PROVIDENCE, RI – In an effort to protect children and families in public housing, U.S. Senator Jack Reed today announced $1,974,400 in new federal grants for Pawtucket and Providence to identify and address lead-based paint hazards.  The Pawtucket Housing Authority will receive $1,000,000 and the Providence Housing Authority will receive $974,400 to evaluate and address lead-based paint hazards in their older housing developments.  These agencies may use this funding to perform risk assessments and remove or control lead-contaminated dust and soil in and around public housing units. The federal funds are administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Public Housing Lead-Based Paint Capital Fund Program.

For years, Senator Reed, the Ranking Member of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) Appropriations Subcommittee, has pushed to strengthen HUD regulations governing lead-based paint hazards.  In 2016, he joined then-HUD Secretary Julian Castro to announce the modernization of HUD’s intervention standard for children with lead poisoning to align with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) most up-to-date recommendations. To help public housing agencies comply with this new standard, Senator Reed included $25 million in the fiscal year 2017 Omnibus, from which these grants were awarded.  Senator Reed also worked to improve inspections and the enforcement of regulations in assisted housing in that bill.

“Every child deserves a safe and healthy home.  Eliminating lead-based paint hazards from public housing is both a moral and economic imperative, and Congress must do its part to protect at-risk children and families.  Lead poisoning is a preventable tragedy, and these grants will help prevent kids from being exposed to harmful lead-based paint hazards in their homes,” said Senator Reed. “This isn’t a problem that will fix itself.  We must be proactive and accelerate efforts to identify and clean up lead-based paint hazards, reduce exposure, and strengthen our communities.  There are simple steps we can take now to prevent permanent damage that could last a lifetime, but we have to provide the resources and collective commitment to get the job done,” said Senator Reed.

Including these awards, Senator Reed has helped to secure over $15 million in federal funding for lead abatement efforts across Rhode Island over the last five years.

According to HUD, 70 percent of lead poisoning cases in the United States are the result of exposure to lead-based paint hazards in the home. This exposure usually stems from the presence of lead-based paint in homes built prior to 1978 as lead was commonly used in household paint at that time to increase its durability. In 1978, Congress banned the use of lead in paint for residential use. According to the Rhode Island Department of Health, an estimated 80% of Rhode Island homes were built before 1978 and likely contain lead-based paint, which is the most common source of lead exposure to children in Rhode Island.

Lead poisoning disproportionately affects the lives of children from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds and can have lifelong, irreversible consequences, including severely inhibiting healthy development and compromising learning ability. According to the CDC, children in at least 4 million U.S. households are being exposed to high levels of lead. Exposure to lead-based paint hazards at a young age poses not only serious immediate health consequences, but may also permanently jeopardize potential for upward social mobility throughout adulthood. Children who are exposed to lead hazards are seven times more likely to drop out of school and six times more likely to end up in the juvenile justice system. 

The CDC now estimates that 535,000 American children under 6 years of age are affected by lead poisoning.  According to the Rhode Island KIDS COUNT Factbook: “In 2017, 953 (4%) of the 24,501Rhode Island children under age six who were screened had confirmedvelevated blood lead levels of ≥5 µg/dL.  Children living in the four core cities (6%) were more than twice as likely as children in the remainder of the states (3%) to have confirmed elevated blood lead levels ≥5 µg/dL.”

In the fiscal year 2019 Senate THUD bill, Senator Reed secured $260 million in federal funding for lead abatement and an additional $25 million to expand inspections for and remediate lead-based paint hazards in public housing.  This combined funding level represents a $175 million increase in funding for these activities since fiscal year 2016.

Senator Reed also helped to include a new grant program in the fiscal year 2019 Senate THUD bill that will identify ways to lower the cost of remediation of lead-based paint hazards in homes so that federal funding can be spent more efficiently and protect more children.  This new grant program will support projects to dramatically reduce lead-based paint hazards in five neighborhoods with high rates of housing stock built before 1940, low-income families with young children, and elevated blood lead levels in children under the age of six years old.  The fiscal year 2019 Senate THUD bill will also improve HUD’s processes to identify at-risk neighborhoods and ensure that lead-based paint regulations are complied with.