Landlords who have done their best to keep their homes safe from lead and abide by Cleveland’s lead safe rules could see some relief under a set of proposed changes to a landmark 2019 law.
The mayor’s administration wants to reward landlords who have regularly complied with the laws and who have rentals that are considered low-risk, said Dr. David Margolius, the city’s director of public health. That would allow the city to focus on the homes mostly likely to be a danger for kids. Lead is a toxin often present in paint on homes built before 1978, when it was outlawed. It can damage a child’s developing brain, leading to irreversible delays and behavioral issues.
Margolius said he developed the changes alongside the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition’s policy committee and after hearing feedback from small property owners in town.
“They feel like they’ve been doing everything right. Yet, there are folks out there, properties out there, that haven’t gone through this process at all and are the greatest threats to poisoning kids,” Margolius said. “And you know, we worry about that as well.”
The city’s lead safe law requires landlords with homes built before 1978 to get them inspected for lead hazards. Once a property passes inspection, it receives a lead safe certificate from the city. Current law requires most of those certificates to be renewed every two years.
As of early February, rough estimates showed about a third of the city’s rental units had a certificate. More than six years after the law passed, tens of thousands of properties don’t have one.
In a PowerPoint presentation posted to Cleveland City Council’s website Monday, the city laid out a number of potential changes to the law. The most significant would grant to landlords who have successfully passed three lead inspections a longer respite between certificate renewals. Another potential change: giving a life-long lead safe certificate to properties built after 1960 after one test determines they are safe. Properties built more recently are less likely to have lead paint in them.
The city has not yet published a draft of the proposed changes to the legislation. Margolius said he first hoped to discuss the ideas with City Council members. Margolius had planned to present them to members at a committee meeting last week but didn’t have time to do so.
The potential updates were welcomed by some lead safe advocates and landlords alike. Joe Libretti, a Cleveland landlord and a certified lead risk assessor, said he advocated for some of the changes the city is considering – in particular, giving a break to landlords who had repeatedly passed multiple lead inspections. It’s expensive for landlords to do the tests and for the city to review them, he said. Plus, those homes aren’t the major obstacle to lowering childhood lead poisoning, he added.
“A house that has passed three consecutive inspections isn’t one of our problem houses,” Libretti said.
Rebecca Maurer, a former city council member and Legal Aid lawyer who championed the city’s move to a prevention model, wrote Signal Cleveland in a text that overall she is supportive of the changes. In an interview, Maurer said a report she published last summer made similar suggestions – particularly, focusing on the properties most likely to poison kids. The city’s current attempts to treat every pre-1978 property the same, regardless of risk, spreads resources thin, Maurer said.
“This was an evolution in my politics,” Maurer said. “… I had thought we had enough resources and skills to do it the way we were proposing, and I’ve spent the last five years learning the hard way that we don’t.”
Other lead advocates, such as Spencer Wells, who works with Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing, were more skeptical. Wells said the proposed changes aren’t “bad ideas,” but he said the city may be able to institute them without putting them into law.
Wells said there are other priorities to address when updating the city’s lead law. That includes codifying a change the Bibb administration made in 2024, which required landlords to undergo a stricter type of inspection to identify lead hazards.
Cleveland lays out updates to years-old lead safe law
The changes to the city’s 2019 lead law are technical. Most deal with how frequently a landlord might need to get a lead inspection to prove their home is safe.
The big change for landlords like Libretti is a suggestion to grant them lead safe certificates that last five years instead of two years. The city would only hand these out to landlords who have received lead safe certificates three times in a row.
Libretti said he had hoped for a longer reprieve – 10 years instead of five – but appreciated the move.
The city is also suggesting five-year lead safe certificates for properties without lead hazards that have replaced their windows, doors and porches after 1978. These parts of the home are the most likely source of poisoning, the city said. The challenge, the city acknowledged, is how to measure or confirm that a home has post-1978 windows, doors and porches.
Maurer wrote in an email that replacing these housing components is “the key way we ramp up spending and directly invest dollars into Cleveland properties.” The city has struggled to spend federal and state dollars it gets to improve properties with lead paint. Recently, because of its slow spending, the city lost $3.3 million from the state meant to pay for property owners to replace leaded windows and doors.
Maurer emphasized that a change in legislation isn’t the final solution to that problem. The city also needs to create a simple pathway for property owners to replace their windows, doors or porches, Maurer said – one that doesn’t get bogged down by paperwork or bureaucracy.
Here are other changes the city is considering
- Providing a lifetime lead safe certificate to homes that meet higher bars for lead safety, such as testing negative for lead based paint or completely abating the home. Currently, those homes are eligible for a 20-year exemption. The city said it wants to incentivize more people to update their homes to a higher level of lead safety.
- Providing a lifetime lead safe certificate for homes built after 1960, if those properties pass one lead risk assessment where no lead hazards are identified. Newer properties are far less likely to poison kids, Margolius said. All 343 Cleveland properties currently under city oversight because a child was lead poisoned within them were built before 1960, according to data the city shared. The vast majority were built before 1940.
- Providing a lifetime lead safe certificate for old commercial buildings that were converted into apartments after 1978, if those properties pass one lead risk assessment where no hazards are identified. These types of buildings can include old office buildings or warehouses that were later turned into living space. Margolius said properties that have been gutted and rehabilitated are not the source of childhood lead poisoning in Cleveland. Libretti said he would prefer these buildings be required to meet a higher standard of testing to get such a long-standing certificate, in case the building’s conversion did not remove all lead hazards.
In a final PowerPoint slide, the city also said it could consider clarifying what type of inspection landlords must get to receive a lead safe certificate. In 2024, Mayor Justin Bibb issued an executive order that resulted in landlords having to undergo a lead risk assessment to get a lead safe certificate – a higher bar than they previously had to meet.
A lead risk assessment tests many components in a home — windows, baseboard, porches — for the presence of lead-based paint. The previous standard, called a lead clearance test, looked for the presence of high levels of lead dust in a home.
Wells said he wants to see this change written into law, instead of relying on executive order. The status quo has confused council members and community members, he said.
“The uncertainty is just driving people crazy,” he said.
