The Operation: Tearing Into Lead-Painted Homes With No Protection

Homeworks Construction, Inc. is a renovation firm based at 1511 Pulaski Street, South Bend, Indiana. The company contracts to renovate residential homes. The federal Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, known as the RRP Rule, exists specifically to protect people, including children, from the catastrophic health consequences of disturbed lead-based paint in older housing. The law applies to all renovation work in homes built before 1978.

The source document confirms Homeworks Construction performed renovations on at least 17 identified properties across Indiana and Michigan, contracted between July 2018 and June 2021. Every single one of those properties was built before 1978. The oldest dated from 1907. These are not abstractions; they are houses where people lived, cooked meals, put children to bed, and trusted that the workers sent in by a licensed contractor would follow the law.

Homeworks Construction admitted in court that across all those jobs, it failed on every single one of the major legal requirements designed to keep families safe.

The Oldest Home Was Built In 1907. Homeworks Sent Untrained Workers Anyway.

The list of properties included homes built in 1907, 1913, 1920, 1930, and 1939. These are structures with decades of paint layered on every surface. When you rip out windows or tear off exterior siding in a house that old, you do not get a little dust. You get a toxic cloud. The law exists because scientists proved long ago that lead paint dust inhaled or ingested by children causes permanent, irreversible neurological damage: lower IQ, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and organ damage that follows a child for the rest of their life.

The work Homeworks Construction performed included window renovation, exterior siding work, painting, kitchen renovation, bathroom renovation, and door replacement. Every single one of those tasks disturbs painted surfaces. Every single one is explicitly covered by the federal RRP Rule. The company admitted it was compensated for every single job.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What The Settlement Doesn’t Count

A court document measuring a company’s guilt in dollars will always miss most of what actually happened. The $10,000 ($10,000 is less than one month’s take-home pay for a median full-time worker in the United States) penalty Homeworks Construction agreed to pay covers nothing of what the families in those 17 homes actually lost. No settlement line item accounts for a parent who watched their child’s behavior change and never understood why. No penalty reimbursement covers a learning evaluation, years of tutoring, or the quiet devastation of a teacher pulling a parent aside to say something is wrong.

Lead poisoning in children is a silent crime. It does not announce itself with a rash or a fever. It works slowly, across months and years, rewiring a developing brain at the cellular level. The Centers for Disease Control has established that there is no safe level of lead exposure in children. Homeworks Construction sent workers into at least 17 homes where children could have been present, performed major demolition work on lead-painted surfaces, and generated lead dust with no containment, no clean-up procedures, and no warning to anyone inside the house that anything had happened.

They Knew. They Had Been Told. They Kept Going.

The detail buried in Section IV of the consent decree is the one that should make every parent in Indiana and Michigan furious. The document states that “after the EPA commenced its initial investigation, Homeworks Construction failed to recognize that certain subsequent renovation projects were subject to the RRP rule.” Read that again. The EPA was already investigating this company for lead safety violations. Homeworks Construction received notice that federal regulators were looking at its practices. And then it kept doing the same illegal work on the same kinds of homes. The company’s own admission says it did not even recognize it was breaking the law it was already being investigated for breaking. That is either a lie or an indictment of how thoroughly the company had normalized treating other people’s safety as optional.

The RRP Rule required Homeworks Construction to do four basic things for every job on a pre-1978 home: have a certified renovator supervise the work; train all other workers on lead-safe practices; hand the homeowner a pamphlet called “Renovate Right: Important Lead Hazard Information for Families, Child Care Providers, and Schools”; and keep records proving compliance. Homeworks Construction admitted in court that it did none of these things across all the identified renovations. The homeowners and tenants living in those properties never received the pamphlet. They were never told their home’s renovation disturbed materials that could poison their children. They had no information. They could not protect themselves, because the company that took their money stripped them of the ability to make an informed choice.

The Records Destruction: Making It Impossible to Know the Full Damage

One of the most chilling admissions in the consent decree is that Homeworks Construction failed to make available to EPA the records necessary to demonstrate compliance with the RRP Rule. This matters enormously for the families involved, because without those records, it is impossible to know the full scope of harm. Which workers were in each home? Were children present during the work? Were any post-renovation cleaning verification steps taken at all? Were the homes cleaned of lead dust before families moved back through them? The answers to those questions died when the company failed to create and preserve the documentation the law required. That failure is itself a federal violation. It is also a decision that permanently seals the families’ ability to understand what happened inside their own homes.

The consent decree covers renovations from a multi-unit dwelling in 1973 all the way back to a home built in 1907. In a 1907 home, lead paint is everywhere. It is in the walls, on the trim, on every window frame, on the porch and the fencing and the siding. A window renovation in that kind of structure does not disturb a small patch of paint. It sends decades of toxic dust into every room without air containment, into HVAC systems without duct covers, onto children’s toys and high chairs and floors. The law requiring containment, clean-up, and HEPA vacuuming exists for this exact reason. Homeworks Construction skipped all of it.

Legal Receipts: What They Admitted Under Oath

These are direct admissions and statements from the consent decree filed by the United States Department of Justice on behalf of the EPA. Every word below comes directly from the source document.

“Homeworks Construction failed to do the following: (1) Have a Certified Renovator direct the Renovations; (2) Ensure that all other persons performing the Renovations received training on lead-safe work practices; (3) Provide an EPA pamphlet on lead hazards, ‘Renovate Right: Important Lead Hazard Information for Families, Child Care Providers, and Schools,’ to the owner of the units being renovated; and (4) Make available to EPA the records necessary to demonstrate compliance with the RRP Rule.” Source: Section IV, Paragraph 8(d), Consent Decree — U.S. v. Homeworks Construction, Inc.

“In addition, after the EPA commenced its initial investigation, Homeworks Construction failed to recognize that certain subsequent renovation projects were subject to the RRP rule.” Source: Section IV, Paragraph 8(e), Consent Decree — U.S. v. Homeworks Construction, Inc.

“Homeworks Construction acknowledges that the amount of the civil penalty has been set based on its documented inability to pay a greater amount and that, in the absence of a limited ability to pay, under the relevant EPA penalty policy, Homeworks Construction’s civil penalty would have been significantly higher than the agreed-upon amount.” Source: Section V, Paragraph 15, Consent Decree — U.S. v. Homeworks Construction, Inc.

“The United States has determined that Homeworks Construction has documented an inability to pay the full civil penalty for which it otherwise would be liable for the violations alleged in the Complaint, and therefore, solely because of that documented inability to pay, the United States is prepared to settle for a lower amount reflective of Homeworks Construction’s ability to pay.” Source: Preamble, Consent Decree — U.S. v. Homeworks Construction, Inc.

“Homeworks Construction performed the Renovations identified in Appendix 1 on properties that were built before 1978 and are ‘target housing’ subject to TSCA and the RRP Rule. Homeworks Construction was compensated for the Renovations identified in Exhibit 1.” Source: Section IV, Paragraphs 8(b) and 8(c), Consent Decree — U.S. v. Homeworks Construction, Inc.

The Cost Of A Life: What Homeworks Construction Decided Children Are Worth

The company walks away from endangering families in 17 homes for less than the price of a used car. And even that paltry amount gets stretched across a year in three installments, with an interest rate that sounds punishing but amounts to a few hundred dollars extra on a $10,000 ($10,000 would cover about 3 months of rent for a working family in South Bend, Indiana) fine.

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Actually Pays The Price

Public Health: Poisoning You Can’t See, Undo, or Afford

Lead is a neurotoxin. There is no safe blood lead level for children. The CDC acknowledges that even exposure below previously considered “safe” thresholds causes measurable IQ reduction, reduced attention span, and increases in violent behavior across entire populations. Every demolished window frame, every torn-off strip of lead-painted siding, every uncontained demo job in a pre-1978 home releases microscopic particles that settle on floors, in rugs, on the surfaces where infants crawl and toddlers play and teenagers do homework. Homeworks Construction generated that contamination across 17 homes over three years and did not clean any of it up to federal standards, because it admitted it never performed post-renovation cleaning verification.

The consent decree lists homes in which kitchen renovations were performed (the BRA job, 1973, a multi-unit dwelling) alongside window and exterior siding jobs in homes as old as 1907. Kitchens are where families prepare food. Siding removal produces exterior dust that travels under doors and through windows. The decree’s own RRP compliance forms list requiring plastic sheeting extended 10 feet from the work area, HEPA vacuuming, wet-cloth cleaning, and a final visual inspection. Homeworks Construction performed none of this. Families returned to homes that had been made measurably more toxic by the company they paid to improve them.

The public health cost is invisible in this settlement. No medical monitoring fund exists. No requirement for blood lead testing of children in the affected homes appears in the decree. The families received no notification after the fact that the renovation company the government later charged with federal violations had worked in their home. The health damage, if any occurred, remains untracked, unmeasured, and uncompensated.

Economic Inequality: Lead Poisoning Is a Working-Class Crisis

Homes built before 1978 are concentrated in low-income and working-class neighborhoods. The RRP Rule specifically designates these as “target housing” because regulators know who lives in old houses: renters, first-time buyers, families who cannot afford newly constructed homes. These are precisely the communities that bear the highest burden of childhood lead poisoning in the United States. Homeworks Construction operated in Indiana and Michigan, states with some of the country’s highest rates of lead-contaminated housing stock.

The 17 homes in Exhibit 1 range from multi-unit rental dwellings to single-family residences across a span of construction years from 1907 to 1974. The residents of these homes did not have the resources to hire their own lead inspectors or independently verify that the renovation contractor they hired was complying with federal law. They depended on the regulatory system and on the honesty of the contractor. Homeworks Construction violated both of those dependencies simultaneously.

The economic consequences of childhood lead poisoning compound over decades. Reduced educational achievement leads to lower lifetime earnings. Cognitive impairment from lead exposure correlates with higher rates of unemployment, criminal justice involvement, and chronic health conditions that drain Medicaid and public health systems. The $10,000 ($10,000 is less than what the federal government estimates it costs to remediate lead paint hazards in a single room of a home) Homeworks Construction paid does not touch any of this downstream cost. Taxpayers and the families themselves absorb it.

What Now: Who’s Watching, What You Can Do

Regulatory Watchlist

• EPA Region 5 (Chicago) — The agency that filed this case. Contact: r5lecab@epa.gov. They monitor Homeworks Construction’s compliance for at least four more years under this decree.
• EPA National Lead Information Center — If you had renovation work done in a pre-1978 home and were never given a lead hazard pamphlet, report it: 1-800-424-LEAD or epa.gov/lead
• U.S. Department of Justice, Environmental Enforcement Division — The federal body that negotiated this settlement. Contact: eescdcopy.enrd@usdoj.gov, DJ No. 90-5-2-1-12999
• TSCA (Toxic Substances Control Act) Enforcement — EPA retains authority to pursue additional violations beyond this consent decree. The decree does not shield Homeworks from future enforcement actions.
• Indiana and Michigan State Health Departments — If you believe your child was exposed to lead dust during a renovation, request a blood lead test through your state health department immediately. It is often free or low-cost.

The Person Named In The Decree

Joe Colvin is identified in the consent decree as the individual contact for Homeworks Construction, Inc., at 1511 Pulaski Street, South Bend, Indiana 46613. The decree designates them as the point of contact for all penalty payment and compliance matters. The decree also requires Homeworks to designate a certified Compliance Officer for all future renovation work.

You Have More Power Than They Want You To Know

If you are a tenant, homeowner, or neighbor in Indiana or Michigan and you hired or lived near a contractor doing renovation work in an older home, you have the right to demand proof of their EPA Lead-Safe certification before work begins. You have the right to receive the “Renovate Right” pamphlet before work starts. If you did not receive it, that contractor may have violated federal law. Report it to the EPA hotline. Support tenant organizations in your area that fight for safe housing. Push your city and county officials to fund lead abatement programs in older housing stock. The families in these 17 homes couldn’t get accountability. The next ones can, if enough people know the rules and demand they be followed.