Turning Lead Into Gold

Centuries ago, alchemists searched in vain for the “philosopher’s stone” which could turn lead into gold. City Council Speaker Peter Vallone and his allies in the real-estate industry found a way to do just that: Vallone’s two-fisted approach consisted of accepting large contributions from landlords with one hand while gutting the laws protecting New York City kids from lead-paint poisoning with the other.

Flying in the face of testimony from doctors, parents of lead-poisoned children and housing experts who have studied the issue for 20 years, Vallone forced a bill through the City Council giving landlords and the city months to remove hazardous exposed lead from apartments where young children live, and shielding property owners from civil liability when children are poisoned—which they are certain to be.

Debate on the floor of the Council prior to the vote revealed that most of the members, including Housing Committee Chair Archie Spigner, the main sponsor of the bill, know little about the causes and prevention of childhood lead poisoning. Missing from the discussion was one central fact: Bad landlords cause childhood lead poisoning. They cause lead poisoning not because the walls, windows and doors of their apartments are covered with lead paint, but because they fail to maintain their buildings.

Lead paint is in almost every building that was built before 1960 for wealthy or middle-class tenants. It was considered premier paint, and it was expensive. Lead poisoning occurs in the lead belt—those areas of the city that have buildings that were built originally for middle-class tenants and now house poor tenants. These buildings are now owned by slumlords who don’t paint every three years, who don’t repair leaky roofs, who allow leaking pipes to continue to drip month after month, causing deterioration of walls and ceilings. Those are landlords who own buildings in neighborhoods where they don’t live, where they simply collect rent. In the words of Brooklyn Councilmember Una Clarke, the landlords “who are all in Florida playing golf.”

Lead poisoning in children occurs when painted walls, ceilings, doors and windows are allowed to get in such bad condition that dust is created and spread onto surfaces that children touch, such as tables, floors, and toys, and then put their fingers into their mouths. Landlords cause this poisoning when they allow these conditions to continue for years, so that no matter how many times the apartment is cleaned, the invisible heavy toxic dust continues to fall.

Even under the old 1982 law, 30,000 children—virtually all of them poor, 90% of them nonwhite—suffer from lead poisoning, with over 1,000 serious new cases each year. Babies or toddlers who breathe or eat dust from degrading lead paint in their apartments can suffer permanent brain damage. This tragic disease is preventable by removing lead hazards following federal safety guidelines to make sure that toxic lead dust is not spread during the removal process.

Private Use of Public Places

Although two-thirds of the Council’s 51 members supported a fair compromise called Intro 205, which has been on the table for more than a year, Vallone refused to even allow a hearing on it, but forced his own bill, drafted in close consultation with landlords, through the Housing Committee and onto the floor of the Council in a matter of days. Supporters of Intro 205 maintained that the current law, Local 1 of 1982, went too far by requiring that apartments be made “lead-free” rather than “lead-safe,” and not far enough in other areas: Intro 205 would have extended coverage to schools and day-care centers.

In order to ensure that the fix was in, Vallone removed Washington Heights Councilmember Guillermo Linares, an outspoken defender of the health of children and the rights of tenants, from the Housing Committee, where he had served for years, and replaced him with Michael Nelson, who comes from the same Brooklyn machine Democratic club as Vallone’s chief of staff, Bruce Bender. Linares was given a subcommittee on “the private use of public spaces,” which, sadly, seems to have become a metaphor for the City Council itself under Vallone’s leadership.

Easy as 123

Vallone signaled his coziness with the real-estate industry by opening his campaign headquarters in the same office suite as the landlords’ Rent Stabilization Association at 123 William St. The RSA has spent millions of dollars in lobbying, political contributions and a misinformation campaign to distort the nature of the city’s housing crisis and the effect of rent and eviction protections. Vallone’s interlocking with real estate is personified in his former chief of staff Joseph Strasburg, now the RSA president.

Last year, Vallone sought support from tenants in his race for governor against George Pataki. After receiving a written statement of his commitment on a number of issues—specifically including not weakening the laws protecting children from lead poisoning—Met Council endorsed him on the Working Families Party ballot line. Vallone then proceeded to ignore tenant issues completely in his campaign, and went down to a resounding defeat.

Now, with his tenure as Council speaker facing an end in 2001 unless he and Rudolph Giuliani can orchestrate the elimination of the city’s term-limits law, Vallone can only prolong his career by seeking another office, and he is raising money to run for mayor.

Cut the Baby in Half?

Vallone’s rush to gut lead-poisoning protections was supported by Giuliani, who gave credence to the lie that the city had to change the law by June 30 because of a court order.

But the lawyers representing the families of lead-poisoned children indicated that they were willing to extend the court deadline until October, rather than rush Vallone’s ill-considered bill through without adequate consideration of its tragic consequences for tens of thousands of children in the years to come. Giuliani also supported Vallone’s bill as a cut-the-baby-in-half compromise between tenants and health advocates, who want to protect children completely, and the real-estate industry, which did not want to protect them at all.

Giuliani’s Rent Guidelines Board also used the “nobody is happy so we must have done the right thing” argument to justify their outrageous rent increases for one million rent-stabilized apartments, totally unwarranted in the face of unprecedented landlord profits and no increase in landlords’ costs. Perhaps Giuliani and Vallone should go back to the Good Book, and see that King Solomon did not really intend to cut the baby in half, but used that outrageous idea to determine who truly loved the child. What is the lesson in the Great Lead Sellout of 1999? We must find a way to focus our understandable anger and cynicism into organizing energy and ideas, to bring a new politics to this city, where money will not rule. Extension of campaign-finance reform, increased voter registration and turnout, and identifying a new generation of political candidates who are not beholden to special interests are some of the ways to end politics as usual. If we can only use it to expose and discredit the corrupt way government is run in New York City, the Great Lead Sellout of 1999 could mark the beginning of a new golden age of democracy.