Cuyahoga County has forfeited nearly $1.2 million in state lead-removal funding after officials and their nonprofit partners could not spend the money before a July 31, 2026 deadline, leaving dozens of eligible pre-1978 homes without the window and door replacements the grant was meant to fund. The county had received $8.06 million from the Ohio Department of Development in 2023 to abate lead hazards, but administrative delays and strict federal paperwork requirements slowed the rollout enough that the unspent balance had to be sent back to the state.
“We just ran out of time,” Laura Boustani said, describing the crunch that ultimately doomed a portion of the county's allocation, as reported by Cleveland.com. According to Brian Bohnert, the unused funds were returned to the state budget office, and he said additional federal lead-abatement funding cannot be predicted going forward. The grant itself traces back to a 2023 award from the Ohio Department of Development, issued, per the agency's news release, specifically to protect families from toxic lead in homes and child care facilities.
The money was meant to flow through several local partners. Cuyahoga County distributed nearly $4.1 million to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, which used it to address 148 units and later completed another 42 projects with additional funds, ultimately spending its full allocation. The county also sent about $1.4 million to Enterprise Community Partners on behalf of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition and $2 million to CHN Housing Partners, along with $493,000 routed to the city of Cleveland Heights.
Where the Shortfalls Piled Up
Not every partner managed to keep pace. Enterprise Community Partners left $530,000 unspent on behalf of the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition, and the organization reported that homeowners often failed to complete applications because they lacked or withheld required financial documents. CHN Housing Partners, which used its funds for larger repair projects across 46 units, left $639,000 unspent; the nonprofit did not receive county program approval until July 2024, giving it barely two years to complete extensive rehabilitation work before the deadline, as Signal Cleveland has reported.
Cleveland Heights fared better. The city, which has conducted lead mitigation for over a decade, spent its full allocation, using $1.8 million to abate 58 units and two child care facilities in addition to a separate $800,000 routed through the city by the Board of Health and a $526,000 grant it received directly from the state. Its Lead Safe Homes Program caps assistance at $9,000 per property. Overall, the county's lead funding reached 189 homes across 15 communities, with Cuyahoga County spending nearly $7 million to remove lead hazards from more than 200 homes over three years, while Ohio reported 210 total lead-removal projects statewide under the program.
A Statewide Pattern of Missed Deadlines
Cuyahoga County's shortfall was not an isolated case. In February 2026, the State of Ohio clawed back $3.28 million of a $4.9 million Lead Safe Ohio grant from the City of Cleveland after municipal agencies there spent only $1.6 million before the state-imposed deadline, a forfeiture Hoodline previously reported in coverage of a Ward 11 community meeting. That $4.9 million grant, like Cuyahoga County's, was funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars specifically designated to replace lead-coated doors and windows in older homes, and all of that ARPA money had to be used by the end of 2026.
The statewide Lead Safe Ohio Program was established under House Bill 45 with $150 million in ARPA funding signed by Governor Mike DeWine in January 2023, dedicating roughly $100 million specifically for lead hazard mitigation across pre-1978 housing in all 88 counties, according to the Ohio Department of Development. Roughly 80% of Cuyahoga County's housing stock was built before 1978, the same year the federal government banned residential lead-based paint, leaving a huge pool of older homes theoretically eligible for the grant even as red tape kept much of the money from reaching them.
Paperwork Hurdles That Kept Homeowners Out
Strict federal income-verification requirements, including extensive tax and asset documentation, discouraged many eligible property owners from completing their applications, directly contributing to the unspent funds Cuyahoga County ultimately returned. Zach Ravanelli said in-house oversight helps move the lead-safety program along, a note that speaks to how administrative capacity, not just funding levels, shaped which communities got the work done in time.
The squeeze on grant money is landing at an awkward moment for Cleveland-area landlords. The Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition wound down its separate Lead Safe Certification Incentive Program in February 2026 after allocating $8.9 million in financial assistance to local landlords since July 2020, with payments of $750 to $1,000 per unit to help property owners meet municipal lead standards. That incentive program's end, reported by Signal Cleveland, means landlords now face rising compliance costs with less direct financial help just as the city ramps up enforcement.
Compliance Gaps Persist Alongside Aggressive Enforcement
As of February 2026, Cleveland reported just 29,116 active lead-safe certified rental units out of an estimated pool of 90,000 pre-1978 rental properties. City building officials responded by dramatically increasing enforcement, issuing 6,038 failure-to-comply citations in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, since local law requires all pre-1978 rental units to obtain lead-safe certification every two years. The combination of lapsing grant funds, an ended landlord incentive program, and aggressive citation activity is creating potential hardship for small property owners even as elevated blood lead levels in local children remain a serious public health threat, per the same council presentation.
That threat is not abstract. Some Cleveland neighborhoods have recorded elevated blood lead levels in children as high as 25%, and Cleveland youth overall have shown elevated blood lead levels averaging 12% to 13%. Cleveland and East Cleveland together accounted for over 54% of lead abatement activity tracked under the program. City health data presented to the Cleveland City Council in February 2026 showed that 1,369 children aged 1 to 5 tested positive for elevated blood lead levels of at least 3.5 micrograms per deciliter in 2024, or 16.8% of those tested, a figure that dropped to 975 preliminary cases, or 14.5%, in 2025. The Ohio Department of Health lowered that reference threshold from 5.0 to 3.5 micrograms per deciliter effective July 1, 2023, aligning state monitoring with updated federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Long-Term Stakes and a Federal Push
The consequences of lead exposure extend well beyond a single blood test. Research from Case Western Reserve University, cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, found that Cuyahoga County children with confirmed elevated blood lead levels performed significantly worse on kindergarten readiness assessments than their non-exposed peers, underscoring why advocates treat old lead paint as a public health emergency rather than a housing nuisance.
At the federal level, U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown has co-sponsored legislation that would distribute $9.5 billion annually through 2035 for lead-pipe, plumbing-fixture, and paint removal nationwide, an effort Hoodline detailed in its earlier coverage of the bill. Whether that funding arrives in time to avoid the same scramble that cost Cuyahoga County $1.2 million remains an open question, but for now, local officials are left explaining to residents why money set aside to protect their children's health went back to Columbus unspent.
