A decades-old federal policy that puts children at risk for lead poisoning is drawing the attention of an Illinois senator after the Tribune documented a once-hidden problem facing poor families.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the top lieutenant to Democratic Leader Harry Reid, is demanding to know why the Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn’t require intervention on lead unless a child in subsidized housing is poisoned at levels four times higher than federal health guidelines.
In a letter Tuesday to Housing Secretary Julian Castro, Durbin also urged the department to overhaul how it identifies homes with crumbling lead-based paint and how it responds when hazards are detected.
“As studies have shown, low-income and minority children bear the disproportionate burden of this disease,” Durbin wrote, noting that “intellectual, behavioral and academic impairment” caused by lead exposure contributes to a cycle of poverty, violence and inequality.
“These impairments are irreversible,” he wrote. “Therefore, the risks cannot and should not be ignored.”
Since 2012, at least 179 children in federally subsidized housing in Chicago have fallen into this gap in federal policy, according to city records obtained by the Tribune.
The amount of brain-damaging lead in these children was higher than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood, the standard for intervention set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it was below 20, a HUD standard that hasn’t been updated since President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
The CDC says there is no safe level of exposure. Multiple studies have found that ingesting even tiny amounts of lead early in life can cause subtle, permanent damage to parts of the brain that enable people to pay attention, regulate emotions and control impulses.
On its website, HUD declares that families in the Housing Choice Voucher program, commonly known as Section 8, “have a right to live in housing that is safe and sanitary.” Local housing agencies are required to inspect properties before families move in and at least once a year after that.
But in Chicago and many other cities, local agencies rely only on visual inspections for lead paint. Inspectors for most local health departments including Chicago’s, confirm the presence of lead with hand-held testing devices.
“This problem is more pronounced for young children in urban, low-income and minority communities because they are more likely to live in older homes that were built before lead-based paint was banned in 1978,” Durbin wrote, citing the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint, Mich., as another example. “Lead exposure is exacerbated among this population, compounding racial and socioeconomic inequalities in health, housing and opportunities.”
A top Chicago Housing Authority official previously told the Tribune her agency will move this year to crack down on landlords when children in Section 8 housing are found to have lead levels higher than the CDC standard but lower than the limit in HUD regulations.
As recently as late November, the CHA had rejected making such a policy change in response to letters and public testimony from advocates at the Loyola University Health Justice Project and the Erie Family Health Center, which represents a Section 8 family with multiple poisoned children.
Emily Benfer, director of the Loyola project, is enlisting advocates across the country to press HUD for changes. For now, Benfer said, Section 8 families can lose their subsidized vouchers if they attempt to move because a child is diagnosed with lead poisoning.
“HUD’s policies,” Benfer said, “ultimately force families to chose between their children’s lives and their homes.”
During the past two decades, as the CHA shifted low-income Chicagoans from high-rises to subsidized housing, officials said the forced migration would make the city more diverse while giving low-income families access to better schools and safer streets. Yet most of the voucher holders live in predominantly African-American neighborhoods on the West and South sides that have given the city a national reputation for extreme poverty, violence and academic failure.
In May, a Tribune investigation found that children in those neighborhoods continue to be harmed by lead poisoning at rates considerably higher than the city average.
A HUD spokesman previously told the Tribune he could not explain why several attempts to overhaul the agency’s lead-poisoning standard have failed.
As a young community organizer in Chicago, President Barack Obama fought to eradicate lead hazards in the Altgeld Gardens public housing project. HUD staff members have urged his administration to update the agency’s lead standard, but such a change isn’t included on the most recent list of federal rules planned this year.
The White House has yet to respond to Durbin’s request for an explanation.
mhawthorne@tribpub.com
Twitter @scribeguy
