Since 1988, the federal Fair Housing Act outlawed housing discrimination against families with minor children. 

The Massachusetts Lead Law was enacted in 1971. The Lead Law mandates that landlords de-lead a unit built pre-1978 if the landlord discovers that a child under the age of 6 resides in said unit. This is due to the detrimental health effects of human exposure to lead, a risk with children as they may lick surfaces coated with lead paint. Yet despite this, only 10% of pre-1978 housing stock has been inspected for lead and confirmed free from lead hazards.  

This has, according to the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center created: "rampant housing discrimination against families with children to avoid the costs of lead abatement."

In 2013, Suffolk Law School’s Housing Discrimination Testing Program conducted a fair housing testing investigation of 27 rental ads that indicated lead was present in the unit. Discrimination against the testers who stated they had a child under age six was found in 25 out of the 27 paired cases, which is equivalent to a 93% rate of discrimination against families with children under age six.

Though this is not advertised as such, as a parent of a young child in Massachusetts, landlords finds way to discriminate against renting you 90% of housing stock.

Even if you begin renting prior to having a child, once the landlord finds out about your child, they will find legal ways to skirt the law and push you out of the unit all to avoid the cost and hassle of de-leading their unit. 

The Lead Law exposes the hollowness of the values Massachusetts espouses: to eliminate discrimination against families, children, and other protected classes.

The law treats parents with children under 6 as second class citizens. It pushes them to own homes themselves, but with Massachusetts having a home price 177% of the typical US price, and home ownership being a luxury of those with high income, this law forces parents with young children out of this state altogether. This results in fewer families, fewer taxpayers, and an anti-family state agenda.

In September of 2021, United States District Court Judge Mastroianni agreed to hear the case of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center and concluded that applying the applicable legal standard “to the challenged portions of the Lead Law compels the conclusion that they are facially discriminatory.”

This petition is to gain support for one of the following outcomes:

(1) For the State of Massachusetts to repeal the 1971 Lead Law Act, thereby ending this discrimination and contradiction with Federal Law, or

(2) For the State of Massachusetts to allocate budgetary spending to pay or assist landlords to de-lead all housing stock within the immediate 5 years post fiscal allocation, or

(3) For the State of Massachusetts to mandate all landlords must de-lead their housing stock within the immediate 5 years.