April 6, 2007. St. Louis, Missouri. In an effort to avoid losing millions of dollars in lead poisoning grant money, the City of St. Louis may end up ignoring homes that are most in need of lead remediation. The City received $7 million in two 2004 grants from Housing and Urban Development (HUD). But a series of letters from HUD reveals a sharp decline in meeting targeted dates for home clean-ups:

" In 2004 and early 2005, HUD gave the City "green" ratings, which meant it was "either meeting or exceeding the quarter's performance benchmarks."

" By late 2005, St. Louis had slipped to "yellow," indicating that it was "behind on one of the performance components."

" Throughout 2006, the City's ratings fell into the "red" category, signaling that it was "significantly behind its primary benchmark standards for completion of lead hazard control work."

HUD commented that St. Louis had "not met the minimum benchmark standards for six consecutive quarters" and placed it in the "pre-high risk" category. According to HUD, the City must show progress on completion of lead remediation goals for three grants or it will not receive funds for a 2006 grant. This could trigger a loss of $3 million in grant funds. Though the City had promised to use grant funds to clean lead from 780 homes by the end of December, 2006, it had only completed 317 homes.

"There's something terribly wrong here," observed Willie Marshall, Chair of the Green Party Central Committee. "If you're getting millions of dollars to remove lead from homes, you need to be spending the money doing what you said you would do. And you need to pick out homes in neighborhoods where the most children are being poisoned."

Amazingly, prioritizing according to need does not appear anywhere in the "Workout Strategy" that the City's Building Division completed on March 15, 2007 to submit to HUD. It proposes a catch-up plan which would focus on the largest multiple-family housing units it can find.

A major component of the proposal is to provide developers $5000 lead remediation money for the first two units and $1000 for each additional unit in housing property. This means that City money would average $3000 for a 4-unit building and $1080 per unit for a 100-unit property. City analysts conclude that it could spend less money per unit and do work more rapidly by going to large apartment complexes.

"It's an outrage for any municipality to use a standard like this to decide which houses to remediate," commented Green Party spokesperson Madeline Coburn. "Since 2005, we've been encouraging the Slay administration to spend the most money where the most kids are lead poisoned." And now we find the City treating the size of an apartment complex as more important than the rate of poisoning."

Greens did react favorably to one part of the City's Workout Strategy. In January 2007 the City adopted a program to encourage landlords to replace old windows when houses are vacant. The friction of opening and closing windows is the largest source for poisonous lead dust.

"In our 2005 report the Greens urged St. Louis to remediate homes when they are empty and no one is inconvenienced by lead removal work," said Coburn. "While this is a step in the right direction, a voluntary program is not sufficient. The City needs to require that lead-dangerous windows in all vacant homes be replaced before the property is rented or sold."

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Gateway Green Alliance/Green Party of St. Louis
P.O. Box 8094, St. Louis MO 63156
314-727-8554 E-mail: fitzdon@aol.com www.gateway-greens.org

For immediate release: April 6, 2007

Contact: Don Fitz, 314-727-8554