What NCHH Does 

Our mission is to ensure that everyone has a safe and healthy home. With more than six million families living in substandard housing, we equip leaders across the public health, housing, and environmental sectors with the data, tools, policies, and best practices needed to improve housing quality in their communities. We channel the powerful energy and deep-rooted interests of the healthy housing movement into a force for change. Learn how you can be a part of this change.

 

How Innovative Communities Are Using ARPA Funds to Transform Housing and Address Environmental Hazards

When we first wrote last fall about the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), we highlighted the huge opportunity present in the flexible recovery funding that the law provides to state, territorial, city, county, and tribal governments. With broad categories of activities that funding could support, the specific mentions of lead poisoning prevention in the interim final rule, and decisions about how to prioritize spending left up to the recipients, ARPA represented a significant chance for communities to use new money to address environmental hazards in homes.

We’re now over 13 months from the law’s final passage, almost a year from when communities started being able to access the funds, and about eight months from that original blog post, and we’re thrilled to share that communities have seized the opportunity and are already implementing innovative ways to use the funding [read more]….

Rhode Island’s Largest Drinking Water Utility Faces Civil Rights Complaint over Lead Contamination

The Providence Water Supply Board performs infrastructure work and partial lead service line replacements in a way that disproportionately increases the risk of lead exposure from drinking water for Black and Latinx residents, contrary to its responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to a group of health and environmental justice organizations. The first-of-its-kind administrative complaint was filed today with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the Childhood Lead Action Project, Direct Action for Rights and Equality, South Providence Neighborhood Association, National Center for Healthy Housing, and Environmental Defense Fund [read more]….

The Administration’s New Lead Action Plan Is a Step Forward, but We Can Finish the Fight with a Leap

Lead poisoning is a problem we can solve, and the National Center for Healthy Housing applauds the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to preventing lead exposure and the harm it has unjustly and unnecessarily conferred on generations of American children. The December 16, 2021, release of the Biden-Harris Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan is a good start on that promise, but we urge the administration, Congress, and leaders at the federal, state, and local levels not to stop there. If the administration is serious about eradicating this environmental justice issue that disproportionately impacts low-income communities and communities of color, they’ll need to address lead more holistically (and lead-based paint in particular), as the plan’s name, but not its current list of promises, suggests. At a minimum, the administration should consider the following measures [read more]….