HUD Awards $139 Million to Protect Families from Lead and Home Hazards
Funding to make low-income housing safer and healthier
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today awarded more than $139 million to 48 state and local government agencies to protect children and families from lead-based paint and home health hazards.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson made the grant announcement today during an event with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services to unveil the Federal Action Plan to Reduce Childhood Lead Exposure. The Federal Lead Action Plan is a blueprint for reducing lead exposure through collaboration among federal agencies to diminish childhood exposure to lead from lead-based paint and other sources.
These grants are provided through HUD’s Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control and Lead-Based Paint and Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration grant programs to identify and clean up dangerous lead in low-income housing. These grants include nearly $18 million through HUD’s Healthy Homes Supplemental funding to help communities with housing-related health and safety hazards unrelated to lead-based paint.
These investments will protect families and children by targeting health hazards in approximately 6,500 low-income homes with significant lead and health hazards. HUD’s lead hazard control grant programs have successfully filled critical needs for remediating housing hazards, focusing on the most vulnerable residents of communities with limited local resources to address these hazards.
“Today, we take another important step toward creating safer and healthier homes for families and their children,” said HUD Secretary Ben Carson. “At HUD, one of our most important missions is to provide people with safe and reliable housing, and these grants will help states and local communities eliminate lead-based paint and other health hazards from low-income homes.”
“Millions of families live in housing that threatens their health and safety,” said Matthew Ammon, Director of HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes. “This year, HUD is expanding our reach into 16 cities for the first time to directly support their efforts to identify and clean up potentially dangerous hazards like lead and mold.”
HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes promotes local efforts to eliminate dangerous lead paint and other housing-related health hazards from lower income homes; stimulates private sector investment in lead hazard control; supports cutting-edge research on methods for assessing and controlling housing-related health and safety hazards; and educates the public about the dangers of hazards in the home. Read a complete project-by-project summary of the programs awarded grants.