Cleveland has lost $3.3 million in state and federal grant money that was meant for clearing homes of lead paint, a toxin that can impair children’s brain development.
The reason for the loss is one that has dogged City Hall for years: It couldn’t spend the money fast enough.
Officials from Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration broke the news to Cleveland City Council’s health committee at a hearing Monday. Ward 9 Council Member Kevin Conwell, who chairs the committee, suggested lobbying Gov. Mike DeWine’s office for a return of the money.
“I don’t like losing money at all,” Conwell said. “It’s not good.”
The city was able to use $1.6 million of the full $4.9 million grant from the Ohio Department of Development’s Lead Safe Ohio program. Cleveland repaired 26 homes, and 63 others in the queue are funded for repairs. The money passed through the city’s Community Development Department.
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.
That alone wasn’t enough to make each house safe from lead paint, forcing CHN Housing Partners to find additional funding sources, Chief of Integrated Development Tom McNair told council members. The result was a “regulatory nightmare” contributing to slow spending, he said.
“If you can only do windows and doors and you can only spend $15,000, there is no way you’re getting a lead clearance certificate,” McNair said.
The administration shared the bad news coupled with some good news. Childhood lead poisoning rates have fallen for the second year in a row in Cleveland, reaching their lowest level on record, Health Director Dr. David Margolius said.
Cleveland received one-year extensions for a trio of other five-year federal lead grants, Margolius said. The city has sped up work on those grants but still faces challenges in spending the money on home repair, he said.
“We are making progress,” Margolius said, “but understand that we’re going to have to bring that same type of accountability to these other grants and keep on pushing forward.”
‘Not great’ progress in lead paint fixes
The state grant dollars were funded through the federal American Rescue Plan Act. Cleveland received council approval to seek the money in December 2023.
By the end of 2025, the state told the city it was concerned about the pace of spending, McNair said. The city was “substantially behind,” having fixed up just 17 homes, he said. The state’s deadline to spend all the money was the end of February. (The number later rose to 26 as more reporting came in, he said.)
“We had only completed 17 homes within that two-year time period, which I think we can all say is not great,” he said. “I think that there are a lot of reasons for that.”
The city scrambled to get more money out the door. The state agreed to lift some of its requirements, including the $15,000 cap, McNair said. But the state did not agree to the city’s request for an extension.
Last week, the development department informed the city it would be repurposing the remaining money for other parts of the state, McNair said.
Cleveland was not the only urban area to lose lead money, he said. The state is trying to spend the money ahead of the federal deadline for spending ARPA funds at the end of 2026.
A spokesperson for the state development department wrote that the state worked closely with Cleveland and provided the city with flexibility. Now the remaining funds will go elsewhere.
“We’re actively working with communities across the state that are positioned to use these funds immediately,” Chief Communications Officer Mason Waldvogel wrote in an email.
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.