communications. The meetings will also be posted on Cleveland City Council’s calendar, which can be viewed at https://cityofcleveland.legistar.com/Calendar.aspx 

The Health, Human Services, and the Arts Committee consists of Council members Chair Kevin Conwell (Ward 9), Vice-chair Rebecca Maurer (Ward 12) , Deborah Gray (Ward 4), Richard Starr (Ward 5), Stephanie Howse (Ward 7), Kris Harsh (Ward 13), and Charles Slife (Ward 17).

###