Concerned about the prevalence of lead in homes across the city, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed a bill in 2012 earmarking additional funding for it. By law, 60 percent of fees associated with inspecting housing units for occupancy were to go to the city’s Lead Remediation Fund.
But the city appears to have quietly stopped the allocation, as city officials have conceded under questioning from both aldermen and SLM. A spokeswoman for the Building Division says that money for the city’s lead remediation efforts currently comes from two sources: a Housing and Urban Development grant, and then building and demolition permit fees, with $2 assessed for the fund for every $1,000 of permits. Housing inspection fees are not part of the mix.
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In response to our questioning, they also later acknowledged that at least one Building Division employee’s salary was being wrongly billed to the remediation fund when that employee was not working on lead-related issues. They have now stopped that practice.
Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier wonders when money from inspection fees stopped going to the fund. Sonnier reviewed the text of the 2012 Board Bill earlier this month, and said that it doesn’t seem like the Building Division could use discretion in determining whether to allocate the money.
“The question is,” she says, “who made the change?”
City Budget Director Paul Payne says that it’s his belief that around 2012, the fund badly needed more money. (To Payne’s point, in 2014, the fund was spending $3 million a year to get lead out of homes.) Now, Payne says, that is no longer the case.
In the last fiscal year, the remediation fund brought in $1.4 million in revenue and around $2.1 million from the fund went out the door.
Despite the fund last year spending $700,000 more than came into it, he says it’s in good financial shape.
“It’s not like they’re struggling for cash,” Payne says—although he acknowledges that could change if building permits drop.
Alderman Shane Cohn remains unconvinced. “That’s not the intent of the legislation,” he said.
Asked if he thought this represented a violation of city ordinance, Cohn replied, “Yep.” He added: “That was my issue.”
The problem of lead poisoning has bedeviled St. Louis for decades. Lead paint was common in homes prior to 1978, meaning that lead poisoning is especially an issue for cities like ours with a housing stock that skews older. (According to the text of the 2012 bill, at the time 90 percent of the city’s housing stock was built prior to 1978.) Renovators working on those homes are supposed to obtain a certification from the U.S. EPA, but last year seven St. Louis area contractors were hit with fines by the agency for failing to do so.
Lead Is a neurotoxin that adversely affects the brain and nervous system, with children under six being particularly vulnerable. Exposure to lead can cause lower IQ, developmental delays, and learning disabilities. Particularly alarming has been the lead found in area schools, including chainlink fences around playgrounds and drinking water. In 2023, the husband-and-wife behind the coffee roastery and Mexican restaurant Brew Tulum sued the Delmar Maker District, alleging that the space the eatery operated out of in the district—and where their son often spent time—was contaminated with lead. The presence of the lead came to light during a routine check up for the child.
The exact number of children who will deal with lead poisoning in the city of St. Louis varies depending on source. Mayor Francis Slay, who began the Lead Remediation Fund in 1999, appointed Jeanine Arrighi as his lead poisoning prevention coordinator. Arrighi tells SLM that in 2004, 13.6 percent of kids in St. Louis under six had lead poisoning. By 2014, that number was down to around 2 percent. Arrighi says that being part of the team that secured that reduction was “the most significant experience of my professional life.”
Anyone in the city who is pregnant or living with a child under six can get a lead inspection from the city for no charge. If lead is found, depending on the household’s income, the family may qualify for financial assistance to remove the hazard. The Building Division says that the Lead Remediation Fund is adequately funded so that no one who qualifies is turned away.
Alderman Shane Cohn began asking questions about the fund earlier this month when the Building Division went before an aldermanic committee with their budget request for the forthcoming fiscal year. He cited Ware’s predecessor Frank Oswald as telling an aldermanic committee that the money was going instead to pay inspector salaries. “Are we actually doing lead remediation? Or are we just inspecting properties to determine whether or not it needs lead remediation?” Cohn asked.
Ware himself seemed surprised by Cohn’s questions. “Well, I don’t want to contradict Mr. Oswald,” he said, before adding, “As far as I know, we’re still doing lead abatement.” He cited a recent instance of the agency remediating lead from a “problematic” landlord’s rental property.
When SLM dug into the issue, the city acknowledged that a little less than half of the fund’s expenditures last year—around $950,000—went to cover salaries in the Building Division, city data shows. About $600,000 went to contractors who operate businesses that remediate and abate lead.
In response to our questions, the Building Division later confirmed that they’d identified an employee whose salary was drawn from the fund who wasn’t working on remediation, as a spokesperson for the division confirmed. Ware says that the employee is in the process of being reassigned to “a more appropriate funding source.”
The spokesperson for the building division also said that the lead remediation programs has received 3,076 referrals for lead inspections in roughly the past five years.
Those referrals only generated 1,146 inspections, which in turn generated just 755 units of housing being cleared as safe.
However, that sort of disparity between inspections and referrals is not unusual, says John Carrico, program manager of lead inspection at the Building Division.
He explains in an email that most of the referrals actually come from the state health agency, to whom healthcare providers are mandated to report blood tests that show signs of elevated lead levels.
Where it gets tricky, Carrico says, is actually gaining access to the property. It often turns out that the person, often a child, is now living elsewhere, or the person with the elevated lead level declines assistance from the city and will accept only “verbal advice.” Sometimes the address the Building Division gets from the state health agency is vacant or boarded up, or the inspector is flat-out denied entry.
“Our team leaves door hangers, places phone calls,” he says. Following up on a referral, it can take as many as 15 attempts to get into a property. He adds, “We are committed to making a good faith effort on every referral.”
