City Council seeks to close loopholes in NYC’s lead poisoning prevention laws

Gaps in New York City’s lead poisoning and prevention laws, along with a lack of enforcement by city agencies, are key factors in the thousands of children diagnosed with elevated blood-lead levels each year, according to proponents of more than half a dozen bills debated in the City Council on Tuesday. The City Council hearing came as the mayor’s office announced the appointment of a new lead czar.

Councilmembers introduced the legislation to address shortcomings that some advocates said date back to the Bloomberg administration, which is when the city’s current lead exposure protections – known as Local Law 1 of 2004 – were first enacted.

“There are still loopholes that allow lead hazards to persist,” said Councilmember Pierina Ana Sanchez, who represents areas of the Bronx, where 65% of the children were found to have elevated blood-lead levels in 2021 according to a new tracker released by the Council. “These are unacceptable realities,” she said. “We must do better.”

Among a number of new requirements, the bills would strengthen stipulations that landlords show written documentation that they’ve complied with annual inspections for deteriorated paint, which are obligated under existing law. The legislation would also speed up one provision of Local Law 1 that, when it was written nearly 20 years ago, was meant to eliminate areas of lead paint so-called “high friction” surfaces, such as doors and windows. These areas create lead dust and pose the most risk to children in the city’s aging housing stock.

Lead can cause brain damage in young children, according to the NYC health department. It’s also associated with behavioral problems, even at low doses.

Old lead paint is the most common source of exposure in New York City. While the number of kids with elevated lead levels has declined by more than 90% since Local Law 1 was enacted nearly two decades ago, over 4,200 children under six years of age had recent blood levels that exceeded the Centers for Disease Control’s current threshold, according to data provided last year to Gothamist by the NYC health department and its 2021 lead poisoning report.

“The data indicates there's still widespread non-compliance with key aspects of local law,” Matthew Chachere, an attorney with the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation who helped draft Local Law in the early 2000s, testified on Tuesday. “In fact, the health department data shows that the rate of poisoning has remained flat for the last three years. In other words, it's not declining anymore. And that's completely unprecedented in the decades of data on lead poisoning rates in New York City. So clearly more needs to be done.”

He pointed to audits of city buildings by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which is charged with enforcing the rule, showing 90% of landlords had not conducted annual inspections for peeling paint.

Mayor Eric Adams named Jasmine Blake as Citywide Lead Compliance Officer, a role once held by his former rival in the 2021 mayoral election, Kathryn Garcia.

“HPD has never taken seriously the requirement,” Chachere said. “It's the only part of Local Law 1 that actually creates a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail if a landlord fails to do this.”

AnnMarie Santiago, HPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Enforcement and Neighborhood Services, admitted to councilmembers that compliance was low.

“We are finding that it is rare that owners have records dating back 10 years,” Santiago testified, adding that HPD opposes the legislation because it would create an extra requirement whereby landlords would need to use X-ray fluorescence technology to test painted surfaces, which could distract from remediating the immediate hazard, she argued.

Santiago said HPD issued 15,448 lead-based paint hazard violations last year, which was an increase over around 2,000 violations when compared to 2019, the most recent year before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal operations.

“HPD will no doubt tell you today that we're doing a great job, we're writing more lead paint violations than ever. And my point is that 20 years after this law went into effect, we shouldn't still be seeing so many peeling lead paint violations,” Chachere said.

He said Local Law 1 was initially designed to eradicate lead poisoning in the city by 2010, partly by requiring landlords to fully remove paint on windows, doors and other high-friction surfaces.

“The pushback from the Bloomberg administration and the real estate lobby back then was, no, that's too, that's too rigorous,” Chachere told Councilmembers.

The compromise, he said, was to require landlords to abate high-friction areas whenever someone moves out of an apartment.

“So what have we found?” he said. “Landlords weren’t doing it.”

A bill introduced by Concilmember Diana Ayala, who represents East Harlem and the Bronx, could require landlords in some cases to do abatement work before an apartment becomes empty, depending in part on whether they have outstanding violations, among other factors.

The legislation would require all work to be done using safe work practices. Santiago said HPD opposes this bill because doing abatement work while an apartment is occupied, “runs the risk of creating active lead hazards where none exist.”

Separate from the City Council hearing on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams named Jasmine Blake as the new citywide lead czar, who will coordinate compliance with local lead laws and reporting across a wide number of city agencies – a role once held by his former rival in the 2021 mayoral election, Kathryn Garcia.

Blake has served as a chief of staff in the mayor’s office since last year. She previously worked as a communications officer with the New York City Housing Authority under the Bill de Blasio administration.