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Residents First

Lead and Amnesia

History of Lead Advocacy in Cleveland

Lead Safe Certificate Law

2026--A period of transition

With the end of the ARPA and State funding, Lead Safety programs in Cleveland will be bound to evolve. Follow the developments here

Feb. 09, 2026. Cleveland.com. Ohio claws back $3.3M from Cleveland after city fails to spend money on removing lead from homes. "Cleveland will lose $3.3 million in grant money that was meant to help remove sources of lead from homes because the city failed to spend the money fast enough. The money was part of a $4.9 million grant administered by the Ohio Department of Development. Cleveland was allowed to use the funds to remove old windows and doors coated with lead paint, a common source of lead poisoning in homes. But the grant came with a February 28, 2026 spending deadline. And over the past two years, Cleveland has struggled to spend the money, Tom McNair, Cleveland’s chief of integrated development, told City Council Monday afternoon."

Feb. 09, 2026. cleveland.com "A lead law meant to protect children — ignored by the people who passed it: Leila Atassi. "City officials and advocates keep asking why landlord compliance with laws requiring lead inspection, mitigation and registration remains so stubbornly low, despite years of outreach, incentives and enforcement. What will it take to convince property owners that protecting children matters more than convenience or cost? While City Hall debates those questions, one City Councilman ignored the lead law he voted for at his own rental properties. And the council president, who once spoke passionately about the damage lead poisoning inflicts on Black and brown children, responded not with urgency or accountability, but with a shrug."

February 9, 2026 Signal Cleveland. Cleveland loses $3.3 million in lead paint grant money after spending it too slowly. "Administration officials said the city and its vendor, CHN Housing Partners, were hamstrung by the grant’s rules. Spending was limited to replacing windows and doors — key sources of lead paint chips and dust — for $15,000 per home." Reporter Nick Castele recalls "It’s not the first time Cleveland has missed out on money meant for fighting lead paint. In 2012, Cleveland lost $2 million in grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because the city was too slow to spend it. More recently HUD gives Cleveland second reprieve on millions earmarked for lead remediation after Cleveland hired an outside firm to manage the program for the Department of Community Development. 

January 31, 2026: From today's Signal Cleveland news site: "During past city budgeting seasons, when [Councilman] Polensek had asked [former director of Building and Housing] O’Leary if he had enough money to run his department, O’Leary had said yes. But that wasn’t true. 'I had lied to you,' O’Leary said. The confession tickled Polensek. 'Of course you did,' he said, as others laughed. O’Leary ran the building department under former Mayor Frank Jackson. He attended Wednesday’s caucus meeting to assist with a presentation on housing trends. His point was that Cleveland has long underfunded its building inspectors. That has made it harder for the city to cite the owners of dilapidated properties. 'The only way that you get code enforcement done right is to give them the money,' O’Leary said. 'And for at least the time that I've been doing code enforcement, since 1999, you've been, the city, has been starving them.' ” In 2018, Polensek told Yvonka, Marian and Spencer that our bill would never work because the city would never enforce it. It was CLASH's ballot initiative that flipped the script and made the city responsible to make rental properties lead safe. 

January 27, 2026. Signal Cleveland The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition said that public funds to pay for the program have run out, and other remaining dollars can’t be used to pay for incentives. "Since 2020, the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition – a partnership of nonprofits and local government officials working to reduce the number of children exposed to lead at home – has offered $750 to $1,000 rebates to landlords whose homes earned a lead safe certification from the city. The certificates are issued after an inspection proves a home has no active lead hazards, which can damage a child’s developing brain, leading to irreversible delays and behavioral issues."

Jan. 07, 2026. cleveland.com Cleveland cracks down on code violations, issuing $1.7M in fines, mostly to landlords. "Cleveland has issued more than 9,000 tickets and $1.7 million worth of fines using a new tool designed to penalize landlords and property owners who flout the city’s housing code. The use of the $200 civil tickets started modestly, as city inspectors wrote dozens in January and February. However, citations ramped up to thousands being written each month this fall. More than half have been at rental properties that are not following the city’s rules. Most of the tickets have gone unpaid so far, but officials warn that ignored tickets will be tacked onto violators’ property taxes. Cleveland has already sent more than 500 unpaid tickets to the county to be placed as liens." Here's the new news: "Cleveland isn’t just sending tickets. With inspectors now systematically looking through neighborhoods for code violations, Martin O’Toole said the department has started giving homeowners warnings about violations and even thank-you tags if no issues are found."

2025: Mayor Bibb makes a sharp turn from Lead Safe to Lead Free, but performance lags expectation

• Oct. 23, 2025 Plain Dealer. Cleveland’s lead poisoning rates show improvement after years of stagnation "New testing data shows that fewer children in Cleveland are testing positive for lead poisoning, leaving city officials hopeful that real progress is happening toward keeping children safe. Advocates, meanwhile, are optimistic while pointing out that much more progress is needed."

• Oct. 19, 2025. Plain Dealer via. Cleveland.com. A mayoralty of youth and energy - Justin Bibb’s first four years did not disappoint: editorial "...Bibb’s biggest failing in his first term was dealing with the poisoning of young people from lead paint. Nothing imperils Cleveland’s children more than lead poisoning, yet despite years of discussions and a $100 million war chest, no one seems able to start removing lead from Cleveland houses. It is Cleveland’s shame that it continues to fail its children by leaving them exposed to lead paint, which permanently damages their brains and condemns them to lives of futility. Eventually, someone in this town will rise and get this job done, building a heroic legacy. We wish that person would be Bibb. He should make it his priority in a second term." CLASH says no Lone Ranger will solve the problem of lead poisoning in Cleveland. The battle is multidimensional (all sectors need to be engaged) and generational. 

• August 14, 2025. Cleveland City Council shifts funds from Building and Housing Department of Public Health. DPH will take over processing applications for lead safe certificates. Watch the proceedings on YouTube. 

• May. 04, 2025. Cleveland.com. $11.9 million: Cleveland may again lose millions meant to keep kids safe from lead over slow spending "Cleveland risks forfeiting $11.9 million in federal funding to remove lead from homes — a critical tool for protecting children — because City Hall once again failed to spend the money fast enough. Cleveland won two federal grants in 2020 and 2022 worth $15.4 million to identify and remove lead from homes to protect children from lead poisoning. But a mixture of City Hall’s own admitted issues — along with strict federal guidelines on spending — have made getting money out the door challenging. Mayor Justin Bibb has $11.9 million left to spend, but both grants are set to expire this year, with $7.6 million expiring on May 30. Initially, the idea that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would expand these grants and postpone the expiration seemed possible, Community Development Director Alyssa Hernandez told Cleveland City Council. But it’s now unclear if President Donald Trump’s administration will do so." 

• Apr. 10, 2025. cleveland.com. Cleveland enlists workers across City Hall to tackle backlog of lead-safe applications. "Cleveland has cleared a backlog of 1,200 lead-safe applications ahead of schedule after enlisting volunteers from across City Hall to tackle the logjam. The cleared backlog lets the city refocus on the bigger issue: trying to make real progress on preventing childhood lead poisoning. The bureaucratic bottleneck was originally expected to take six months and was tying up key staffers as they reviewed paperwork submitted by landlords. But Cleveland’s Health Director Dr. David Margolius said workers from four other city departments were brought in to help Building & Housing review 1,000 applications in about a month." Good work! Thanks to all the CLASHers who were working behind the scenes to make the backlog a front burner issue. More here.

• February 3, 2025. Signal Cleveland. Mayor Justin Bibb’s $2.1 billion budget calls for tackling blight. First Cleveland needs more staff to do it. "The latest spending plan shows the city will have work to do filling code enforcement vacancies.Cleveland will have around 30 code enforcement vacancies to fill this year, according to Mayor Justin Bibb’s 2025 budget proposal. "This year’s spending plan calls for 120 positions in the code enforcement division of the Building and Housing Department. Only 92 people worked there as of December 2024, according to the budget estimate. In a letter introducing the budget proposal, Bibb wrote that “tackling blight through aggressive enforcement” would be a key priority."

• October 17, 2024. Signal Cleveland. Mayor Justin Bibb shakes up Cleveland’s flagging effort to stop children from being lead poisoned. "Bibb wants to push for a higher standard of lead inspections in Cleveland rental properties. His executive order surprised the people who have been helping City Hall carry out its lead program for the last several years. A shakeup is coming to Cleveland’s multimillion-dollar fight against lead paint. In an executive order this week, Mayor Justin Bibb argued that the city’s five-year-old effort to clear household lead hazards was ineffective. The order came as a surprise to people who have worked for years to help City Hall carry out its battle against lead. Now the mayor is reaching for a more expensive and difficult goal: lead abatement. The term “abatement” means the full removal or permanent containment of lead in a house. That could entail replacing walls, baseboards, windows, doors – any surface coated with lead-based paint before the substance was banned in 1978. Chipped and peeling lead-based paint that was applied to homes decades ago still poses a risk to children. Cleveland, with its old housing stock, has one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country."

• Oct 14, 2024. WEWS. Cleveland pivots certification process to tackle lead paint hazards

• Oct. 14, 2024. Cleveland.com. Worse than Flint: 4 takeaways from Cleveland’s big lead poisoning hearing

• October 14, 2024. Channel 3 News. City of Cleveland determined to lower lead poisoning cases; Mayor Bibb takes action. "Mayor Justin Bibb signs executive order requiring anyone who owns or rents a home built before 1978 get additional testing."

• Oct. 15, 2024. SpectrumNews1. Public health leaders raise alarm bells about lead crisis in Cleveland

• October 14, 2024. Ideastream Public Media. Cleveland officials meet to address shortcomings in lead testing, remediation efforts. 

• Enforcement and Endorsement. October 21, 2024. Tracking Cleveland’s efforts to crack down on lead paint hazards. "We told you last week that Cleveland City Hall is shaking up its efforts against lead paint in rental homes. Here’s another angle on the city’s fight against lead." 

• Oct. 11, 2024 cleveland.com Five years in, Cleveland’s much-touted lead-safe law has failed to reduce child lead poisoning

• CHILDHOOD LEAD EXPOSURE IN CLEVELAND, OH DATA BRIEF OCTOBER 2024 (this was the report that triggered the Mayor's Executive Order