Fund Healthy Housing NOW!
by Julie Kruse
ACT NOW to ensure continued funding for HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes and CDC’s Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program!
The home is the most dangerous place for U.S. families. Nearly six million families live in housing rivaling that of developing countries, with broken heating and plumbing, holes in walls and windows, roach and rodent infestation, falling plaster, crumbling foundations, and leaking roofs. Millions more in all 50 states live in housing with serious health and safety hazards including mold, exposed wiring, radon, unvented heaters, toxic chemicals, broken stairs, missing smoke detectors, and other hazards. Home-based interventions to address health hazards improve health and have a large return on investment: Each dollar invested in lead paint hazard control results in a return of $17 to $221*, and each dollar invested in asthma home-based interventions that include education and remediation results in a return of $5.30 to $14.00.
That’s why it makes both great common sense and great fiscal sense to direct more funding to the critical government programs that invest money in America’s future by making homes safer and healthier. Unfortunately, these programs are always in serious danger of debilitating budget cutting.
Please take these simple steps now to ensure healthy homes and lead hazard control and lead /poisoning prevention programs continue!
STEP 1: SIGN your organization on to the attached letter to Congress for HUD and CDC funding.
Click here to sign on to the attached letter. And forward these links to your networks!
STEP 2: CALL your representative in the U.S. House!
- Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask to be connected to your representative. (If you don’t know who your representative is, the switchboard can tell you based on your address.)
- Ask to speak with the staff person who handles the health or housing issues for the office.
- When you reach or leave a message for the staffer (or speak to the receptionist if the staffer is not available), tell him or her:
“I’m calling to urge Representative [representative’s last name] to sign on to the Congresswoman Slaughter sign-on letter in support of healthy homes and lead poisoning prevention funding for HUD and CDC. The sign-on letter deadline is March 19.
“I also urge the representative to submit a request to the health appropriations subcommittee to fund CDC’s Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at $29 million.
“These funds will ensure the protection of over 500,000 lead-poisoned children who need CDC-funded services.
“Thank you!”
STEP 3: Call your senators! (Coming soon!)
Only you can help us win this budget battle.
*These figures were published in “Childhood Lead Poisoning: Conservative Estimates of the Social and Economic Benefits of Lead Hazard Control” by Elise Gould, Environmental Health Perspectives, July 2009.
Julie Kruse, worked as NCHH’s director of policy from November 2014 to January 2017, passionately advocating for safe, healthy, and affordable housing of high quality. In her long and distinguished career, she has served such organizations as the Immigration Equality Action Fund, the Center for Economic Progress, Chicago Women in Trades, and the Midwest Women’s Center. Since 2017, she has worked with the Family Equality Council’s public policy team to gain legal equality for LGBTQ families, LGBTQ youth needing families, and LGBTQ adults waiting to foster or adopt in the U.S. Ms. Kruse holds a B.S. in biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana and a Master of Science in education from Northwestern University.