On the recordFebruary 13, 2013
today I am introducing two bipartisan bills pertaining to healthy housing, the Healthy Housing Council Act and the Title X Amendments Act. These bills seek to improve federal coordination of healthy housing efforts and better integrate healthy housing activities into the ongoing lead poisoning prevention work at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The presence of housing-related health hazards is often overlooked or is unable to be addressed, and yet these hazards are sometimes the cause of a variety of preventable diseases and conditions like cancer, lead poisoning, and asthma. While I have been working to address these hazards throughout my tenure in Congress, I was pleased that the Administration last week released its Strategy for Action to Advance Healthy Housing, a multi-department and agency effort to develop consensus-based criteria to address housing hazards that impact the health and habitation of children and families. This new Strategy for Action calls on Federal agencies to address barriers and disincentives to the delivery of services to improve housing conditions, particularly among low-income families with young children; replicate successful local healthy housing programs on a larger scale; and conduct more research into cost-effective advances in healthy housing programming. The Title X Amendments Act, S.…





