Lead Legal Strategies Partnership

Project Funder: The New York Community Trust

Project Partners: ChangeLab Solutions and Earthjustice

Project Contact: Laura Fudala, lfudala@nchh.org, 443.539.4167

Project Description: In an ongoing effort to effect change at a systems level and improve outcomes today and for generations to come, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH), ChangeLab Solutions, and Earthjustice joined forces in 2019 to establish the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership (LLSP). With funding from The New York Community Trust, the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership’s primary charge is to mobilize existing effective tools, resources, data, model policies, and best practices and equip communities to put them into action.

The initial technical assistance activities of the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership focused on the nine communities identified as grantees of NCHH’s Equipping Communities for Action initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The legal guidance and coaching provided by the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership has been a critical piece of this initiative helping communities address existing, time-sensitive housing issues, build local capacity, and advance evidence-based lead poisoning prevention efforts through policy and systems change.

In addition to the flexible, on-demand coaching that occurred throughout the partnership’s founding year, the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership convened informational webinars, developed technical assistance tools to expand the reach of provided 1:1 coaching to a broader audience, and conducted code comparisons for numerous localities to help demonstrate where a city’s code may fall short on best practices to protect health, specifically related to lead hazards.

Resources

Local Policy Toolbox
Experiences of the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership were a primary driver of the creation of the new Local Policy Toolbox on the NCHH website. This collection of informal resources was developed in reaction to direct requests for technical assistance on local policy opportunities and serves as a mechanism to share provided guidance, considerations, and existing real-world examples with a broader audience. Check out the full toolbox.

Legal Strategies and Mechanisms to Reduce Lead Poisoning Webinar
In August 2019, the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership hosted an introductory webinar with the main objectives of identifying: multiple legal strategies and/or policy levers to act upon to prevent lead poisoning; potential unintended consequences and their implications for advancing health equity; and various resources to learn more about each legal strategy/policy lever, including successful examples from around the country.

Access the webinar here: YouTube | GoToWebinar

Material Resources Available (August 2019):

Proactive Rental Inspection Webinar
In January 2020, the Lead Legal Strategies Partnership hosted a webinar to dive deeper into the specific legal strategy of proactive rental inspections (PRI). The LLSP presented information on (1) the key benefits PRI programs can offer to cities, tenants, and the public as a whole; (2) the key components of PRI programs; (3) some different considerations to keep in mind while developing a program; and (4) how to create an effective implementation system.

Access the webinar here: YouTube | GoToWebinar

Material resources available (January 2020):

Related

New Partnership Established to Help Communities Implement Context-Specific Legal Strategies to Address Lead Poisoning [press release, July 9, 2019.]