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Oakland's Lead Funding Sits Untouched as Residents Face Exposure

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Yazmin Alvarez and her daughter Leyla Avelar discuss Halloween costume ideas in their living room. Yasmin Alvarez was found to have elevated levels of lead in her blood.  (Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/CatchLight Local/Report for America corps member.)

Eighty-three percent of Oakland’s rental housing may contain lead. Despite winning millions of dollars in settlement money from paint companies to help address the problem, the funds have remained unused as residents face potential exposure. El Tímpano’s Jasmine Aguilera and Cassandra Garibay explain why the city of Oakland has still not used these funds.

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This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there are errors.

Cassandra Garibay [00:01:17] The city of Oakland has known that they have had a lead problem for decades. There’s about 80,000 rental units that the city of Oakland estimates  were built pre-1978, which means that there’s a high likelihood that they have lead-based paint in them. Another study showed that there could be an additional 12,000 accessory dwelling units that have lead risk as well.

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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:04] And how exactly can someone be exposed to lead? You mentioned paint. I mean, is it also pipes? Like what are the different ways people can be exposed?

Cassandra Garibay [00:02:14] Yeah. So people can be exposed to lead through lead-based paint. It’s particularly harmful if the lead-based paint is chipping or peeling and children, you know, pick it up, put it in their mouths. Lead tends to have a sweet taste, and so it’s something that could be really dangerous, especially for children. And then lead can also be found in soil and in old pipes, old plumbing.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:42] And so you’re talking about old homes in particular, right, that are using these lead-based paints. What areas in particular in Oakland are are especially impacted by this lead problem?

Cassandra Garibay [00:02:57] Throughout Oakland, lead-based paint can be found but this 2021 study that the city of Oakland commissioned found that predominantly Latino areas has extremely high risk of lead exposure, as well as other areas where the community is predominantly Black or predominantly people of color.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:15] So probably talking about like East Oakland, West Oakland, what neighborhoods?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:03:19] Yeah, we’re talking about particularly around Fruitvale. Bancroft Havenscourt, a lot of neighborhoods where you find kind of older, older homes, older kind of more dilapidated housing.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:03:31] And Jasmine, actually sticking with you here, you met a woman and her daughter who live in an Oakland neighborhood that’s actually in the top 5% of lead risk statewide. Tell me about Yazmin. Who is she and where does she live?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:03:48] So Yazmin Alvarez, she lives in Bancroft Havenscourt. And she shares a home with her husband, her mother, her younger sister and her four year old daughter. She’s only 30 years old. But she discovered in 2020 that she was suffering through kidney failure.

Yazmin Alvarez [00:04:10] I lived a pretty healthy lifestyle. I coached. I did exercise, I did sports. I cheered. I was a cheerleader. Like, what the hell?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:04:18] When Yazmin first got sick, she said that everything happened very quickly, all at once. She was almost immediately hospitalized, immediately put on dialysis treatment.

Yazmin Alvarez [00:04:27] Processing that I was sick, that there was something wrong and that it was my kidneys. And then, like before I even had time to process that, like I had to start dialysis. And then before I had time to process that, I found out I was pregnant. And then, yeah, it was super hard. It was so hard.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:04:44] During, you know, all of the labs that she had to undergo, she learned that she also had elevated blood lead levels.

Yazmin Alvarez [00:04:48] From what the nephrologist said at that time, he said it was more than three times the amount that it should be at.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:04:57] So she doesn’t know how the toxin entered her bloodstream, but she does know that lead, especially in utero, can be absorbed so quickly. So she knows that her daughter was potentially exposed as well while while she was pregnant.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:09] And we know that she lives in one of these neighborhoods where many folks are particularly exposed to lead. How have Yazmin’s kidney problems ultimately affected her life?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:05:24] It seems like they completely derailed her life.

Yazmin Alvarez [00:05:26] Well, my lifestyle was completely different. You know, I was always up and about everywhere.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:05:31] She was kind of on a track to get her education. She was making steady money, but basically because of her treatment, she can no longer work a steady job.

Yazmin Alvarez [00:05:40] And it was just hard to to get used to being home and then and then not doing anything because, you know, I couldn’t you know, I was limited to what I could do. But for now, I’m just like learning to live with dialysis.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:05:53] It’s an extremely exhausting process to undergo three times a week. So she let go of her work, her education. And then on top of that, she has to raise her kids. So a lot of her energy is spent between, you know, just trying to be physically well and then, you know, being there for her daughter.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:09] Yeah. And I mean, talking about her daughter. She was pregnant with her when she learned about these elevated lead levels in her body. So does she know for sure that her daughter has been exposed to lead?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:06:24] That’s what she’s in the process of trying to figure out. So the Alvares family, they are on Medi-Cal. So it’s actually a requirement for her daughter to get tested for lead. But there are a lot of delays just in the system statewide. So, Leyla, the daughter, was due for a test around age 1 or 2. She didn’t get it until age four. It just happened earlier this month. And we’re in the process of of awaiting the results.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:06:48] And either way, we know that young people in particular kids being exposed to lead is really, really dangerous, right, to be exposed at that age.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:06:59] Right. Yeah. Every study of this shows that there’s absolutely no safe level of lead in the body. And in children especially, it can cause a lot of developmental problems. These symptoms don’t show themselves until later, once the child has already been exposed. And that’s kind of the phase that we we met Leyla and Yazmin.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:22] Okay. So we know this is an issue in many Oakland homes, but you still have to test for it to really know. So what kind of help is there for people like Yazmin to try and figure out whether there is lead in their homes?

Cassandra Garibay [00:07:36] The city of Oakland joined a lawsuit against paint companies back in 2000 because they were aware that lead was a serious issue in Oakland. And after almost two decades of back and forth, the lead paint companies settled. In that settlement, Alameda County and the city of Oakland jointly received $24 million to split between the two jurisdictions. The city of Oakland was given $4.8 million right away. The county of Alameda was given $9.5 million. And then the remaining 9.5 or $9.6 million was allocated to the benefit of Oakland residents. But Alameda County is holding on to that money until Oakland comes up with a plan of how they’re supposed to spend it.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:08:32] So this is money that goes to both the city and the county to sort of try and figure out theoretically how to address this problem, Jasmine, what are the different ways I mean, what are the kinds of things this money could theoretically be used for to address this problem?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:08:48] In Alameda County, for example, they’ve used it, used it mostly for educational outreach, promotional materials, mostly like public awareness of how serious this issue is in Alameda County. Oakland has taken a very different approach where they want to be able to change around inspection systems so that it’s not so much the on the tenant to complain first before something is done to to examine a home and make it more proactive so that these homes are constantly, or more frequently, being examined for for hazards like lead.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:09:19] Right. Which is really important because that’s not quite how it works right now. Right. It’s more often the case that people are finding out that they have been exposed to lead and then it sort of works in the reverse, where then you have to tell your landlord and it’s this whole process. Cassandra, this is actually the subject of your reporting for El Timpano,  that there has been this bucket of money that the city has gotten to address this problem, and yet it’s kind of just been sitting there. What exactly did your reporting find?

Cassandra Garibay [00:09:53] Yeah. Through public records requests and lots of interviews, Jasmine and I uncovered that the city of Oakland has the knowledge of this issue and where and who this issue is affecting. They actually have the money to at least start to work on this issue. The amount of money they have won’t be enough to to solve it, but at least to start. And yet, for about two years, nothing happened with it.

Cassandra Garibay [00:11:19] The city of Oakland wanted to use their portion of the settlement funds to develop a lead hazard abatement program that would work with, like Jasmine said, a proactive rental inspection program approach that requires a lot of different departments. And from the get go, they said they want to hire a consultant to really figure out how these two programs could work in tandem. But that requires a lot of different departments. And but they didn’t even begin looking for a consultant to design a program that would address lead abatement until early January 2024. And so for two years they had these funds that just sat there, largely because of staff turnover. There were vacancies and really just not a lot of urgency to use these funds, how they were intended.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:12:22] And Jasmine, another thing that your reporting found was that distrust between county and city officials is also a reason why this money has just been sitting there. What’s up with that? Can you talk about how that distrust has also sort of led to these delays in the use of these funds?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:12:42] We realize that that distrust is pretty ingrained in the way that both of these jurisdictions work. It was through the public records request that we found a few emails that kind of describe just how these two organizations don’t really talk to each other. They talk past each other often. And on the Oakland side of things, it seems like they were waiting or have been waiting on evidence that what Alameda County has done has been equitable, has been truly, you know, committed to community. Without seeing that evidence, according to them, they don’t want to have Alameda County really involved in the the inner workings of their program. On the flipside, Alameda County says that they’ve continuously offered any kind of guidance and advice, you know, input about how Alameda County has done these things, offering help and that that offer has never really been taken up.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:38] Well, I mean, this is a sort of terrible. I mean, to hear that there is money to address this problem, which I feel like is not often the case. Right. There’s it’s usually that there’s a problem, but there’s no money to address it. In this case, there is. And yet it sort of has just been sitting there. Cassandra, I mean, what have the city officials in Oakland said about all of this?

Cassandra Garibay [00:14:05] So we have heard from a couple different city council members. City council member Noel Gallo. Fruitvale is in his district, and Fruitvale is one of the areas that has more children that are lead poisoned than Flint, Michigan. He was very vocal in saying that, you know, he wants this money to be used. And he and others on the city council have told us that there hasn’t been like a clear person who has communicated what’s going on with the funds over the years and from the city administrator side of things. You know, we sat down and spoke to planning and building director William Gilchrist and the Housing and Community Development director Emily Weinstein. And they had said that these things take time. They also want to address the issue, but they want to get it right in doing so. And so they’re waiting for this consultant. In terms of why they hadn’t hired a consultant sooner to get this work underway. You know, they kind of pointed to things happening before they were in those roles, so they couldn’t really speak to it. And they also noted budgets and turnover of staff that were tasked with initially getting the consultants underway. And so it’s really not clear why the city has taken so long to begin to put this money to use.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:35] It’s kind of hard to point the finger at one particular person here, but there have been a lot of breakdowns in the process. And in the meantime, Jasmine, I mean, what has this meant for average people living in Oakland? Like I imagine the longer that this money is sitting there, the more and people are being exposed to lead potentially.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:15:56] Yeah. You know, sociologists and medical experts like to use that term, the social determinants of health. So there’s a lot happening all at once to families, including lead exposure. But what we found in our reporting and just being out doing a lot of community engagement work is that a lot of people feel like they don’t really have the power or the ability to even complain in the first place that, you know, they might be exposed to a toxin or that something in their home might be putting them in danger because housing is so expensive in the Bay Area. And in the case of, you know, Yazmin Alvarez, I think, you know, she she felt pretty empowered and emboldened to tell her story because she’s already had access to a lawyer. She’s, you know, in a position where she feels like that’s okay. I’m fine with showing my face and my name, but many, many people are not there. They’re in such a vulnerable position that they just don’t want to kind of rock the boat. So because there is no other type of system, if the onus is on the tenant to address these issues, then nothing is going to be addressed.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:17:01] And I mean, Yazmin and her family are an example, as you mentioned, of a family that has been able to I mean, is at least, at the very least, testing for lead. Do we happen to know the results of Yazmin’s daughter’s tests at this point? Or what do we know about about whether she’s been exposed or not?

Jasmine Aguilera [00:17:22] Yeah, that’s the tricky thing, right? We don’t know exactly where the exposure came from I think when I was in the process of testing a few things in her home. So we just got confirmation the other day that there is no lead in the water, but we’re continuing to test her soil. We’re going to test her paint. And we’re also waiting on the results of Leyla’s blood lead level test, which took place early November. So hopefully soon we’ll know those results. But in the meantime, yeah, it’s it’s a pretty tricky process, you know. There’s labs to get involved. And, you know, I think without us as a resource to test as home, I’m not sure how else they would have gone through the process of testing this home.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:18:10] Well, I wonder what the main takeaway from this story is for the two of you. What sticks with you the most, I guess starting with you, Jasmine.

Jasmine Aguilera [00:18:20] Lead is something that’s not visible. I mean, it has a taste, but you can’t really smell it. It’s it’s so easy to deprioritize it in people’s lives when you’ve got so much going on. I mean, sometimes it was even just a hassle to talk to people, like to ask them what they think about lead.  Like, what lead? On top of all the things going on in my life, I have to think about lead now? My main takeaway is really just an appreciation for how, you know, it’s not just the one issue people face. When you’re in a vulnerable position. You’re  facing many layers of issues that are kind of burdening you from living a healthy life.

Cassandra Garibay [00:18:52] Yeah. And I really think that this is another example of how housing can greatly impact somebody’s health. And reactive systems have left a lot of people vulnerable. It was really important that we put a spotlight on how this is impacting communities directly. It’s not just a policy that, you know, lives ambiguously. It has a real impact on people’s lives.

Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:19:31] Well, Cassandra and Jasmine, thank you both so much for joining me. I appreciate it.

Cassandra Garibay: Thank you.

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Jasmine Aguilera: Thank you.

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