Yvonka Hall, president of CLASH, called on the city of Cleveland to make changes to its multimillion dollar effort to combat childhood lead poisoning.
Yvonka Hall, president of CLASH, called on the city of Cleveland to make changes to its multimillion dollar effort to combat childhood lead poisoning. She stood alongside other community advocates. Credit: Celia Hack / Signal Cleveland

Cleveland’s multimillion-dollar effort to fight childhood lead poisoning is falling short, local advocates say.

The city should bolster its efforts with several changes, leaders of Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing and other community members said at a press conference Monday. 

The glaring headline was Cleveland’s loss of $3.3 million to fix up homes with dangerous lead paint, money the State of Ohio said it would claw back this year after the city hamstrung its own spending. But they also pointed out that seven years after legislation passed requiring lead safe certificates, fewer than half of rental properties have them. 

And the group is highly frustrated with childhood testing efforts. 

“We’re here again to highlight something that the City of Cleveland has been masterful in, and that is failure and getting in their own way,” said Erika Jarvis, a CLASH member who said she was poisoned by lead as a child.

Advocates laid out a list of about half a dozen changes that they’d like to see made by the city or its partner, the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, a partnership of nonprofits, philanthropists and local government officials.

Those include:

  • Restoring financial incentives for landlords to get a lead safe certificate from the city. The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition ended the program last month when federal COVID relief funds ran out. 
  • Using the city’s mobile clinic, staffed by health department staff, to test lead levels in children around the city. 
  • Creating a city Department of Lead Safety to operate lead programs and the Lead Safe Resource Center, which is currently run by a nonprofit.
  • Updating the city’s lead safe law to include a change made by Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration in 2024 that required a stricter inspection for lead hazards. 
  • An audit of all ARPA funding spent on lead safe programs. The city gave about $14 million to the Mt. Sinai Foundation for use by the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition. It’s been spent on landlord incentives, a resident relocation program and a lead testing program. 

Dr. David Margolius, the city’s director of Public Health, has argued that Cleveland is making progress on its fight against lead poisoning. The rate of kids who were poisoned decreased in 2025, the second drop in two years. He disagreed that several of CLASH’s requests — including bringing back financial incentives and testing from the health department’s mobile van — were necessary to improve lead safety in the city. 

In recent weeks, though, Margolius has proposed several changes to the city’s lead safe law to make it easier on landlords who have done the “right thing” regarding lead safety. 

Spencer Wells, a co-founder of CLASH, said that the advocacy group soon plans to suggest its own set of amendments to the lead safe law, reflecting the concerns and goals it raised Monday.  

Cleveland lead testing still lags, though officials say there has been improvement

One of CLASH’s major concerns is getting more kids tested and screened for lead poisoning. 

Yvonka Hall, the president of CLASH, said she believed the city’s shrinking rate of lead poisoning is “partially” because the number of kids tested is dropping. 

“If testing is going down, how can you say that the numbers have gone down?” Hall said.

The number of kids tested in Cleveland dropped by about 4,000 during the pandemic and hasn’t returned to the same level since, according to state health department data. And she said the testing rate was “dismal” even before the pandemic. 

About 41% of the city’s kids aged one to five were tested in 2019, according to city health data. That dropped to 34% in 2024, though this number is a rough estimate because the city did not have census data for the number of children that year. 

CLASH wants the city to hire a staffer who can provide lead testing on-board Cleveland’s mobile health clinics, as a way to make it more accessible. The clinics – renovated vans that park at community sites like recreation centers – currently offer testing for sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. The vans could test residents on evenings and weekends, Well said. 

Margolius said the city doesn’t have a system to follow up on the results of the lead tests in the mobile clinics. He emphasized that the department wants children to receive lead testing at their primary care office, so that children receive it as part of “whole wellness care” — an opportunity to get their vaccines, measurements and other assessments.  

He added that fewer kids are being tested for lead poisoning because there are fewer kids in the city: Cleveland’s birth rate declined 17% between 2019 and 2024.  

Margolius also pointed to the success of a pilot program overseen by the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition. The program is more narrowly focused on children who attend a well-child visit before their second birthday. Amongst those children, the rate of testing rose from 69% last June to 74% this December. The goal is to reach 79% this summer. 

Higher hopes for Lead Safe Resource Center

CLASH also raised concerns about the Lead Safe Resource Center, a facility on Euclid Avenue meant to assist landlords and tenants in all things lead safety. It can provide training for interested lead workers, navigation for landlords seeking a lead safe certificate from the city, and education to tenants about lead. The center staffs a hotline about lead. 

Hall called the center an “utter failure.”  

“We’ve had landlords who have called us … and asked who could they talk to, because they have been calling a line that no one’s responding,” Hall said. 

CLASH suggested moving the center to operate underneath a new city department focused on lead safety – “with real people who can answer questions,” Hall said.  

Ayonna Blue Donald, an executive board member of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, said that the resource center was initially established outside of city government because Cleveland didn’t have the capacity to answer phone calls. She said the organization is open to feedback on where it can improve, but she is unsure who specifically had a complaint with the center. This morning, she called the resource center. 

“It picked up on the first ring,” Blue Donald said. “So I’m not exactly sure what that complaint is.”

Kim Foreman, a leader of Environmental Health Watch, the nonprofit that operates the center, did not have a comment on the concerns raised by CLASH on Monday.

Health Reporter (she/her)
I aim to cover a broad array of factors influencing Clevelanders’ health, from the traditional healthcare systems to issues like housing and the environment. As a recent transplant from my home state of Kansas, I hope to learn the ins-and-outs of the city’s complex health systems – and break them down for readers as I do.