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below and start advocating for healthy housing today.
Homes may have hazards because there is not enough income to maintain
the property. The National Housing Trust Fund is a strategy to develop
and subsidize decent housing that is affordable to low-income households.
Get your neighborhood or faith group signed up to support the Low
Income Housing Trust Fund.
Targeted funds and greater authority is needed to get the federal agencies
(U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection
Agency, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to invest in solutions
to health hazards in the home environment. Senator Jack Reed has drafted
federal legislation to build knowledge and capacity for healthy homes.
Contact your U.S. Senators about supporting his healthy homes bills (the
Healthy
Housing Council Act of 2009 and the Research,
Hazard Intervention, and National Outreach for Healthier Homes Act of
2008). Obtain the contact information for your Senators here
and email or call their offices to ask them to cosponsor these bills.
The new renovation
rule requires that painting and repair work in pre-1978 homes
and child occupied facilities be performed by trained renovators as of
April 2010, but there are not enough training opportunities. Join
the Alliance in asking the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) to ensure that workers can get trained and certified to perform
renovation and remodeling work without leaving behind lead hazards by
mailing a letter to the EPA administrator with that message, as written
using the following sample language but personalized as you wish.
The Honorable Lisa Jackson
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Constitution Ave. NW
Washington, D.C. 20460
Dear Administrator Jackson:
I believe that EPA should provide compliance
assistance in the form of free training for renovators. The advantages
of EPA paying for training are: (1) more renovators will be likely
to get trained sooner, (2) with better assurance of demand, trainers
will come forward to become accredited and actually schedule training
deliveries, (3) there will be a slight reduction in the initial
cost of compliance that small businesses will incur, (4) there will
be one less excuse for non-compliance, and (5) EPA can have a more
direct understanding of progress in capacity building. Building
lead-safe capacity is a long-standing role of EPA. I We urge you
to identify and allocate resources for training. To train 236,000
renovators then costs $44 million. To train workers who are slated
to only get on-the-job training and increase the protectiveness
of the rule, EPA should allocate another $63 million. A one-time
investment of one percent of EPA’s proposed ten billion dollar
budget for 2010, or less than 2% of the Agency’s recovery
act funding, will speed up compliance with the renovation and slow
down the lead poisoning of the nation’s children.
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The Toxic Substances
Control Act (TSCA, pronounced TAH-ska) is the federal law
that is supposed to protect citizens from exposure to asbestos, lead,
radon and other poisons. It is a weak law. Even the chemical companies
admit it’s not protective. Senator Frank Lautenberg is planning
to introduce a new version. He needs encouragement of everyone’s
interest. Contact
his office to tell him that you support TSCA reform.
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