Legislators have delayed implementing Rhode Island’s lead paint law for one
year, giving property owners time to take a required three-hour course and –
if necessary – mitigate any lead paint problems in their rental properties.
Some landlords who managed to meet the initial July 1, 2004 deadline, however, are upset to think that they worried about losing their properties, now that they have another year until next year’s July 1 deadline.
“I have heard that people are frustrated,” said Susan Arnold, CEO of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. “They were literally losing sleep over it, thinking they might lose their property. They didn’t know how to comply and there weren’t enough classes available.”
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David Godden, president of the association, agreed, but said he hopes those who got the work done on time are happy they don’t have to worry now.
“It’s unfortunate and I’m sure it created a lot of stomach acid, but it’s good that they’ve done it already,” he said.
The Realtors association, along with other groups, landlords and property owners, advocated for a delay in implementing the law. By July 1, every property owner and landlord in the state who owns a property or residence built before 1978 was required to have completed a three-hour lead abatement course. But public outreach and courses didn’t start until May, and there are 145,000 rental units that were built before 1978, some of which would require lead abatement.
“That didn’t give people much time at all, even if they did know about it,” Arnold said.
Awareness was another problem. Association members were made aware of the law, but the state Housing Resources Commission didn’t develop the course until May, and the governor made his first commercial on the law at the end of the month.
“It became obvious that what we needed to do was have some delay, and we thought one year was most appropriate,” she said.
In a letter to the Providence Business News, Rep. Roger A. Picard, a Woonsocket Democrat, said the law was designed to halt the threat of lead in homes, but as the deadline approached, it became clear that the solution was a bit more time-consuming.
“We became aware that eliminating the lead paint hazards presents some greater-than-expected challenges and expenses, as well as some unintended consequences that would actually hurt the families it was supposed to protect,” Picard said. “In order for all of the estimated 145,000 pre-1978 apartments in Rhode Island to be inspected, each of the 70 licensed inspectors in the state would have to perform 2,071 inspections by July 1 (2004). Since the state’s public awareness campaign got off to a late start and few landlords got a jump on the requirement, it was clear that was not going to happen.”
Landlords and property owners now have until next July to take the three-hour course, offered at 13 locations, get an inspector and have their property inspected, and if necessary hire a contractor to remedy any lead problems. If the owner plans to do the remediation, he or she needs to get certified in an eight-hour course.
“It was a very ambitious undertaking,” Arnold said, and one that the housing commission had trouble with; the law was passed in 2002 but regulations explaining it weren’t passed until March 2003, and the course wasn’t developed until the following May, she said.
Another problem is that there are a number of different regulations governing lead safe standards, so compliance is confusing. Many insurers, instead of dealing with conflicting standards, were simply refusing to cover many properties. The state has commissioned a study designed to take stock of all the regulations and standards, Arnold said.
Continued outreach will be key in ensuring this confusion doesn’t repeat itself, Godden and Arnold said.
“The people we reached were the tip of the iceberg,” Arnold said. “We processed about 1,600 people in a very brief period of time (members), who could then go out to their landlords and tell them. A year is a workable time frame, as long as the outreach continues.”
Claudia Chappelle, a landlord and property owner in Warwick and the association’s CFO, said she took both courses, but until then “never realized the serious dangers of lead paint to children.”
She has removed lead paint from her 1965 ranch duplex rental, as well as from her mother’s turn-of-the-century home in Pawtucket. Chappelle didn’t get her license until June 30, and took the first courses offered in May.
“I still have a long way to go before being finished,” she said. “I never would have met the deadline if it weren’t extended,” and that was with having all the information through the Realtors association. “The only people that could have been done on time were the people who (did remediation) before this became an issue.”
According to Picard, if the law had been implemented this year, the result would have been higher rents for many Rhode Islanders. Landlords would have been unable to afford good insurance. Some might have tried to avoid renting to families with small children, despite housing discrimination laws. Prices would have been too high for many families and the elderly, Picard said, and landlords would have been forced to sell their properties because they wouldn’t have been able to afford keeping them.
“It won’t do any good if we eliminate lead hazards from the state’s apartments, but make it impossible for families to afford any of them,” Picard said. “In the coming year, we will take what we learned from this year and use it to come up with a better, more effective, more affordable lead paint law.”
