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Repair money
squandered while kids face danger
by Emilia Askari and Tina Lam, Detroit Free Press,
January 21, 2003
For more articles visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
Janiya is the kind of child Congress had in mind when it set
aside $313 million over the last five years to remove lead
from homes in low-income neighborhoods across the country.
But Janiya's home remains contaminated, even though her
grandmother has tried for two years to get some of the money.
The reason: The rules of a tangled bureaucracy exclude her
grandmother from qualifying. The house is in such bad shape,
the government has concluded that it would have to spend too
much to make the home lead safe.
While turning down people like Janiya's family, the government
has removed lead paint from vacant apartments in Detroit and
other cities. Federal grant programs also have paid to remove
lead hazards in dozens of one-bedroom apartments occupied
mainly by elderly people. They are not the age group most at
risk for lead poisoning. So Janiya continues to ingest lead
dust. And the more it attacks her growing brain, the more it
jeopardizes her future.
Which mystifies her grandmother, Harriett Williams. "Who are
they holding the money for, anyway?" she says.
A Free Press investigation has found that Michigan's
lead-abatement efforts are a confusing patchwork that often
fails to deliver help to the state's neediest children. State
and local officials have mismanaged millions of dollars,
causing long delays in fixing dangerous homes. In Detroit,
which has two-thirds of the state's lead-poisoned children,
more than $3 million has sat unused for at least two years.
Threatened with losing future federal grants, officials in
Detroit, Wayne County and Michigan have stepped up their
efforts to spend the money -- but often on homes where
children don't live.
"The money is not getting to lead-poisoned kids," said Lyke
Thompson, a Wayne State University professor who has evaluated
city programs aimed at lead repairs.
Size of the problem
Last year, 3,228 Detroit children were diagnosed as having
enough lead in their bodies to cause irreparable health
problems. But as many as 8,000 Detroit children overall are
estimated to be poisoned, because thousands go untested and
undiagnosed.
Many Detroit children are at high risk because they live in
old, deteriorating housing coated with lead paint and they
have poor diets, making them more susceptible to lead's
effects.
Detroit has 2,080 homes known to have poisoned more than one
child in the last six years, according to a list compiled for
the Free Press by the city's Health Department.
Near the top of the list is a two-story, wood-frame house on
Livernois near Michigan, where 13 people live.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Carol Galvez, the mother of
seven children in the house and an aunt to three others,
greeted some of the kids with kisses as they arrived home from
school, then sent them off to study.
Her two youngest, Rosa Maria, 5, and Israel, 4, are lead
poisoned, she said. A clinic tested them a year ago. Now a
public health nurse makes house calls to check on them.
"She told us they got it from the paint," said Galvez, 30.
"They were breathing the dust, playing near the windowsills,
eating the paint chips and sticking their fingers in their
mouths."
Galvez's niece, Angelita, 5, who also lives in the house, also
tested positive for lead. According to health officials,
another three children in the family are lead poisoned.
Lead-painted pottery used for cooking may be partly to blame,
they said.
Galvez said no one has ever told her about government money
available for lead paint abatement. Although it's the Health
Department's policy to try to connect people like her with the
programs, department records indicate that nurses have had
trouble communicating with the family.
The family on its own repainted the house, inside and out,
five years ago. But cracks are showing. And Galvez worries.
"I was notified that my son has to see a specialist about his
speech," she said. "He has trouble talking in sentences." The
Galvez home is one of many that the Health Department has
linked to the poisoning of at least five children. One house
was listed as the home of eight lead-poisoned children. Four
homes were each linked to six poisoned children. And 16 homes
were each linked to five poisoned children.
One flaw in the lead cleanup efforts is that city departments
in Detroit don't always share information.
The Health Department, for instance, compiled the list of
most-dangerous homes so that its workers would have a road map
to find kids needing medical attention. But the agency does
not routinely provide that list to departments that could
clean up the homes with federal money.
A nationwide effort
Three years ago, former President Bill Clinton vowed that
the United States would end childhood lead poisoning by 2010.
The key weapon in that effort was supposed to be the removal
of lead-paint hazards from 2.3 million homes and apartments
nationwide.
But in Detroit, where problems are widespread, the city has
failed to spend millions of dollars available for cleanups.
In 2001, the Detroit City Council began setting aside a pool
of lead-repair money culled from block grants from the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development. The city amassed
$3.5 million. As of December, the city had fixed just 10homes
with some of the money. Records show that repairs on eight of
the abated homes cost $233,934. A full tally was not
available. Another 200 people have applied for repairs but
have not received help.
"There are millions of dollars there, and what they've spent
is way below the amount they could be spending," said
Thompson, the Wayne State University professor and lead
activist. "The pace should be much faster than it is." Andrew
Kemp, whose home on Hubbard in southwest Detroit is one of the
few to be made lead safe under the program, said it took two
years just to go through the application process.
"It was really tough," Kemp said. "You had to call every
couple of weeks and remind them that you were trying to do
this thing. I feel so lucky that I was able to access this
money. I don't know how many people would be that persistent.
I gave up plenty of times."
Kemp bought the family's blue frame home nine years ago for
$9,000, then started knocking out walls and remodeling.
Several years later, he married and became a father. It wasn't
until his 2-year-old daughter's blood-lead level came back at
23 that Kemp began to worry that his home improvements may
have spread lead dust throughout the house.
He initially applied to the city for a $15,000 grant. By the
time the lead fixes were completed in early 2002, the final
cost to the city was $47,505. The lead-painted floors had to
be carpeted, the window frames replaced and the exterior
covered with an encapsulating paint.
City officials said they're working to get help to more
people.
"We're not proud of what we inherited, but we're proud of our
turnaround and the systems that we've put in place," said
Jannie Warren, general manager of the Detroit Planning
Department's housing division. She took over the program last
June.
Recent efforts include training new lead-abatement contractors
and hiring new lead-risk assessors who are just now poised to
begin going through the backlog of about 200 applications, she
said. City officials hope to announce a new program as early
as this week that would make it easier for renters to get
help.
Concentrating on children
When Michigan first began making homes lead-safe in the
mid-1990s, the state planned to focus on homes where children
lived.
Since 1998, testing has identified about 19,000 lead-poisoned
children across the state.
But the problem is more widespread than that, experts say.
Most lead-poisoned children are never diagnosed. State health
officials estimate that the actual number of poisoned kids in
Michigan just this year will be closer to 22,000.
Finding them and getting their homes made lead safe has been
difficult, officials said. "I know there are statistics that
show there are thousands of lead-poisoned kids in Detroit,"
said Dana Moon, who has overseen lead removal grants for two
city departments. "They weren't coming through our door."
Moon, who currently is a supervisor in Detroit's Planning and
Development Department, said grant officials did what they
could to locate needy kids. For example, they once got the
names of 1,100 poisoned children from the Health Department.
But it turned out the information on some of them was two or
three years old.
"We were spinning our wheels," Moon said. "We weren't finding
units with lead-poisoned kids living in them. The low-income
population in the city of Detroit is transient."
Finding the kids is just one hurdle. The families must also
meet a long list of eligibility requirements, which vary from
program to program.
Nationwide, most of the grant money to make homes lead safe
comes from HUD. And most of the HUD money in Michigan is
targeted for home owners. In Detroit, this is a problem: 45
percent of the city's residents are renters.
To qualify for the grant programs, home owners must be
low-income and have paid all their property taxes. The repair
work also can't cost too much, an elusive definition that
varies depending on the program.
Harriett Williams sees herself in a trap as a result.
City officials initially told her they would pay a contractor
to remove flaking lead paint from the windows and walls of her
house near Indian Village. But then, she said, the city
realized that the job would cost about $80,000 because the
home needed structural repairs as well. In a letter the city
sent Williams, officials told her that was too much.
So now the city is offering to help Williams find a new, lead
safe home. Williams said she wasn't clear on what the city
intended to do -- whether, for instance, it was an offer to
help with rent or mortgage payments. City officials would not
explain.
In any event, Williams said she doesn't want to move. She has
lived in her home for 20 years. It's paid off and is worth
$120,000, according to city tax assessors.
"I totally understand why she wouldn't take the city's offer,"
said Lois Nelson, executive director of Metro Neighborhood
Housing and Community Development, a nonprofit group that
helps Detroiters with housing problems. Nelson spent months
trying to advocate for Williams to city officials.
"She has equity in the neighborhood," Nelson said. "Homes
around there are going for $200,000. What they should have
done was give her the maximum help the program would allow."
For now Williams cleans obsessively, trying to keep lead dust
to a minimum. She has almost given up hope that some of that
lead-removal grant money will ever come her way.
PAINSTAKING RELIEF: Kemp family members relax behind their
Detroit home in September. Andrew Kemp's wife, Kinga Kemp,
second from left, sits with her husband's cousin Elizabeth
Hoffman, left, as Sofia Kemp, 2, and Anna Kemp play. When
Anna, right, now 4, was found to have a high blood-lead level,
her father applied for lead-abatement grants for their home.
He said the application process took two years.
Poor performance cited
Federal officials have cited Michigan, Wayne County and
Detroit for not effectively managing lead grants.
Detroit's performance was so bad, HUD officials forced the
city to change which department was handling the money. But
despite the mismanagement, federal dollars continue to flow to
the city.
In 1995, Detroit promised to use $5.9 million in HUD funds to
make 360 homes safe within three years. Four years later, just
45 had been fixed, prompting HUD officials to threaten to
revoke the grant.
To keep it, the city moved the money from its Health
Department to the Housing Commission. HUD also agreed to relax
its requirements, reducing the number of units the city had to
fix to 250 and giving them seven years to do it. When the
program ended last summer, the city reported fixing 270 homes
and apartments.
City officials acknowledge that the grant was handled badly.
That's why they were stunned when HUD announced in October it
was giving Detroit a new $2.1-million grant, which will begin
being used later this year. HUD turned down requests from
dozens of other cities and counties across the country,
including some with better track records.
"We were told that we shouldn't even waste money on the
postage to mail the application because we weren't going to
get it," said Warren, the Detroit Planning Department
official. When the grant was approved, she said, "I was
shocked. I've got to believe it was based on need." HUD
spokesman Brian Sullivan said Detroit got the new grant
because it had improved its performance by the end of its last
grant. The Free Press requested information about the
selection process under the Freedom of Information Act, but
the department has not provided details. Wayne County also has
performed poorly, HUD officials have said.
In November 1997 the county received $5 million and promised
to make 350 homes lead safe within three years. But by
mid-2000, only one home had been done, county grant records
show. In 1999 HUD threatened to take the money back, but
instead gave the county more time and reduced the number of
required homes. When the program ended last year, the county
had taken five years to abate 190 homes.
The State of Michigan has managed to clean up more homes with
its HUD money than Wayne County and Detroit, but federal
officials weren't pleased with the state's performance,
either.
In 1994, the state received $4.9 million in federal funds and
promised to abate 400 homes within three years. But after five
years, HUD wrote the state expressing concerns that too few
homes had been fixed, compared to other grant recipients. It
eventually took the state seven years to do the 400 units
required by the grant. When Michigan officials applied for a
new grant in 1999, HUD turned them down, citing the previous
poor performance. In 2000, HUD gave the state another 1chance
with a $3-million grant, which state and federal officials say
is being handled much better. As of last month, 167 units had
been fixed, of the 265 required, the officials said. The grant
expires in June.
Cleanup misses the mark
Stung by criticism from HUD, local and state officials
have resorted to tactics that maximize the number of housing
units they make lead safe -- but not necessarily the number of
children who are helped.
Federal rules for spending lead funds do not require that a
lead-poisoned child live in the home, only that the home could
house a child.
In 2000, Detroit targeted cleanup money to the Robert Thomas
Apartments on West Chicago Boulevard in order to help meet the
city's HUD quota. A group affiliated with Ebenezer AME Church,
next door to the 1apartments, was planning a complete
renovation of the building.
Moon, the Detroit city official who oversaw the lead grant
program, used more than $600,000 in HUD funds to pay for part
of the project that included the removal of lead paint and the
addition of new windows.
When the renovated apartment building opened in August, it was
supposed to be marketed to families with young children for at
least five years. But a rental agent said the units are almost
all one-bedroom apartments, and most of the people who moved
in are older people.
No more than two people are allowed to live in each
one-bedroom apartment, which eliminates large families with
children. When the building was completely rented in December,
only seven children ages 6 or younger lived in the 49
apartments, said rental agent Claudia Anderson.
Joan Buchanon, 60, is a typical 1tenant. She lives alone in
her one-bedroom, $253-a-month apartment.
"I really love it," she says. "I hope to live here until I
die."
HUD normally doesn't allow lead-abatement money to be spent on
one-bedroom apartments because they are unlikely to house
children. But city officials convinced HUD that in Detroit
plenty of families squeeze into such units, records show. So
the city was then able to count the building's 49 apartments
toward its federal quota of 270 units.
Moon said last week he was unaware that few children are
living in the apartments.
"If they are not marketing the units to low-income families
with children under 6, they are certainly in betrayal of their
agreement with us," he said, adding that he would ask city
officials to look into the matter.
In Wayne County, lead-abatement officials were so desperate to
meet federal quotas in 2000 that they tried to entice home
owners to sign up for lead repairs by offering $30 coupons for
groceries at Farmer Jack stores and pizza at Little Caesars
outlets. It helped bring attention to the program, which
received more applications, officials said.
The officials also targeted 42 homes for lead abatement that
had already received some renovation through a HUD program
several years earlier. The Highland Park homes were easy to
add toward the county's quota because the owners had already
qualified as low-income, had completed paperwork and were
willing to take part, program records show.
Wayne County counted another 49 units in its tally to HUD that
the Michigan Department of Community Health has told the
Legislature were abated with state bond money. Records show
the state bond money paid for the actual renovations, but
county officials included them in their HUD tally.
After those efforts, Wayne County officials wound up with 50
qualified applicants who never received any abatement help
because the county ran out of HUD grant money last year,
county reports show.
Progress hard to track
In the last seven years, about 1,500 homes have been made
lead safe by the Michigan Department of Community Health,
Wayne County and the City of Detroit. Of those, about 1,000
are outside Detroit, even though it has the most lead-poisoned
children. Because funding is so fractured, it's impossible to
know how many have been fixed statewide. Michigan, unlike some
other states, doesn't maintain a list of lead-safe homes.
Those families who have received help are grateful -- although
often, it comes too late to spare their children from the
long-term effects of lead exposure.
In 1998, Lottie Parker discovered that her daughter, Maile,
had a blood-lead level of 24 -- a level that was more twice
what the government considers the poisoning level. The family
lived in an old home in Pontiac.
Morris James, lead remediation project coordinator for the
Oakland County Department of Environmental Health, helped the
Parkers apply for a lead cleanup grant from the state.
"It all happened really fast," said Parker, whose daughter is
now 8. "The Health Department and the state were the best,
which usually isn't the case. I didn't have to pay for a
thing. All I had to do was fill out papers and be here when
they came to fix everything. In this case, the system
definitely worked."
After work was done, Maile's blood-lead level dropped to 5.
But Parker is convinced the damage was already done.
"She's hyper and she has learning disabilities," Parker said.
"The teachers can't keep up with her; I can't even keep up
with her. She just bounces off the walls."
Contact EMILIA ASKARI at 313-223-4461 or
askari@freepress.com.
Contact TINA LAM at 734-432-6502 or
lam@freepress.com.
Marsha Low and Shawn Windsor contributed to this report.
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