Funds to help cut lead hazard

The city of Spokane is getting $2.29 million from the federal government to help reduce lead hazards in older housing occupied by poor children.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development grant announced Tuesday will help fund a program called Lead Safe Spokane that will build upon the city’s previous lead hazard reduction efforts. The city will provide $579,912 in local matching funds.

“Every family deserves a safe and healthy home to raise their children,” said HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson in a statement announcing the grant, part of nearly $168 million awarded nationally to help cities reduce lead hazards.

“This is new money to the city of Spokane,” said Arlene Patton of Spokane’s HUD office.

Receipt of the competitive grant comes as a surprise because the city applied last year and failed to get the HUD funds, said Paul Trautman, housing program administrator for the city’s Community Development Program.

Spokane doesn’t have reliable data showing how many low-income children have dangerously high blood-lead levels, but the city does have a lot of pre-1940s housing that’s likely to contain lead paint, Trautman said.

“That’s what caught their eye. Because there’s not that much blood-lead testing in Spokane, we can’t say how many kids are affected. But we do have a lot of older houses that could be a big problem. We said, let’s go out and fix them,” he added.

Lead is a neurological poison that’s especially dangerous to the developing brains of children. It can cause IQ loss, disrupted balance, hearing impairment, tooth decay and nervous system and kidney damage. It is found in lead paint in older homes and yards.

The federal money will be used in inner-city neighborhoods of Spokane that include 38,675 pre-1978 and 17,000 pre-1940 housing units.

More than 12,000 low-income families live in those neighborhoods – including 57 percent of the city’s children under 6 and 78 percent of all children under 6 who are living in poverty, the federal housing agency said.

The target neighborhoods also include 45 nonprofit-owned housing units with defective lead paint; 300 child-occupied rental units with lead paint and 42 child-occupied rental units denied HUD assistance because lead-based paint problems haven’t been fixed, the agency said.

In 2001, a new HUD regulation took effect that requires all owners and managers of federally subsidized low-income housing to test for lead. Some private property owners balked at fixing their property and Spokane didn’t have enough money to deal with the scope of the problem, Trautman said.

“It was a new and expensive requirement for property owners. If we have to subsidize a private property owner, it’s worth it to make the property safe for children,” Trautman said. About $1.5 million from the HUD grant will go to make more lead-tainted dwellings safe, including those currently out of compliance, he said.

The program partners include Kiemle & Hagood, a real estate company; Spokane Neighborhood Action Project (SNAP); Community Health Association of Spokane; Spokane Housing Authority; Spokane County Regional Health District; and MCS Environmental Inc., a company that does lead testing.

When federal blood-lead levels were tightened from 25 to 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood in 1991, the Washington Department of Health requested physicians and pathology labs in the state to submit any blood lead “hits” above 10 micrograms, said Michael LaScuola of the regional health district.

That data shows very few children in Spokane with elevated blood lead levels, but the testing isn’t comprehensive, LaScuola said.

The 10-microgram-per-deciliter blood-lead limit is equivalent to a microscopic speck of lead in less than a half-cup of blood. The federal health guidelines call for medical intervention at 20 micrograms, but recent health studies show IQ loss in children at levels as low as 2.5 micrograms.

Since the federal lead hazard control program began in 1990, HUD says it’s eliminated lead-based paint in 26 million homes. The program is active in 115 communities.