New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
City to raise focus on ‘healthy home’ issues with $2M grant
NEW HAVEN — A new $2 million federal “healthy homes” grant to address lead, mildew, mold, radon and other at-home health issues will help the city make life better and safer for hundreds of the city’s vulnerable families, officials say.
“This is a really big deal — and it’s exciting,” said Mayor Justin Elicker, standing in front of a house on Grafton Street in the city’s Fair Haven section, one of 200 the grant, obtained through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “Healthy Homes” program , will help make safer over the next two years.
“This $2 million is a really big deal because it significantly adds to the work that we are doing in New Haven to keep people safe in their homes, and particularly people who are vulnerable,” Elicker said. Director of Health Maritza Bond, “when she started over two years ago, she and I talked about the importance” of continued lead abatement, among the issues, he said.
Health officials said it’s particularly important in New Haven because 70 percent of the city’s houses were built before 1978, at a time when lead paint was commonly in use.
“It’s been a priority” because of lead’s potential to inflict “permanent damage to young children’s frame development,” Elicker said. “Since then, the Health Department, Director Bond and her team have worked very hard to dramatically change the way that the city approaches accountability regarding lead and insuring that more young people are safer.”
Among other things, “they’ve entirely revamped the city’s policies around lead,” gone from two to six inspectors and addressed a former backlog to address lead complaints, “and because of that, there are many New Haven children who are safer today,” he said.
The $2 million grant, which will supplement the city’s existing lead-reduction programs, “adds to that by adding an additional layer of inspection” that goes beyond addressing lead issues to address things such as mildew and radon, he said.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who helped with the funding, said “there’s a reason why New Haven has received this grant” and “that’s because New Haven has the leadership to make good use of it.”
The grant is important because “there is nothing more important to kids’ health than their homes,” Blumenthal said. “If a kid can’t go to school or go to the playground, that affects that kid for a long time.”
Blumenthal said environmental preparedness will help prevent things such as asthma and lead poisoning.
Bond, who grew up in Fair Haven, said that “although we’ve been at the front lines” fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Department also has been working to reduce home health issues such from threats such as lead and mildew “to make sure that we are addressing timely issues for our children.”
She called the house at 150 Grafton St. where she and other officials had gathered “an opportunity house” that “has numerous violations,” located in a neighborhood with multiple health issues that need to be addressed.
Rafael Ramos, the city’s new environmental health program director, said
New Haven was one of just two communities in New Haven that were among 60 in the nation to get grants under the program, and the Health Department will work closely with other city department, including the Livable City Initiative, to do the work.
The targeted population “is low-income families,” according to the program’s guidelines, he said.
People seeking more information about the program can do so via the city’s lead abatement program website, at www.newhavenlead.com, or by calling the Health Department at 203-9466999, Ramos said.