In attempt to end the epidemic of the lead poisoning of Philadelphia children, city law requires all landlords to certify to tenants and to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health that a rental is either lead-safe or lead-free. The same law requires the Health Department to publicly publish the certification status of each property in the city. Yet years after the law went into effect, those certifications remained behind closed doors, with renters, housing advocates, and lawyers forced to file individual Right-to-Know Law requests to ascertain the existence of up-to-date Lead-Safe or Lead-Free Certifications. The law has a hammer: landlords that have not ensured their properties are free of lead paint dangers are unable to charge rent or evict tenants for that back rent for any period of noncompliance.

Recognizing that the absence of public information made private enforcement of the law more difficult, the Law Center got to work. On behalf of Face-to-Face Germantown, we filed a right-to-know request with the City, seeking records of all properties with lead certificates. Rather than simply provide us with a response, the City did even better: publicly publishing Lead-Free and Lead-Safe certification information for approximately 220,000 units with active rental licenses in Philadelphia.

This victory will aid tenants, organizers, and attorneys, who will use the information to protect individuals, strengthen tenant protections in Philadelphia, and keep more Philadelphians safe from the dangers of lead.

See the dataset here.