HUD Offers Largest Funding Amount to Clean Up Lead in Housing

HUD recently announced a record $330 million in grants to clean up lead-based paint hazards and other housing-related health and safety hazards in low-income housing. These grants are provided through HUD’s Lead Hazard Reduction and Healthy Homes Production for Tribal Housing grant programs and will direct critical funds to qualifying cities, counties, states, and Native American tribal governments to eliminate dangerous lead paint hazards. HUD is making grants available through the following programs:

Lead Hazard Reduction: $324 million. The purpose of this program is to maximize the number of children under the age of 6 protected from lead poisoning by assisting grantees in undertaking comprehensive programs to identify and control lead-based paint hazards in eligible privately owned target housing. This year, HUD has added a category of cities and counties that have “high impact neighborhoods” with high concentrations of both pre-1940 housing, low-income families, and high rates of young children with elevated blood lead levels. These five-year grants will be for up to $9.1 million each. In the second grant category, HUD will award 42-month grants of up to $5 million each for controlling lead-based paint hazards in communities with large numbers of occupied pre-1940 rental housing. Other eligible applicants may apply to do this lead hazard control work with 42-month grants of up to $4 million each. Applicants that have never had a HUD lead hazard control grant are eligible for a 42-month grant of up to $3 million each.

Healthy Homes Production for Tribal Housing: $12 million. This program helps American Indian and Alaska Native tribal governments to develop comprehensive programs to identify and remediate housing issues that contribute to health and safety issues in tribal communities. The grant program takes a comprehensive approach to addressing multiple childhood diseases and injuries by focusing on housing-related hazards in a coordinated fashion, rather than addressing a single hazard at a time. The estimated total for this program is $12 million, with grants up to $1 million each.