Feds Launches $112m Fund to Protect Children From Dangerous Lead and Other Home Hazards

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded more than $112 million in grants to 39 local and state government agencies and research institutions to protect children and families from the hazards of lead-based paint and from other home health and safety hazards.

The grant funding will reduce the number of lead-poisoned children and protect families by targeting health hazards in nearly 7,000 low-income homes with significant lead and/or other home health and safety hazards. In addition, some of these grants will support research on increasing the effectiveness of hazard reduction methods. These programs have a demonstrated history of success, filling critical needs in communities where no other resources exist to address substandard housing that threatens the health of the most vulnerable residents, and filling research gaps essential for being able to reduce hazard reduction costs.

As HUD approaches its 50th anniversary next year, HUD Secretary Julián Castro is focused on advancing policies that create opportunities for all Americans, including helping children and families secure quality housing by protecting them from the hazards of lead-based paint and other home health and safety hazards.

"No person should ever be in harm's way when cooking dinner in their kitchen or playing with children in the living room," said Castro. "These grant awards will help communities eliminate home-related hazards and give families new opportunities to thrive. Housing is a critical source of stability, and HUD is committed to helping ensure that all Americans have a healthy safe place to live."

"Millions of families and children are seeing their hope for the future threatened by poor health simply because of where they live," noted Matthew E. Ammon, Acting Director of HUD's Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes.  "Every child deserves to grow up in a healthy home and yet far too many continue to be exposed to potentially dangerous lead and other health hazards in the home."

Unsafe and unhealthy homes affect the health of millions of people of all income levels, geographic areas, and walks of life in the U.S. These unsafe and unhealthy homes affect the economy directly, through increased utilization of health care services, and indirectly through lost wages and increased school days missed. Housing improvements help prevent injuries and illnesses, reduce associated health care and social services costs, reduce absentee rates for children in school and adults at work, and reduce stress, all which help to improve the quality of life.

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; stimulate private sector investment in lead hazard control; support cutting-edge research on methods for assessing and controlling housing-related health and safety hazards; and educate the public about the dangers of hazards in the home. Read a complete project-by-project summary of the programs awarded grants today.

The funding directs critical funds to cities, counties and states to eliminate dangerous lead paint and other housing-related health hazards in thousands of privately-owned, low-income housing units. HUD is also providing over $11.4 million to help communities mitigate multiple health hazards in high risk housing simultaneously in conjunction with their lead hazard control activities.

The funding also directs funds to public and private universities and research organizations to improve methods to detect lead paint in the home, assess the effectiveness of lead laws, improve home fall protection for the elderly, improve sustainable pest management strategies, evaluate the health effects of smoke-free policies, and assess home air cleaning in reducing childhood asthma.

Protecting children and families from home hazards, such as lead concentration, asthma, etc., is also a concern of real estate brokers. The real estate industry should be responsible and pro-active in eliminating dangerous lead paint and other housing-related health hazards. Real estate brokers can take advantage of a technology developed by RealBiz Media Group, Inc.’s RBIZ Nestbuilder.com.

RealBiz Media’s Nestbuilder.com aims to grant agents control over how they want to run marketing campaigns for their listings. The portal came at a time when the norm among agents for capturing leads is to buy them from established multiple listing sites.

“Nestbuilder.com’s mission is to both empower the real estate agent and to connect the homeowner and homebuyer directly with the agent in a personalized and meaningful relationship without interference from large, impersonal, third party lead generation sites,” RealBiz Media President and chief revenue officer Steve Marques noted.

“Homebuyers are able to create personalized video collections of potential homes to be set-up for review and sharing. Agents can quickly bring their listings to life via RealBiz’s rich video conversion tools, and market their properties directly to homeowners and homebuyers in a personalized, customized, entertaining, and engaging format no matter where they are," he said.

RealBiz has access to the nation’s largest real estate companies with numerous approved vendors and national contracts, both key to its future development programs. When completed, the company is targeting distribution of its digital video network to more than 70 million households and an agent driven MicroVideo App program. For more information, please dial this toll free number at 1.888.REAL.BIZ (888.732.5249) or email at support@rbm.zendesk.com.