Slumlords Are The Big Winners In $1 Billion Lead Paint Removal Ruling
Children are the losers.

Daniel Fisher writes at Forbes about a judge who ordered several companies to pay $1.1 billion to clean up lead paint in California homes.

The judge, California Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg, is rewarding the most neglectful landlords with repairs paid for by these companies and is having the job supervised by David E. Jacobs, a former HUD official who left after auditors discovered $90 million in improper grants to outside organizations.

Even worse, it seems to be more unhealthy to remove the paint than to just keep it where it is, painted over:

Under the judge's highly detailed, 13-point action plan, the money would flow first to properties with "substantial deferred maintenance," defined as 10 or more code violations in the past four years, and in "high-risk census tracts or neighborhoods."

In addition to ripping out and replacing the windows of these properties, the judge wants to require "repair of building deficiencies that might cause the corrective measures to fail," including water leaks. In other words, he wants to provide these owners with roof repairs, also on the paint companies' dime.

...Giving the owners of run-down housing hundreds of millions of dollars in property improvements is just one of the curiosities in the judge's ruling. He also plans to order the defendant companies to pay the money directly to the lead-poisoning program within the California Dept. of Public Health, with specific instructions on how it is to be spent.

"That has all of us scratching our heads," said Hardy, since California already has a well-established lead abatement program, partly funded by paint manufacturers, that focuses on proper maintenance instead of the potentially risky practice of trying to remove lead paint from the walls of homes. There's little precedent for a judge ordering an expert state agency, formed by the legislature, to do his bidding, especially when it conflicts with established policy.

The state's policy of containing lead paint under well-maintained coats of non-toxic paint "is a floor, not a ceiling," Fineman said, and total removal is the only true way to protect children. The plaintiffs have "quite of bit of evidence that says this is the way to do it," she told me.

Bonnie Campbell, a spokesperson for the defendant companies, said the judge's plan would actually expose poor children to more lead dust, not less. The vast majority of governments around the country favor keeping lead paint covered rather than removing it, she said. Repeated studies by the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, some of them commissioned by the plaintiffs' own expert when he was a top HUD official, found no benefit to physically removing lead paint from windows, for example, because the main risk was lead dust on floors that is often tracked in from lead-containing soil outside. That soil, in turn, is contaminated with lead from exterior paint - which Judge Kleinberg excludes from his order - and the lead that formerly was in automotive gasoline.

"As a public policy matter, it is a very strange thing to take a carefully constructed program, thoughtfully created by the legislature, and turn it upside down," she said. "The implications for children probably aren't going to be good."

No, landlords aren't expected to make their properties safe for the tenants they're profiting from. Companies, years after selling lead paint that the government had no problem with (and even specified the use of) are now being forced to give the worst landlords a repair windfall.

via @WalterOlson