A Delaware landlord rented nine apartments in buildings from the era of the Great Depression and World War I without once telling tenants they could be living with lead paint — a neurotoxin that permanently lowers children’s IQs, causes behavioral disorders, and has no antidote.
The Landlord Who Skipped the Warning Label
On June 17, 2024, EPA and HUD inspectors walked into Pencader Realty’s offices in Newark, Delaware, and asked for lease agreements. What they found was a paper trail of neglect across nine apartments in Wilmington, in buildings so old they predate the discovery of penicillin.
Federal law has required landlords to disclose lead paint risks since 1992, under the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act. The rule is not complicated: tell tenants the building may have lead paint, give them a pamphlet called “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home,” and get their signature confirming they received the warning. Pencader Realty did none of this correctly — across nine separate lease agreements spanning lease dates from February 2021 through November 2023.
The EPA counted 17 total violations: nine for failing to include a statement from tenants confirming they received lead hazard information, and eight more for missing required signatures certifying the accuracy of lead warning disclosures. Every single lease handed to those inspectors was deficient.
Every Building Was Pre-1978. Every One.
The Lead Disclosure Rule applies specifically to “target housing” — any residential building built before 1978. Lead paint was widely used in American homes until it was banned for residential use that year. The nine units Pencader Realty rented out were not borderline cases. Every property on the list was built decades before the ban, in an era when lead paint was standard practice.
| # | Address | Lease Signed | Built | Age at Lease |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1700 N. Washington St., Wilmington, DE | Feb 20, 2021 | 1916 | 105 years old |
| 2 | 1700 N. Washington St., Wilmington, DE | May 21, 2023 | 1916 | 107 years old |
| 3 | 1400 N. King St., Unit #3, Wilmington, DE | Feb 28, 2023 | 1907 | 116 years old |
| 4 | 1718 N. Washington St., Unit #3, Wilmington, DE | Nov 26, 2023 | 1918 | 105 years old |
| 5 | 210 E. 16th St., Unit #1C, Wilmington, DE | Feb 28, 2023 | 1930 | 93 years old |
| 6 | 2201 N. Washington St., Unit #3, Wilmington, DE | Feb 26, 2021 | 1937 | 84 years old |
| 7 | 210 E. 16th St., Unit #4A, Wilmington, DE | Mar 17, 2022 | 1930 | 92 years old |
| 8 | 210 E. 16th St., Unit #3D, Wilmington, DE | Apr 1, 2023 | 1930 | 93 years old |
| 9 | 210 E. 16th St., Unit #3C, Wilmington, DE | Mar 17, 2022 | 1930 | 92 years old |
Building Age at Time of Lease Signing (Years)
The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Signed Form Actually Means
A disclosure form is a piece of paper. But for a renter — especially one without resources, without a lawyer, without leverage — that piece of paper is the only weapon the law gives them against a landlord who holds all the cards. Pencader Realty took that weapon away from nine sets of tenants and handed them leases stripped of the one warning that could have changed their decisions about where to live and raise their families.
Lead paint does not announce itself. It hides under layers of fresh coats, in the dust that settles on window sills, in the chips that fall near doors that stick and scrape. The people living in a 1907 building on N. King Street, or a 1916 building on N. Washington Street, had no way of knowing the history of their walls without being told. The law exists because the market will never voluntarily offer that information. Pencader Realty proved the point.
The EPA’s required pamphlet — “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home” — exists because lead poisoning in children is permanent. There is no treatment that reverses the neurological damage. A child who ingests lead paint dust from peeling walls or a chalky windowsill does not get better when the exposure stops; they carry the cognitive and behavioral consequences for life. Tenants in these nine apartments had a legal right to that knowledge before they signed. Pencader Realty denied them that right for years.
The addresses concentrate on the North Wilmington corridors of Washington Street and 16th Street. These are working-class rental corridors, the kind of blocks where families take what they can afford and trust that the landlord is operating within the law. That trust is the entire foundation of the tenant-landlord relationship. Pencader Realty accepted rent from these tenants while withholding federally mandated safety information — a transaction built on an information gap the company created and maintained across multiple lease cycles spanning 2021 through 2023.
It is worth sitting with the timeline. Some of these lease violations involve the same address, meaning tenants cycled in and out of buildings where lead paint disclosures were never properly made. Lease 1 and Lease 2 both cover 1700 N. Washington Street, signed in February 2021 and May 2023 respectively. That is a two-year window during which the company had multiple opportunities to correct the deficiency and did not. Leases 7, 8, and 9 all cover units at 210 E. 16th Street, a 1930 building where three separate tenants moved in across 2022 and 2023 without a single proper lead disclosure on record.
There is no record in the source documents of any tenant receiving the “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home” pamphlet. There is no record of any tenant signing a statement confirming they understood the risks. For eight of the nine leases, there is not even a landlord signature certifying the accuracy of any lead warnings. The paper trail does not show a company that tried and failed. The paper trail shows a company that skipped the step entirely, lease after lease, year after year.
17 Violations. One Company. Zero Excuses.
Violation Breakdown: Pencader Realty, LLC
Legal Receipts: The Government’s Own Words
These are direct quotations and documented factual findings from the EPA’s Consent Agreement and Final Order. These are the agency’s conclusions — not ours.
“In each of the nine contracts to lease target housing, identified in paragraph 22 above, Respondent failed to include, either as an attachment or within each lease, a statement by the lessee affirming receipt of the lead hazard information specified in 40 C.F.R §§ 745.113(b)(2) and (b)(3) and the lead hazard information pamphlet required under 15 U.S.C. § 2696, as required under 40 C.F.R. § 745.113(b)(4).” — EPA Consent Agreement, Paragraph 26. This is the core finding: nine tenants received zero confirmation of lead hazard disclosure.
“In each of eight contracts to lease target housing (Leases ## 2 – 9), identified in paragraph 22 above, Respondent failed to include within the lease agreement, or as an attachment to the lease agreement, signatures of the lessor and lessee certifying to the accuracy of their statements, to the best of their knowledge, along with the dates of signature.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Paragraph 29. The landlord did not sign. The tenant did not sign. Eight leases with zero accountability signatures.
“At all times relevant to the violations alleged in this Consent Agreement, none of the nine agreements to lease the target housing described in Paragraph 22, above, fell under any of the exceptions set forth at 40 C.F.R. § 745.101 of the Lead Disclosure Rule.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Paragraph 24. There were no loopholes. No short-term lease exceptions. No certified lead-free inspections. No valid exemptions of any kind.
“The EPA reserves the right to commence action against any person, including Respondent, in response to any condition which the EPA determines may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health, public welfare, or the environment.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Paragraph 45. The EPA explicitly left the door open for further enforcement action if actual lead contamination is found at these properties.
“Respondent certifies to the EPA, upon personal investigation and to the best of its knowledge and belief, that it currently is in compliance with regard to the violations alleged in this Consent Agreement.” — EPA Consent Agreement, Paragraph 43. Pencader Realty now claims compliance. The same company that ran nine deficient leases across multiple properties for over two years.
Societal Impact Mapping
Public Health: The Poison That Doesn’t Forgive
Lead is a heavy metal neurotoxin. The CDC states there is no known safe blood lead level in children. Even low-level exposure causes measurable IQ reduction, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, and increased rates of violent behavior in adulthood. These are not theoretical risks; they are outcomes documented by decades of pediatric research.
The buildings Pencader Realty rented out were built between 1907 and 1937. Lead-based paint was the dominant interior paint product throughout that entire era. The probability that these buildings contain lead paint is not a question — it is a near-certainty built into the regulatory framework itself, which is why federal law mandates disclosure for all pre-1978 housing. Nine families moved into these apartments without the legally required warning and without the pamphlet that explains what to watch for, how to protect children, and who to call.
The EPA’s disclosure rules exist as a minimum floor of protection, not a ceiling. The assumption is that landlords will go beyond the paperwork and actually remediate lead hazards. Pencader Realty did not even meet the paperwork floor. If a child in any of these nine units developed elevated blood lead levels, their family had no documented evidence that they were ever warned — because they were not. The consent agreement does not include any investigation of actual lead paint presence in these units, and no medical monitoring for affected tenants was ordered.
Economic Inequality: Old Buildings, Low-Income Renters, No Information
The addresses in this case are not in Wilmington’s most expensive zip codes. North Washington Street and East 16th Street are working-class rental corridors where families rent because buying is out of reach. Renters in older buildings in lower-income neighborhoods carry a disproportionate lead exposure burden in America — this is documented at the federal level and has driven decades of housing policy. Pencader Realty operates in exactly this market.
The federal law Pencader Realty violated was designed precisely for this dynamic. Wealthy homebuyers can hire inspectors. Wealthy renters can negotiate lease terms with attorneys. Working-class renters in 100-year-old buildings on tight budgets do not have those options. The law substituted a mandatory disclosure requirement to give lower-income renters what the market refused to provide: information. Pencader Realty stripped that substitute away and replaced it with nothing.
The fine of $15,907 (roughly the cost of a used car, or about three months of average rent in Wilmington for three of the affected units combined) functions as a rounding error for a realty company managing multiple properties across multiple Wilmington addresses. The maximum possible fine under federal law was $21,699 per violation — with 17 violations, that ceiling was $368,883 (enough to pay the first year’s rent for roughly 60 low-income families). The EPA assessed $15,907. That is approximately 4.3 cents on every dollar of the maximum authorized penalty.
Fine Assessed vs. Maximum Authorized Penalty (USD)
The “Cost of a Life” Metric
What Now? Who to Watch and What to Demand
The Person Who Signed This Agreement
- Srinivasa Pittala — Owner, Pencader Realty, LLC, 25 Donald Preston Drive, Newark, DE 19702
- Pencader Realty, LLC — Principal place of business, Newark, Delaware; contact email on record: pencaderrealty@gmail.com
The Regulatory Watchlist
- U.S. EPA Region 3 — Enforcement & Compliance Assurance Division (filed and closed this case)
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — conducted the joint inspection; has authority over lead disclosure enforcement in federally assisted housing
- Delaware Division of Public Health — state-level authority over lead poisoning prevention and childhood blood lead testing programs
- Delaware Attorney General’s Office — state consumer protection authority for landlord-tenant violations
- City of Wilmington Department of Licenses & Inspections — local rental property inspection and licensing authority
The EPA has a link on their website where you can read about this: https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/rhc/epaadmin.nsf/Filings/802001AA1D449DCF85258CA600439B49/$File/Pencader%20Realty%20LLC_TSCA%20CAFO_June%2011%202025_Redacted.pdf
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