I'Jaz Ja'ciel | July 11, 2024

Tenants and community organizations are taking the City of Buffalo to court, contending it is failing to enforce rental inspection laws aimed at reducing lead paint in the city’s aging housing stock.

The inspection law, enacted in 2020, was in response to the large number of children testing with high levels of lead in their blood. City inspectors have conducted relatively few inspections since then, according to the lawsuit.

“By not implementing the law, and really by failing to inspect and regulate rental housing in the city of Buffalo for decades, they are not providing a clean and healthful environment for the city’s renters,” Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good, told Investigative Post.

Every year, approximately 450 children under the age of six in Buffalo are diagnosed with elevated blood lead levels, with children living in predominantly Black neighborhoods 12 times as likely to be poisoned by lead than children living in white neighborhoods, according to the lawsuit. The City of Buffalo accounted for three of the four ZIP codes in the state with the highest percent of children tested with elevated levels of lead in their blood, according to state Health Department data for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available.

Lead-poisoned children suffer neurological damage, learning disabilities, attention disorders, hearing and speech problems, decreased IQ and a decreased lifespan, the lawsuit states. 

“There is no safe level of lead, and damage from lead poisoning is irreversible,” according to the complaint. 

The lawsuit was filed late Wednesday by four community organizations - the Partnership for the Public Good, People United for Sustainable Housing, Housing Opportunities Made Equal, and the Center for Elder Law and Justice - as well as four  individuals, representing themselves as well as thousands of others in a class action for “all individuals who live or are asking to live in properties subject to the city’s rental inspection law.”

“Every one of them is susceptible to the consequence of an unhealthy living environment and is vulnerable to the harms related to the ingestion of lead from flaking and peeling of paint,” the lawsuit says of renters, particularly young children.

The lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court, asks the court to compel the city to conduct rental apartment inspections, as its own Proactive Rental Inspection Law requires, checking for lead paint hazards and other health and safety violations. It also asks the courts to declare that the city’s failure to fully enforce the law “violates the rights of the most vulnerable of the city of Buffalo to a safe and healthy environment,” as guaranteed by the New York State constitution.

“Families in Buffalo are regularly living in housing that is not fit for human habitation,” the plaintiffs said in a statement. “In this lawsuit, tenants describe living with leaking roofs, collapsing ceilings, mold, broken windows, rotting floors and exterior doors that do not lock. Their children and grandchildren have lead poisoning, asthma, persistent headaches and nosebleeds, and more.”

City officials declined comment.

"The city does not comment on pending litigation,"  Catherine Amdur, commissioner of Permits and Inspection Services, said in a statement to Investigative Post.

Amdur noted, however, that Mayor Byron Brown previously announced that the city is adding seven new inspectors to the program this fiscal year.

"This brings the PRI team to a total of 10," Amdur's statement said.

There are about 36,000 rental units in one-and two-family homes in Buffalo that are covered by the city’s Proactive Rental Inspection Law, and therefore subject to interior and exterior inspections every three years, according to the lawsuit. 

In the four years since the rental inspection law went into effect, less than 5,000 units have been inspected, the lawsuit states. Just 293 units were inspected in 2023, and about 200 in the first quarter of 2024. 

The lawsuit comes five months after 39 community organizations - including the four groups filing the lawsuit - sent a letter to Brown and Amdur, demanding the city enforce the rental inspection law. The letter states a similar program in Rochester has been effective in reducing lead poisoning.

Subsequently, Amdur said in a report to the Common Council that the city cannot afford the program, and that it should be revised. She noted landlords are not charged fees for the inspections, which she said are time consuming. 

In response, local advocates and medical professionals urged the city to increase funding to satisfy the program’s requirements. 

“We’ve known about the harmful impacts of lead paint for over 100 years. It’s long past time for the city of Buffalo - home to some of the oldest housing stock in the nation- to aggressively work to ensure owners of rental housing in our city stay compliant with protection measures, as well as ensure the basic health and safety of our city’s youth,” the medical professionals wrote to the mayor and Council. 

Partnership for the Public Good also asked the city to increase funding to support the rental program. 

“We asked for that very explicitly in the city budget hearing," Ó Súilleabháin said.

The Council increased rental registration fees to help fund the inspection program, and the city did increase program funding.

"They did increase it. However, what they did was say, ‘We're going to put new money in this year's budget to hire new inspectors. But that's going to take some time, then they have to be trained, ’'Ó Súilleabháin said.

The city is showing no urgency, she said.

“They added that funding but they didn't release how many more inspections [they would] be able to do each quarter of the year, when that's going to happen, [and] which neighborhoods are going to be targeted,” she said.

Amdur has also previously said that Erie County - not the City of Buffalo  - has primary responsibility for lead poisoning prevention in Buffalo and Erie County.

In response, a county health department spokeswoman said that while Erie County does receive county and state funds for lead poisoning prevention, inspection and enforcement, the issues being raised by community groups focus on a city program.