A lead weight
One has to wonder sometimes if the goal of Massachusetts' leaders is to make this state uninhabitable. And by that we mean simply, making the cost and annoyance of living here so tremendously unbearable that we all just throw our hands up in exasperation and move to a state whose elected officials are, at least more or less, sane.
One doesn't need a master's degree in economics to know that high housing costs pretty much top the list of biggest problems in the Bay State. Rents keep hiking upward like it's post World War I Germany. Even when the number of homes being sold stalls, the median price is still 50 percent higher than it was just five years ago. Businesses can't afford to pay the wages that workers need in order to afford the homes they have to live in. It's a situation every business organization in Massachusetts has identified as a huge barrier to growth.
Why then is the Massachusetts General Court looking at a proposal that will unquestionably raise the cost of housing for everyone by hundreds of dollars a year?
State Sen. Patricia Jehlen, D-Somerville, is pushing a bill that will force every home built before 1978 (when lead paint was outlawed) to get a lead inspection. For homeowners, the requirement comes on the sale of the property. For landlords, it's triggered when a unit is re-rented, or every two years, whichever is less. The Worcester Property Owners Association, the Southern Worcester County Landlord Association, the MetroWest Property Owners Association, and the Greater Milford Landlord Association have all come out against the idea.
Lead poisoning is a horrible thing but at some point, we have to do a true risk/reward analysis. That is something Sen. Jehlen doesn't yet seem to have figured out.
The Bay State currently has the toughest lead laws in the country. We force landlords to abate, remove or encapsulate lead paint up to five feet high in any unit in which there is, or might be, a child under the age of 6. This at an average cost of $10,000 per apartment according to the Massachusetts Rental Housing Association. If a child under 6 develops problems because of lead, the landlord is automatically assumed responsible, regardless of measures he may have taken, regardless of lead in municipal water pipes, regardless of lead in soil, regardless of whether the child moved into the apartment from a prior home with lead.
Lead poisoning incidents have dropped substantially since our lead laws went into effect. But there's much debate whether it was the containment of surfaces covered in lead paint or the elimination of leaded gasoline that made the most difference. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows a much stronger correlation to changes in gasoline than to lead paint abatement.
We have indeed succeeded in bringing down the incidents and scope of lead poisoning. Now Sen. Jehlen wants to take it so much further. A lead inspection costs an average of $300. Her legislation forces repeated inspections on landlords. It is not quite so onerous on homeowners (but one has to wonder, why not? If an apartment can mysteriously become lead toxic every two years, how is a single-family home immune?), yet many, many sales will now have another $300 bill tacked on. Rents will surely rise.
Massachusetts has the country's second-oldest housing stock, of which only about 20 percent has been de-leaded. The expense and risks to the economy of Jehlen's bill far outweigh the negligible public health good which might be gained. The de-leading that needs to happen most is clearly in the legislature.
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