Learn About Healthy Housing in Your Region

Region 5: Great Lakes

States included: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin

NCHH board or staff based in this region: Yes

The cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural communities of the Great Lakes region face the continuing task of keeping existing homes safe, comfortable, and affordable. Repair, lead poisoning prevention, and reliable heating are important parts of that work, while heat, heavy rainfall, wind, and flooding create additional demands. Coordinating lead safety and other healthy housing improvements with energy upgrades, weatherization and neighborhood investment offers an opportunity to make existing homes healthier while preserving their affordability.

	Housing Units1	Built Before 19801	Renter-Occupied Homes2	Housing with a High Cost Burden3
Illinois	5,482,133	3,410,687	1,655,487	1,452,512
Indiana	3,026,101	1,614,291	812,741	679,351
Michigan	4,669,109	2,866,185	1,096,483	1,061,830
Minnesota	2,597,229	1,333,442	671,007	610,136
Ohio	5,366,168	3,307,668	1,577,508	1,253,105
Wisconsin	2,820,531	1,563,207	811,672	632,631
United States	146,740,964	70,645,087	46,101,640	40,510,500

The Midwest (Region 5) has one of the nation’s largest numbers of older homes with a high-cost burden, compared to other regions. Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan especially have particularly large numbers of older housing relative to their total housing inventories. Many of these homes were built before the residential use of lead-based paint was banned in 1978, making lead hazard reduction, home repair, and rehabilitation critical investments for protecting health and preserving housing quality across the region. For example, the Illinois Department of Public Health has declared that its housing is all “high-risk” for lead hazards. The region is also home to some of the largest cities with older housing stock, including Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee. Some of these jurisdictions have significant numbers of homes with mold, asthma triggers, radon, and other home-based health hazards.

Learn more about healthy housing in each state:

Illinois  |  Indiana |  Michigan |  Minnesota |  Ohio  |  Wisconsin

Community and Partner Spotlight

Across the region, communities and organizations are working in many ways to make homes healthier and safer. These spotlights offer a glimpse of that work, highlighting just a few of the many efforts underway. Explore the links below to learn more directly from those leading the work.

Cleveland Environmental Health Watch
Environmental Health Watch has played a key role in advancing the Cleveland area’s lead paint ordinances, as well as helping to raise large amounts of private sector funding for lead paint remediation. It was also involved in some of the first mold remediation work, together with Case Western Reserve University, that helped to lay the foundation for the national healthy homes movement. The EHW Healthy Homes program assesses, develops a plan of action, and mitigates home health risks in Cleveland and includes. It has also been instrumental in building a local coalition of hundreds of community groups to promote policy reforms related to lead paint and healthy housing.

Healthy Homes Coalition of Western Michigan
The mission of the Healthy Homes Coalition is to prioritize children’s health and well-being by eliminating harmful housing conditions, beginning in Grand Rapids’ hardest-hit neighborhoods. The Healthy Homes Coalition is an outgrowth of the successful Get the Lead Out! campaign, which sought to end childhood lead poisoning in Grand Rapids and to apply lessons learned from lead to other children’s environmental health issues related to housing. These efforts were in response to local data that called out the environmental injustice of childhood lead poisoning. In addition to lead poisoning, the group has focused on radon, fire safety, and carbon monoxide as priority issues of concern. Asthma is also priority concern that can be reduced by addressing children’s housing. Services for families with children with asthma include tailored home assessments, linking to asthma-specific resources, and assistance with integrated pest management.

Metropolitan Tenants Organization
Chicago’s Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO) works directly with individual tenants to resolve landlord and apartment problems. The group provides free tools and resources that enables tenants to document housing deficiencies and to seek immediate resolutions. It anchors the city’s hotline, which receives over 10,000 housing-related complaints annually. MTO continually works to strengthen rental laws and create better tenant protections by advocating for new and improved legislation on the local, state, and federal levels. MTO’s advocacy board facilitates, oversees, and organizes efforts to make housing a human right. The advocacy board promotes and builds campaigns that confront power and win back our human rights to housing, health, education, jobs, and the ability to organize. The proposed Chicago Healthy Homes Ordinance would change Chicago’s housing code inspections to a proactive rather than a reactive model. Under the proposal, which is now being studied by the City Council, the City of Chicago would inspect all rental units on a regular five-year cycle for health and safety violations. Currently, Chicago’s complaint-based system places the burden on renters to tattle on their landlords and, thereby, risk spoiling the relationship, getting hit with retaliatory rent increases, or even evictions. The proposal will increase maintenance and protect the health of families. Inspectors will also look for lead-based paint and other housing-based health hazards. The organization also has chapters in a number of buildings across the city.

Michigan Environmental Council
The Michigan Environmental Council has promoted healthy housing legislation with a proposal that would provide holistic funding and program support to create more affordable housing; improve the quality, energy efficiency and safety of existing affordable and low-income housing; and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions from all housing. The proposal includes $100 million to create and pool resources into a whole-home retrofit program to improve quality, safety, and energy efficiency of existing affordable and low-income housing and provide for another $30 million to fund workforce development initiatives to attract, train, and retain contractors for weatherization and home building projects. This will help to ensure energy efficiency of new housing by introducing a bill to reform the state’s uniform building construction code adoption process that would remove the seven-year cost test and require the state to adopt the new international codes every three years.

Ohio Healthy Homes Network
The Ohio Healthy Homes Network (OHHN) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit statewide organization whose mission is to promote healthy, safe, and affordable housing for people of all ages. OHHN was formed in 1997 as Help End Lead Poisoning and focuses on ensuring that Ohio families have access to lead-safe housing. OHHN has expanded its mission to focus more broadly on health-related housing issues like indoor environmental quality and establishing and preserving affordable, healthy housing. OHHN is a member of the leadership team for the Ohio Lead Free Kids Coalition, a large collection of organizations and individuals who share a deep and urgent concern about the potentially life-long harm caused by lead poisoning. The group holds regular annual conferences and has helped to formulate and promote some of Ohio’s lead poisoning prevention and healthy homes programs and laws around the state.

NCHH Research in the Region

NCHH’s research in Region 5 has included strong collaborators at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission, and local housing and health departments.

Michigan Children’s Lead Determination Study (MI CHILD)  |  PubMed
Carried out with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, this NCHH study used data from 2017 to 2021 for 429 children in 345 homes that included lead in blood, paint, dust, soil, water, and other housing, demographic, and behavioral metrics. Fifty-three percent of these children had blood lead (BPb) levels greater than or equal to five micrograms per deciliter (≥5 μg/dL). Results showed that children’s BPb was directly predicted by lead in settled floor house dust, child’s age, season, and mouthing behavior and indirectly predicted by windowsill and trough dust lead (DPb), bare soil lead (SPb), proportion of floors with carpets, and exterior building deteriorations. Paint lead (PPb) was also an indirect predictor of BPb through the soil and settled dust pathways. This study shows that the main direct and indirect pathways of lead exposure for most children in older housing remains paint and the contaminated dust and soil it generates. The study shows that lead in dust, soil, and paint all should be measured to predict risk and target remediation.

Comprehensive Lead Education and Reduction Through Window Replacement (CLEAR WIN)  |  PubMed
This NCHH study, in collaboration with the University of Illinois Chicago and the Chicago and Peoria Health departments evaluated an Illinois state bond-financed pilot program that replaced old lead-contaminated windows with new, lead-free, energy-efficient ones. It included 96 low-income households, where dust wipe sampling, visual assessment, and physical and mental self-reported health data were collected before the windows were replaced, immediately afterwards, and one year later. Geometric mean lead dust (PbD) from baseline to one year for interior floors, interior sills, and exterior troughs declined by 44%, 88%, and 98%, respectively (P < .001); one year later, levels remained well below baseline but rose slightly compared with clearance sampling just after intervention. PbD declined significantly on both sills and troughs in both the urban and rural jurisdictions from baseline to one year. On interior floors, PbD significantly declined by 58% (P = .003) in the rural area and 25% (P = .38) in the urban area, where the decline did not reach statistical significance. Households reported improvements in uncomfortable indoor temperatures (P < .001) and certain health outcomes. Economic benefits were estimated at $5,912,219 compared with a cost of $3,451,841, resulting in a net monetary benefit of $2,460,378. Residents reported that they were “very satisfied” with the window replacement work (87%). The study showed that local and state governments should fund and operate window replacement programs to eliminate a major source of childhood lead exposure, improve energy bills, increase home market value, and create local construction and industrial jobs.

Moving into Green Healthy Housing—The Yield (MIGHHTY)  |  PubMed
Together with the University of Illinois Chicago, the Chicago Housing Authority, the Chicago Metropolitan Tenants Organization, and several private low-income housing providers, this study compared health before and after families moved into new green healthy housing with a control group in traditionally repaired housing in three large multifamily housing developments. It included 325 apartments (with 803 individuals) and measured self-reported health status, visual assessment of housing condition, indoor air sampling, and Medicaid expenditure and diagnostic data. The results showed that housing conditions and self-reported physical and mental health improved significantly in the green healthy housing study group compared with both the control group and the dilapidated public housing from which the residents moved, as did hay fever, headaches, sinusitis, angina, and respiratory allergy. Asthma severity measured by self-reported lost school/work days, disturbed sleep, and symptoms improved significantly, as did sadness, nervousness, restlessness, and child behavior. Medicaid data in this exploratory study were inconclusive and inconsistent with self-reported health outcomes and visual assessment data on housing quality but hold promise for future investigation.

Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality and Health in Homes Undergoing Weatherization  |  PubMed
This NCHH study, in collaboration with the Illinois and Indiana weatherization programs and the University of Illinois was a randomized trial that compared how two ventilation standards (ASHRAE 62-1989 [n=39 houses]) and ASHRAE 62.2-2010 [n=42 houses]) influenced ventilation rates, moisture balance, indoor air quality, and self-reported physical and mental health outcomes. Average total airflow was nearly twice as high for ASHRAE 62.2-2010 (79 vs. 39 cfm). Volatile organic compounds, formaldehyde and carbon dioxide were all significantly reduced for the newer standard and first-floor radon was marginally lower. But for the older standard, only formaldehyde significantly decreased. Humidity in the ASHRAE 62.2-2010 group was only about half that of the ASHRAE 62-1989 group. Radon was higher in the basement but lower on the first floor for ASHRAE 62.2-2010. Children in each group had fewer headaches, eczema, and skin allergies after weatherization, and adults had improvements in psychological distress. Indoor air quality and health improve when weatherization is accompanied by an ASHRAE residential ventilation standard, and the 2010 ASHRAE standard has greater improvements in certain outcomes compared to the 1989 standard. The study showed that weatherization, home repair, and energy conservation projects should use the newer ASHRAE standard to improve indoor air quality and health.

Explore Healthy Housing in Other Regions

Region 1: New England  |  Region 2: New York/New Jersey  |  Region 3: Mid-Atlantic  |  Region 4: Southeast  |
Region 5: Great Lakes |  Region 6: South Central  |  Region 7: Central Plains  |  Region 8: Mountain and Northern Plains  |
Region 9: Southwest and Pacific |  Region 10: Northwest and Alaska  |  Tribal Healthy Housing |  Rural Healthy Housing

 

Table Reference Sources:

¹ U.S. Census Bureau. “Year Structure Built.” American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables, Table B25034. Accessed October 7, 2026.

² U.S. Census Bureau. “Tenure.” American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables, Table B25003. Accessed October 7, 2026.

³ U.S. Census Bureau. “Housing Costs as a Percentage of Household Income in the Past 12 Months.” American Community Survey, ACS 1-Year Estimates Detailed Tables, Table B25140. Accessed October 7, 2026.

 

Latest page update: October 22, 2026.