Onondaga County health officials and Syracuse property owners will have to inspect hundreds of housing units for lead poisoning threats in the coming years as part of a new state program.
New York lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul approved in 2023 the creation of a state lead rental registry program that would require 25 municipalities with high numbers of lead-poisoned children, including Syracuse, to create a registry of rental homes. The state estimates that there are around 282,000 housing units across the state that should be inspected for lead safety.
In Syracuse, more than one in 10 children tested in the city show elevated blood lead levels, according to county health department officials.
State officials with the State Department of Health see the program as a transition toward proactive enforcement of lead remediation measures.
“It moves the needle from reactive lead poisoning intervention to proactively addressing lead hazards in rental homes before a child is lead poisoned,” State Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a press release leading to the rollout of the program’s regulations.
NYSDOH’s program this spring kicked into gear after a slow rollout by the state that included years of debate on the particulars of the program.
Almost 650 structures have been registered by their respective owners in the state’s system, county officials said, with just over a hundred more awaiting processing. Officials expect that inventory to significantly grow, given that 90% of the city’s housing stock predates 1980 — when the federal government barred the use of lead paint.
The World Health Organization deems lead a neurotoxin in children, noting that the chemical element attacks the brain and the central nervous system at high levels of exposure. This can lead to convulsions and even death, with other long-term effects such as intellectual disabilities and behavioral disorders.
News of the program’s rollout has hit local lead safety advocates in a way reminiscent of their feelings of a new rental registry three years ago: the state’s efforts are a step in the right direction toward mitigating childhood lead poisoning.
“Instead of waiting until we blood test the child and identify hazards where they live, we can actually find out the conditions of their homes before there is a problem,” said Kiara Van Brackle, a clinical neuroscientist and the steering committee chair for the Lead Safe CNY Coalition. “But I don’t think the registry makes it to where every home is now safe.”
The program, however, does not do enough to protect families from lead poisoning, Van Brackle said. NYSDOH’s lead rental registry, she added, is teeming with blind spots that ultimately do not allow for the abatement of lead poisoning hazards.
State environmental advocates agree with Van Brackle’s assessment. Earlier this month, the New York Public Interest Research Group Fund, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and AVillage sued the State Department of Health and Commissioner McDonald, demanding the state tighten the program’s regulations.
“The rules that DOH has adopted to implement the law fall very far from that mark of ensuring that housing will be truly free of lead paint hazards,” said Eve Gartner, an environmental lawyer with Earthjustice, an organization that represents the coalition suing the state.
Gartner called the state’s program the most ambitious lead law in the country but added that it is ripe with loopholes, exemptions, and a reliance on outdated metrics to quantify lead contamination.
“All of that adds up to a situation where children who are supposed to be protected by this law will be left in harm’s way,” she said. “In some respects, they’ll be even in a worse position than before because their families will be misled into believing that they’re living in housing that’s free of lead hazards,” Gartner said.
A NYSDOH spokesperson did not address questions about the concerns highlighted by advocates in the lawsuit, instead noting that the department does not comment on pending litigation.
“The Department is committed to eliminating childhood lead exposure in New York State and addressing health disparities through strong programs, plans and laws,” John Emery, a NYSDOH spokesperson, wrote in an email.
How does the program work? And community concerns
Through the program, the owners of homes built before 1980 with more than two units in 25 municipalities across the state have to register their properties. Those properties will then have to be inspected either by county health department officials, third-party risk assessors hired by property owners, or, in Syracuse’s case, code enforcement officers.
The state’s program covers five zip codes in Syracuse, encompassing parts of several city neighborhoods:
- North Side
- West Side
- Near Eastside
- Southside
- Valley
- Southwest
Properties in these areas cleared by inspectors from having peeling lead paint, lead dust and traces of lead in the soil are then issued a lead safety certificate that must be renewed every three years. Owners have to remediate the sources of lead outlined in the inspection.
The county has not yet started inspecting properties and will not do so in 2026. Instead, the county’s focus for the remainder of the year will be on education and outreach to property owners, said Justin Sayles, a spokesperson for County Executive Ryan McMahon.
Sayles said the county has vetted 631 registrations, with an additional 92 pending acceptance. Property owners must comply by the end of 2028.
To assist property owners, the county has hosted and will continue to host community presentations, events and open houses to assist with state registration, as well as continue to distribute educational materials. The county also plans to continue its efforts to increase access to the requisite U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certifications to assess lead hazards, and remediate and abate sources of lead contamination.
As localities prepare to inspect these homes and enforce remediation, environmental advocates are trying to push the state to fortify the program’s guidelines. One of the weakest aspects of the program, according to the advocates who sued the state, is the lack of depth in the inspections experts are supposed to conduct.
The regulations, Gartner said, do not specifically mandate dust wipe testing of the exterior of homes. Gartner said this is particularly troubling given that porches are often the source of lead poisoning for children. NYSDOH has, in response, said that they will not implement dust wipe testing as a requirement because the EPA does not have testing standards for exterior dust wipe testing.
Gartner said the regulations also don’t mandate soil testing when there is snow on the ground. NYSDOH officials wrote in the finalized regulations that inspections should focus on addressing bare soil areas where people are more likely to spend time.
“During times of snow cover, soil does not present a direct exposure concern,” officials wrote.
Several of the communities of concern included in the state lead rental registry are in areas of the state that see consistent snowfall for several months out of the year, Gartner said. Program guidelines, Van Brackle said, should adapt to the conditions of the communities they cover.
“If snow prevents inspectors from determining whether a soil hazard exists, then the answer should be to complete that assessment when conditions permit — not to leave that potential exposure pathway unexamined,” she said.
Guidelines for interior inspections also lack thoroughness, Gartner and Van Brackle said. Regulations don’t direct inspectors to cite for remediation the presence of paint on surfaces where friction can lead to the peeling of paint. Instead, inspectors should only cite when there is a visual of peeling or chipping paint or dust on surfaces.
“That distinction matters because friction and abrasion can generate lead dust
even when painted surfaces do not appear visibly deteriorated,” Van Brackle said.
Despite these concerns, Van Brackle said she remains optimistic that the rental registry can help Syracuse protect families from lead poisoning. She said the program should be used as a tool to continue to abate lead in homes all over the city. The program should also be taken more seriously than the city’s current effort to bring properties into compliance.
Those efforts rely on a local lead ordinance from 2020 that did not see enforcement until 2022. The ordinance, similar to the state’s program, requires city code enforcement officers to look for potential lead contamination in city homes before issuing rental registry certificates to property owners. Only 41% of the eligible homes, around 4,500 of them, have a valid rental registry certificate with the city
“That ordinance hasn’t been strictly enforced,” Van Brackle said.
The success of the state’s rental registry, however, should be measured on how effective it can be at lead poisoning prevention, she added.
“We need this to be strong,” Van Brackle said.
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