Cleveland wasn’t the only local government to spend lead paint grant dollars so slowly that it lost out on money.
Cuyahoga County failed to spend nearly $1.2 million of a state grant designated to making properties lead safe by a required deadline at the end of July. That means the state of Ohio will keep the money, according to county spokesperson Kelly Woodard. The state hasn’t yet said how it will spend the remaining money.
Ohio’s Department of Development gave the grants to the county and city in 2023 as part of its Lead Safe Ohio program, which is funded with federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
The county lost a far smaller percentage of its total $8.1 million grant: about 15% to Cleveland’s 67%. Still, the unspent money was geared toward Cleveland and East Cleveland, according to a county press release — two municipalities with very high lead poisoning rates.
Two vendors distributing the funds did not spend all of their dollars on time: CHN Housing and Enterprise Community Partners on behalf of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition. Two other vendors, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health and Cleveland Heights, spent their entire allocation, according to numbers shared by the county.
Laura Boustani, CHN’s chief strategy officer, said that the dollars were a “great blessing” as another funding source to improve homes. But they had to be spent in a “very limited amount of time” and had complicated requirements, she said. The contract with the county, allowing them to start the work, wasn’t finalized until July 2024.
The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition said federal funding requirements such as a complex income verification process made spending dollars difficult. Many residents didn’t have ready access to or did not want to provide the necessary financial documents, according to a spokesperson.
“Because of hurdles like these, many property owners didn’t complete their applications,” wrote Wyonette Cheairs, a leader of the coalition, in an emailed statement. “In some cases, they decided to pursue grants from the Coalition’s Lead Safe Home Fund, which do not include those requirements, instead.”
The group went “above and beyond” to complete as many projects as possible before the funding deadline, Cheairs added.
What will happen to the funding now? A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Development did not directly answer the question, saying that it cannot yet confirm how much went unspent because Cuyahoga County hasn’t yet submitted its final report to the state. But the COVID relief money has to be spent by the end of this year, according to federal guidelines.
More broadly, the Lead Safe Ohio program has made a “meaningful impact” across the state, including in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, said Brian Bohnert, senior public information officer with the Department of Development. He added that Cuyahoga County has had more work done as part of the grant program than any other county in Ohio.
This article was updated to correct the spelling of Laura Boustani’s name.
