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Rollout of Rhode Island lead registry draws criticism over accuracy, inspector capacity
Summary
Lawmakers and the Department of Health discussed rollout problems with the new statewide lead-rental registry: incomplete source data led to false landlord listings, the state is notifying suspected landlords by letter, inspectors have been added but wait times and costs remain a concern.
State health officials told the House Finance Subcommittee that the lead-rental registry launched in October after funding became available July 1 and that early iterations pulled publicly available property and tax records to identify potential rental units — a method that inadvertently listed some properties whose owners are not landlords.
"When we built that database, you need it you need to make it rather comprehensive. So it needs to be more sensitive. It needs to pull in everybody that could potentially, and that was sort of where the rub was," the department director said, describing why the registry initially identified many properties that then had to be corrected.
Why it matters: the 2023 law requires landlords of pre-1978 housing to register and to hold a lead-safe or lead-free certificate. Department officials told lawmakers the registry must be publicly facing under that law, so property listings that are not corrected by owners will be published…
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