
NYC Housing Authority routinely disputed tests that revealed lead in apartments - JumpCrisscross
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/nyregion/nycha-lead-paint.html
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fallingfrog
This is a case where you can spend 10K on lead remediation now, and the
payback to society in terms of adults who didn't have lead poisoning is _many
fold_. But then, we put the costs of that remediation on the people who have
the least time and money to do it (people who are working and supporting small
children). Do you know how cruel it is to ask someone who is living paycheck
to paycheck to somehow magically come up with thousands of dollars or have
their children be poisoned? But the city refuses to pay for it, by faking
tests, so, it doesn't get done. This is not some kind of accidental neglect;
it's intentionally being done by people who value their tax dollars in the
short term literally more than _poisoned children_. It's tragic, the
pointless, meaningless suffering.

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yholio
I find it strange that tenants have and show very little agency in all this,
except for sueing the city when their child is poisoned. City housing is not a
right, it's a public subsidy, and the houses were built with the best
interests of the tenants in mind, which unfortunately did not recognize lead
hazards at the time.

I would expect tenants to be proactive and organize to have lead removed in
time, by their own means if necessary, then recoup the costs from the city. As
opposed to going for a settlement as if the taxpayer is a private landlord
that provided them an inadequate product at market prices.

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ekidd
> _I would expect tenants to be proactive and organize to have lead removed in
> time, by their own means if necessary,_

Lead removal and/remediation is hard to do safely. We looked into this when
deciding whether to buy an older house, which had flaking lead paint in
interior rooms.

To avoid contaminating everything with lead dust, we would need to seal the
area, control air pressure, keep surfaces damp, etc. We would need HEPA
sanders and special training, among other things. We were told that it would
cost us at least $18k to outsource, and that wouldn't cover the whole house.

So I don't know how people living in subsidized housing can be expected to
manage lead remediation without assistance.

When the NYC Housing Authority was informed that tenants had extremely high
levels of lead in their blood, and that independent tests showed high levels
of lead in the apartment, they chose to deal with the problem by sending in
their own testers, who said there was no lead. Given that pretty much every
building constructed or repainted between the 40s and 1960 (in NY) has lead, I
don't think the Housing Authority should be running its own tests. It
certainly shouldn't be claiming to have run tests without actually having run
them.

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merpnderp
Why remove the paint? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to replace the Sheetrock/plaster?

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sokoloff
Lead paint on the flats is less of an issue than lead paint on trim and
windows. Trim because toddlers are down near there and some trim presents a
nice target for an inquisitive mouth and windows because mechanical action
tends to grind the paint, releasing lead dust which is slightly sweet.

The trim is intricate to sand and also would be fairly labor intensive to
completely replace as well. (Let's face it: all of this comes down to
money...)

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cobookman
Wouldn't replacing trim + windows. And painting over existing lead paint be
good enough?

Replacing trim can't be that labor intensive. Especially if your going to
paint all the walls anyways

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AstralStorm
This costs thousands of dollars. It may be even hard to find a compatible
window frame for such old building.

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cobookman
Thousands is less than full removal of all the lead paint.

""" According to the EPA, professional lead-based paint removal for the
following three options costs about $8 to $15 per square foot or about $9,600
to $30,000 for a 1,200- to 2,000-sq. ft. house. The average removal project
costs about $10,000. """ [https://www.houselogic.com/remodel/painting-
lighting/lead-pa...](https://www.houselogic.com/remodel/painting-
lighting/lead-paint-removal/)

~~~
ekidd
As other posters have noted, one of the biggest sources of lead is window
trim. Replacing windows in old buildings is also a serious renovation—for
example, I know a landlord who paid about $15,000 to replace the windows in a
3000-sq. ft. duplex about 20 years ago. And that doesn't fix door trim,
baseboards, or flaking walls.

But more importantly, I've never met a landlord who'd let a tenant replace
windows or sheetrock. And what tenant would spend $10,000+ renovating an
apartment they don't own? Certainly this is not a viable solution for
government-managed, low-income rental housing.

A large landlord, on the other hand, can amortize the cost over multiple
buildings and multiple years, and they can order correctly-fitted replacement
windows in bulk. It makes no financial sense for low-income tenants to do
expensive, piecemeal lead remediation. It's just another long-term maintenance
cost, like replacing the linoleum floors, fixing the roof, or replacing the
building furnace. (Of course, it sounds like the housing authority wasn't
doing that reliably, either.)

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village-idiot
Nevermind the fact that poorly done lead removal work actually makes the
problem worse, since you're going to produce a lot of lead containing dust
that takes specialized skills and equipment to contain. Just doing that willy
nilly (and on a budget) will likely expose you and your children to more lead
than just leaving it be.

