When Home is the Most Dangerous Place: How a Community Development Organization Learned to Get the Lead Out

Marty Johnson, Elyse Pivnick and Peter Rose

No 2018-1, Community Development Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Abstract: The debacle of lead-poisoned children in Flint, Michigan reminded us of the insidious and permanent impact of this toxic poison on a child?s brain. However, millions of children (and seniors) living in older homes, especially ones with flaking paint, are still being lead poisoned. Today, the vast majority of children who become poisoned by lead come from lower-income families of color?those least able to shoulder this added burden. This is where community-based nonprofit organizations?especially the 1,000+ groups that weatherize and retrofit older homes across the country?can step in and play a key role. This paper shows how Isles, Inc., a Trenton, NJ?based community development and environmental organization, learned new ways to think about the threat of dangerous homes as a system, and develop low cost ways to change it. The organization tested and developed low cost ways to remove lead, asthma triggers and other threats from homes, train local contractors and health workers, educate residents, and perform these tasks for under $10,000 per unit. This is a fraction of the cost of treating the symptoms of just one lead poisoned child.

Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2018-07-23
Note: FRBSF Community Development Investment Center Working Papers: http://www.frbsf.org/community-development
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/wp-con ... ent-lead-removal.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedfcw:2018-01

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Community Development Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library ().