Fortune Painting Company sent workers into homes built as far back as 1891 to scrape, sand, and disturb lead-laden paint surfaces, without a single certified lead renovator on any of the first twelve jobs, without documenting a single safety procedure, and without telling at least two homeowners that the work put their households at risk of lead exposure.

The Paper Trail: 13 Homes, Years of Violations

Established: 2024 The EPA’s investigation began on December 21, 2023, when federal regulators sent Fortune Painting an information request letter demanding records on the company’s compliance with lead renovation rules. Fortune replied in January and March 2024. What those records revealed prompted 27 separate alleged violations across a three-year window of work.

Every single property on the list below was built before 1978, the federal cutoff year after which lead-based paint was banned in residential construction. That means lead paint is presumed present in all of them. Disturbing those painted surfaces, through scraping, sanding, or pressure washing for exterior repainting, releases lead dust and chips that settle into soil, lodge in window frames, and infiltrate interior air.

Fortune’s workers did all of that. The company just couldn’t prove anyone was doing it safely.

Twelve of those thirteen jobs happened across a single summer and fall season in 2021. The thirteenth came two years later, in November 2023. At jobs 10 and 13 specifically, the EPA alleges Fortune failed to hand homeowners the required lead hazard information pamphlet before work began, meaning those households received no formal warning at all.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What the Fine Doesn’t Cover

Congress put these rules into law because lead poisoning was devastating a generation of children. The federal government’s own findings, codified in the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992, stated that as many as three million children under age six were being afflicted with low-level lead poisoning at the time. That number did not come down by accident. It came down because of enforcement, education, and the very rules Fortune Painting is alleged to have ignored.

The houses where Fortune’s workers showed up with scrapers and ladders were not empty. They were homes. People live in these neighborhoods in Oak Park, Rogers Park, Lincoln Square, and Evanston. Some of those households include children. The law draws a hard line at age six because that is when a child’s developing brain is most vulnerable to the neurotoxic effects of lead. A company that skips lead-safe protocols is not making an administrative oversight. It is making a bet that the children who live in those houses will not get sick.

The required lead hazard pamphlet exists for one reason: so homeowners can make an informed decision about who works on their home and how. Two families specifically, at 1049 West Wolfram Street in Chicago and 1139 Sheridan Road in Evanston, were allegedly denied that choice entirely. Fortune’s workers arrived, began disturbing the paint on buildings constructed in 1891 and 1915 respectively, and the families inside had no documentation that they had ever been warned. Whatever decisions those households might have made, whether to temporarily relocate, to ask questions about containment, or to find a different contractor, the company’s failure to hand over that pamphlet made those decisions impossible.

Twelve consecutive jobs ran without a certified renovator. That certification is not a bureaucratic formality. It is the mechanism by which the law ensures someone on every job site actually knows how to contain lead dust, set up proper plastic sheeting barriers, clean up correctly, and verify the work area before the family comes back in. At every one of those twelve properties, from the Oak Park Victorians to the century-old Chicago two-flats, that verification never happened on paper. The families living in those homes trusted that a licensed contractor would follow the law. They had every reason to believe that. Fortune Painting gave them every reason to be wrong.

Legal Receipts: The Government’s Own Words

These are direct statements from the EPA’s Consent Agreement and Final Order. No paraphrasing. No spin. Just the document.

“Congress found, among other things, that low-level lead poisoning was widespread among American children, afflicting as many as 3,000,000 children under age six; at low levels, lead poisoning in children causes intelligence quotient deficiencies, reading and learning disabilities, impaired hearing, reduced attention span, hyperactivity, and behavior problems; and the ingestion of household dust containing lead from deteriorating or abraded lead-based paint is the most common cause of lead poisoning in children.” EPA Region 5 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 9 — Statutory and Regulatory Background

“Respondent’s renovator’s certification had temporarily lapsed, therefore EPA alleges that Respondent failed to ensure a certified renovator was assigned to each renovation performed by the firm and discharged all of the certified renovator responsibilities.” EPA Region 5 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 44 — Counts 16–27

“EPA alleges that Respondent failed to retain and make available to EPA all records necessary to demonstrate compliance with 40 C.F.R. Part 745, Subpart E for a period of 3 years following completion of the renovations. More specifically, EPA alleges that the Respondent failed to: Provide documentation that a certified renovator was assigned to each of the renovation projects… Provide documentation that the certified renovator performed on-the-job training for workers… Provide documentation that the certified renovator performed the post-cleaning verification.” EPA Region 5 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 40 — Counts 4–15

“EPA alleges that Respondent failed to provide the owner of the unit with the EPA-approved lead hazard information pamphlet before beginning renovation activities.” EPA Region 5 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 32 — Counts 1–2, referencing properties at 1049 W Wolfram St and 1139 Sheridan Rd

“This CAFO constitutes a ‘prior such violation’ as that term is used in EPA’s Interim Final Consolidated Enforcement Response and Penalty Policy… to determine Respondent’s ‘history of prior such violations’ under Section 16(a)(2)(B) of TSCA.” EPA Region 5 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 60 — General Provisions

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Neurotoxin Next Door

Lead is not a substance the human body can handle safely at any dose. The federal government’s own findings, embedded in the law Fortune Painting violated, state that three million children under six were being poisoned by lead-based paint dust at the time Congress acted. The pathway is straightforward: workers sand and scrape exterior lead paint, generating dust and chips. That contamination settles onto soil, landscaping, window sills, and porch surfaces. Small children who play near the home, touch surfaces, or track material inside face the most direct exposure risk.

The work practice standards Fortune allegedly skipped were designed specifically to interrupt that pathway. Certified renovators are trained to contain the work area, use wet methods to suppress dust, clean up using HEPA-filter equipment, and perform a post-cleaning verification before calling a job done. At all twelve of the 2021 properties, the EPA says Fortune produced zero documentation that any of that happened. There is no paper trail proving containment. There is no record of post-cleaning checks. The families at those addresses have no way of knowing whether their yards, porches, and entries were properly remediated after each job.

The post-cleaning verification step is one of the specific items the EPA says Fortune failed to document at all twelve properties. That step exists precisely because lead dust is invisible to the naked eye. Without a verified clean, the assumption must be that contamination remained. The children who played in those yards after the painters packed up had no warning, no pamphlet, and no documented proof that anyone had checked.

Economic Inequality: Who Actually Lives in These Neighborhoods

The homes Fortune worked on span some of Chicago’s most historic but economically diverse neighborhoods. Rogers Park, where two of the affected properties sit, is one of the city’s most racially and economically mixed communities. Evanston’s older housing stock, including homes built in 1896 and 1898, sits in areas that include working-class and lower-income households who may lack the resources to independently hire lead abatement inspectors to verify a contractor’s work. Oak Park, while wealthier on average, still contains older rental and owner-occupied stock where tenants and owners alike depend on contractors following the law.

The financial asymmetry is stark. Fortune Painting accepted contracts, collected payment for renovation work, and allegedly cut corners on lead-safe protocols that would have cost time and money to implement properly. The families who paid for that work received a structurally compromised safety guarantee. If any of those households later discovers elevated lead levels in soil, paint chips, or a child’s blood, the cost to address that contamination, including medical testing, remediation, and potential health consequences, falls entirely on them. The company paid $68,488 ($68,488 is roughly what a full-time minimum wage worker earns across four years of 40-hour weeks) to close out 27 alleged federal violations. The families bear the residual risk for free.

The Cost of a Violation

What Now? The Watchlist and What You Can Do

Still Operational Fortune Painting Company, Inc. remains a registered corporation based at 6619 North Lincoln Avenue, Lincolnwood, Illinois 60712. The settlement document explicitly states that Fortune certified it is “now complying” with lead renovation regulations. That certification came from the company itself. No independent verification of current compliance is described in the document.

On Record The EPA confirmed in the final order that this settlement now constitutes a “prior such violation” in the agency’s enforcement database. That means if Fortune Painting violates lead renovation rules again, this settlement will be used to escalate penalties. The company cannot pretend this never happened.

The Corporate Roles Involved

Respondent Fortune Painting Company, Inc. The company’s operational email used in the settlement correspondence is on file with the EPA. The company signed the consent agreement, waived its right to contest the violations, and waived its right to appeal.

What You Can Actually Do

If you live in a pre-1978 home in the Chicago area and hired a painting contractor in the last few years, you have the legal right to ask for documentation of their lead renovation certification before or after work begins. If they cannot produce it, report them to the EPA’s tip line at 1-800-424-4372. If you suspect a child has been exposed to lead paint dust, contact the Illinois Department of Public Health for free blood lead testing resources. Organize with neighbors to demand contractors show proof of certification before any work starts on your block. These rules exist because people fought for them. Enforcing them requires the same fight.