By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — Washington has handed Buffalo another chance to strip lead paint out of the old houses where its children get poisoned. Whether the city can use it, and whether the program behind it will still exist in a year, are open questions.
On Sept. 30, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announced $10,280,387 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Lead Hazard Reduction Program for Western New York: $4,030,387 for the City of Buffalo and $6,250,000 for Niagara County.
Federal spending records reviewed by The Buffalo Chronicle show the new money arrives on the heels of a grant Buffalo could not finish. And HUD’s own budget documents show the Trump administration has asked Congress to cut the national lead program from $295.6 million to $110 million in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, a reduction of 63 percent. Congress has not settled that fight, and the stopgap law keeping the government open expires Dec. 11.
Half the last grant went back to Washington
HUD obligated $2,023,602 to the City of Buffalo on Sept. 21, 2020, under grant NYLHD0457-20, for lead-based paint hazard control in privately owned housing, according to USAspending.gov. The grant ran from January 2021 to July 2025.
On April 2, 2026, the federal record shows a deobligation of $1,010,850.83. The city’s final total was $1,012,751.17, almost exactly half the original award. The rest went back to the Treasury.
The Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, which ran the program, had set a goal of making 110 homes lead-safe. Four years in, it had finished 18, Investigative Post reported in May 2025, when HUD refused a second extension.
“Due to multiple factors, there were challenges at the inception of the program, which have now been addressed,” Hope Young-Watkins, BURA’s senior director, told Investigative Post at the time. She pointed to a pandemic launch and a service area that, for its first three years, was limited to four census tracts on the Upper West Side and in Schiller Park.
Advocates were less forgiving. “This is another outrageous sign that lead exposure and children with lead poisoning are not priorities in Buffalo City Hall,” said Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, then executive director of the Partnership for the Public Good.
Ms. Ó Súilleabháin’s word, “another,” has history behind it. In 1995, HUD gave Buffalo $3.7 million to remove lead from 300 homes. By 1998 the city had spent about $1 million and finished three houses. In 2001, HUD inspectors found incomplete work at more than a quarter of 153 homes the city called lead-safe, froze the program and took back the $1.4 million that was left, according to Investigative Post’s account of that grant.
‘We won’t’ lose it again, city says
City Hall says this time will be different. The Buffalo News reported Oct. 16 that the city had won the new $4 million “after failing to spend nearly half its previous grant.”
“We just don’t have the luxury of not getting this done this time,” Deputy Mayor Thomas Baines told The News. “It’s too big of a deal for us to lose again in this round – and we won’t.”
Mayor Sean Ryan framed the grant as a priority of his administration. “Every child in Buffalo deserves to grow up in a safe, healthy home, and our city’s high rates of childhood lead poisoning made pursuing this funding a priority for my administration,” Mr. Ryan said in the senators’ announcement. “This investment will help homeowners and landlords make lead-safe repairs, prioritizing homes with children under six, while supporting the contractors and training needed to get the work done.”
The question is scale. HUD’s fiscal 2027 budget justification estimates the average cost of making one home lead-safe under these grants at $12,900, up $900 from 2025, in part because a tougher EPA dust-lead cleanup standard takes effect nationwide in January 2027. At that price, the entire $4.03 million would treat about 310 homes, before any administrative costs. By the city’s own count, it is trying to inspect and license about 30,000 rental units every three years.
The numbers behind the urgency
In 2024 and 2025, 932 children living in Buffalo tested positive for lead poisoning, according to state Department of Health figures cited by Investigative Post. From 2021 to 2023, 1,262 Buffalo children were confirmed to have high blood lead levels, the Partnership for the Public Good says. Outside New York City, 11 of the state’s 25 worst ZIP codes for lead poisoning are in Buffalo, and a 2017 report for the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo found children in predominantly Black neighborhoods were 12 times more likely to be diagnosed than children in majority-white ones.
“No amount of toxic lead exposure is safe for children,” Mr. Schumer said in announcing the grants. “Lead poisoning is an irreversible, preventable tragedy that robs many families and children of their future.”
Erie County has a $7.75 million grant. Records show about 5 percent spent.
Buffalo is not the only local government holding federal lead money. USAspending.gov records show HUD signed a $7.75 million award to Erie County in January 2025, $7 million of it under the Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration program aimed at the places with the worst lead poisoning, plus a separate $750,000 obligation under the agency’s base Lead Hazard Reduction program. The grant’s performance period runs from March 2025 to March 2029.
As of the award’s most recent update, in June 2026, the county had drawn down $373,645.71, or about 4.8 percent. Federal outlay data can lag behind work on the ground, and draws often speed up once contracts are signed, so the figure is a snapshot rather than a verdict. But it is the kind of number HUD watches when it decides whether to grant extensions.
Elsewhere in the region, the same database shows:
- Niagara County: a $3.3 million grant from November 2023, with about $2.04 million, or 62 percent, drawn down, and performance running through November 2027. Its new $6.25 million award would come on top of that.
- Chautauqua County: a $5.75 million grant from January 2025, with about $589,000, or 10 percent, drawn down.
- Cattaraugus County and Genesee County: new awards of $4.4 million and $3.3 million in March 2026.
“Preventing lead exposure before it impacts children is a fundamental public health priority,” said Dr. Fauzia Khan, director of the Niagara County Department of Health. “These funds will directly support ongoing efforts to identify and remediate lead hazards in homes across Niagara County.”
Washington’s fight over the program itself
The money flows from HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes. Congress gave it $295.6 million in each of fiscal 2025 and 2026. For fiscal 2027, the administration requested $110 million, according to HUD’s budget justification. Under that request:
- Lead Hazard Reduction grants, the program that funded Buffalo, would fall from $50.6 million to $30 million.
- Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration grants, the program behind Erie County’s award, would fall from $105 million to $50 million.
- Healthy Homes grants would drop from $110 million to $9 million.
HUD’s document estimates the requested level would make about 12,400 homes nationwide healthy and safe.
The House Appropriations Committee rejected the cut. Its fiscal 2027 transportation and housing bill, H.R. 9170, approved June 3, would keep the lead program at $296 million, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis. The Senate Appropriations Committee had not produced its own version as of CRS’s latest update.
Ms. Gillibrand, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that writes the housing budget, cast the Western New York grants as a product of that process. “I’m proud to deliver this funding from the Housing Appropriations bill that I negotiated to help clear hazardous lead paint from homes in Buffalo and Niagara County, and I won’t stop fighting until lead paint is a relic of the past and no longer a threat to New Yorkers,” she said.
For now, the program is running on a continuing resolution, P.L. 119-103, which funds agencies at fiscal 2026 levels through Dec. 11. If Congress extends that law for the full year, the program would hold at roughly current funding. If lawmakers adopt anything close to the White House number, the next round of grants would be far smaller. Buffalo and Niagara County would keep the awards they already have, but communities hoping to compete next year would face much longer odds.
Albany’s piece of the problem
Federal money pays for repairs. Inspections are what make landlords do them, and that part of the system has stalled at the state level.
In June, the state Health Department issued 77 pages of guidance for New York’s 2023 lead rental registry law. The guidance bars any “formal enforcement action” against landlords who skip lead inspections until a three-year compliance period that starts Jan. 1, 2029, Investigative Post reported in September.
“It’s a huge disincentive,” Louis Petrucci, Buffalo’s permits and inspections commissioner, told Investigative Post. “How are we going to obtain compliance when the state pushed the goalpost down the road?”
Anna Falicov, who directs the city’s Bureau of Administrative Adjudication and helped write the city’s 2020 rental inspection law, said the delay puts “hundreds and hundreds of kids” at risk.
The Erie County Department of Health, which carries out the state program, shared the concern, saying in a statement to Investigative Post that it “will not have the ability to enact fines or act to enforce, especially for persistent and blatant violators, until 2029.” The state Health Department said the 2023 law “proactively addresses lead hazards in rental homes to help ensure the health and safety of all residents.”
Buffalo’s own inspection program faces a court challenge. Four community groups sued the city in 2024, arguing it was not carrying out the inspections its 2020 law requires. A trial judge dismissed the case in January 2025, and the groups argued their appeal before the Appellate Division in Rochester on April 9. We could find no published ruling as of this weekend.
“This case shows that it’s not enough to get a new law passed, you also have to make sure it’s actually implemented,” Matthew Parham of the Western New York Law Center said in a statement the day of the argument.
Who is accountable, and what would help
The record points to responsibility at every level of government.
City Hall sent back half of its last grant and, decades earlier, most of another. The new award gives the Ryan administration a clean test. Publishing quarterly counts of homes enrolled, cleared and certified, and how much has been drawn from HUD, would let the public judge progress well before any deadline.
Erie County holds the region’s largest active lead grant. Federal records show only a small share drawn so far, and the county could clear up the question by reporting how many homes it has enrolled and finished.
Albany controls the enforcement calendar. The Health Department could revise its June guidance so that county inspectors can act against repeat violators before 2029, as city and county officials have asked.
Washington decides whether there is a program at all. The difference between the House committee’s $296 million and the White House’s $110 million will land before Dec. 11 or in whatever comes after it. Western New York’s delegation, including Ms. Gillibrand on the Senate subcommittee that writes the bill, will help decide which number wins.
There is a model 75 miles east. Rochester adopted proactive rental inspections in 2006, and the number of children testing positive for lead poisoning fell 85 percent over the next decade and a half, according to Investigative Post. Buffalo copied the approach in 2020. Mr. Petrucci said in September that the city had recently passed 6,000 inspections, with 10 city inspectors now working alongside 15 from the county.
“You’re starting to see real numbers,” he said. “It took a little bit longer than we liked, but we’re in a good spot. This is just slowing down the momentum.”
The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking comment from the City of Buffalo, the Erie County Department of Health and the offices of Western New York’s congressional delegation on the grants and the fiscal 2027 budget. Featured image: Older homes on Sycamore Street on Buffalo’s Near East Side. Photo by Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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