A landlord hired contractors to rip out 21 windows in a building saturated with potential lead paint, never told a single tenant it was happening, and got away with paying $5,000 ($5,000, roughly what some Lincoln families spend on groceries in four months).

A Building Old Enough to Be a Minefield

The property at 4828 Meredeth Street in Lincoln, Nebraska was built in 1973. That single fact matters enormously. Any residential building constructed before 1978 is legally classified as “target housing” under federal law, meaning it is presumed to contain lead-based paint. Lead paint was not banned in residential housing until 1978. Buildings from the 1960s and 1970s are, in the words of regulators, targets, because the hazard is almost certainly there.

From June 5 to August 4, 2022, Lynn Fisher, operating under the business name Great Place Properties, brought in a contractor called Window World of Lincoln to replace windows in 21 separate units of this building. Window replacement in a pre-1978 building is not a routine home improvement project. It is a federally regulated renovation activity. Removing old windows disturbs painted surfaces. Disturbing painted surfaces in a building this old means generating dust and debris that may contain lead.

The EPA’s Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule exists precisely for this scenario. It is not a new rule, not an obscure technicality. It has been federal law since 2008. Landlords who perform renovations in pre-1978 housing for compensation, meaning any landlord running any rental property, must follow it, no exceptions.

The EPA Shows Up

On June 12, 2023, an EPA inspector visited 800 Pioneers Boulevard in Lincoln to evaluate Great Place Properties’ compliance with the Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule. The inspection included a review of Fisher’s own business records. What the inspector found, or rather what the inspector did not find, told the whole story.

Fisher’s records contained no evidence that any affected tenant had received the federally mandated “Renovate Right” pamphlet, a document that explains lead hazards to families before construction begins. The records also showed no evidence that informational signs had been posted anywhere in the building during the months-long renovation. The EPA mailed Fisher a copy of the inspection report on July 27, 2023.

What You Can’t Put a Dollar Amount On

Twenty-One Families, Zero Warning

Twenty-one apartment units. That means at minimum twenty-one households, likely dozens of individual people, woke up one morning in the summer of 2022 to find contractors working on their windows, kicking up dust, removing old frames, disturbing painted surfaces in a building that has stood since 1973. Nobody slid a pamphlet under their door. Nobody put a sign in the hallway. Nobody told them that the work happening inches from where they sleep, eat, and breathe carried a federal lead-hazard warning attached to it by law.

The “Renovate Right” pamphlet that Fisher failed to distribute is not bureaucratic filler. It tells families what lead dust is, what it does to children’s brains, and what they should do to protect themselves during a renovation. It tells parents to keep kids away from work areas. It tells tenants to watch for dust and to clean up carefully. Without it, the families in those 21 units had no framework, no context, and no agency. They made decisions, about opening windows, letting kids play in the hallway, going about their summer routines, without information they were legally entitled to have.

The renovation ran for two full months, June 5 through August 4, 2022. Two months is a long time to expose families to a potential hazard while keeping them in the dark. Children under six years old are the most vulnerable to lead poisoning, which causes permanent neurological damage, lower IQ, behavioral problems, and developmental delays. There is no cure for lead poisoning after it happens. The damage is done. A pamphlet and a posted sign cannot undo exposure, but their absence guarantees that families cannot even try to minimize it.

The Name of the Business Says It All

The company is called Great Place Properties. That name carries an implicit promise to tenants. You will be safe here. This is a well-managed building. Someone is watching out for you. The federal lead notification rules are some of the most straightforward tenant-protection requirements on the books. They do not require expensive testing, specialized equipment, or complex procedures. They require a pamphlet and a sign. The failure to provide either is not a paperwork oversight; it is a decision that the comfort and safety of tenants ranked below the administrative inconvenience of compliance.

When the EPA inspector reviewed Fisher’s records during the June 2023 inspection, the absence of documentation was total. There was no evidence of written notification to any affected unit. No evidence of posted informational signs. Fisher’s own records confirmed the violation. This was not a close call, not an ambiguous situation, not a misunderstanding of technical legal requirements. The rule says notify tenants. Fisher did not notify tenants. End of audit.

The settlement document notes that Fisher “neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations.” That is standard legal language. But the EPA’s findings came directly from Fisher’s own paperwork. The records did not lie. Tenants in those 21 units lived through a renovation that disrupted their homes, possibly their health, and certainly their sense of security, without the basic dignity of being informed it was coming or being warned about the risks it carried.

The Legal Door That Stays Open

The settlement document explicitly states that full payment of the $5,000 ($5,000, the cost of a modest vacation) penalty “shall only resolve Respondent’s liability for federal civil penalties for the violations alleged herein.” The EPA reserved the right to take enforcement action for any other violations of the law. More pointedly, the document states this settlement now counts as a formal “prior such violation” for purposes of future enforcement. If Fisher skips lead safety rules on the next renovation project, the penalty structure escalates, and federal enforcers can point to this case as proof of a pattern. The door to accountability stays open. Whether anyone walks through it depends entirely on continued regulatory attention.

Straight From the Document

These are direct statements from the EPA’s Consent Agreement and Final Order. Nothing paraphrased. Nothing invented.

“During the Inspection, the Inspector’s review of Respondent’s records revealed that Respondent had not ensured that each affected unit of the Renovation had received the Renovate Right: Important Lead Hazard Information for Families, Child Care Providers and Schools.” EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 27

“During the Inspection, the Inspector review of the Respondent’s records revealed that Respondent had not posted informational signs during the Renovation.” EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 28

“The Property is a multi-family building, constructed in 1973. Under Section 401(17) of TSCA, 15 U.S.C. § 2681(17), the Property was considered ‘target housing.'” EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 19

“Respondent retained the services of a window replacement contractor, Window World of Lincoln, to perform window replacement at 21 units of the Property from June 5, 2022, to August 4, 2022, approximately.” EPA Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 20

“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 Consent Agreement and Final Order, Paragraph 44

The Ripple Effects Nobody Talks About

Public Health: Lead Has No Safe Dose

Lead poisoning in children is irreversible. The Centers for Disease Control has stated for decades that there is no safe level of lead exposure for children under six. The federal notification rules that Fisher violated exist specifically because exposure during a renovation can spike lead dust levels in a home far above what normal background exposure produces. Window replacement is one of the highest-risk renovation activities in pre-1978 housing because old window frames often contain thick layers of lead paint applied over decades.

The building at 4828 Meredeth Street is a multi-family structure built in 1973, five years before the federal lead paint ban. Every affected family during that June-to-August 2022 renovation period was breathing and living in a building where the risk level was legally elevated and legally required to be disclosed. Children who lived in those 21 units during the renovation had no special protections put in place on their behalf by the person legally responsible for putting them in place: their landlord.

Lead poisoning’s consequences follow children for life. Reduced IQ, increased rates of attention-deficit disorders, higher rates of aggressive behavior, and long-term cardiovascular effects in adults have all been linked to childhood lead exposure. The public health system, schools, social services, and healthcare providers absorb those downstream costs. Fisher collected rent. The families and their communities absorbed the risk.

Economic Inequality: Who Lives in Rental Housing Built in 1973

Pre-1978 rental housing is overwhelmingly occupied by lower-income renters. This is not a coincidence. It is the direct result of housing economics. Older buildings carry lower property values, lower rents, and fewer amenities. They attract, and in many markets exclusively serve, people who cannot afford newer construction. The tenants at 4828 Meredeth Street were likely there because it was what they could afford in Lincoln’s housing market, not because they chose a building with potential lead-paint risk.

Federal lead notification rules are one of the few legal mechanisms that give lower-income renters the same hazard information that wealthier people get automatically by virtue of living in newer homes. When a landlord like Fisher skips those notifications, the inequality deepens. Affluent renters in newer buildings never encounter this problem. Working-class renters in aging stock are left dependent on a landlord’s legal compliance for their children’s safety, and when that landlord defaults, they have no fallback.

A $5,000 ($5,000, less than two months of rent at the median Lincoln apartment rate) penalty does nothing to change the economic calculation for future violations. If compliance with lead notification rules costs more in time and administrative effort than non-compliance costs in fines, the rational economic actor in a profit-driven rental market will keep skipping the rules. The penalty structure, as applied here, does not deter. It invoices.

The Math of Accountability

What Now?

Who Is Responsible

• Lynn Fisher, Individual Landlord operating as Great Place Properties, Lincoln, Nebraska. This is the named respondent in the EPA enforcement action and the person legally responsible for the violations at 4828 Meredeth Street.

Who Is Watching

• EPA Region 7 (Lenexa, Kansas) is the enforcing agency. The case file is now public record. Future violations by Fisher will carry this case as a documented prior offense.
• Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE) oversees state-level environmental compliance and can act independently of the EPA.
• Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services tracks childhood lead poisoning cases and can cross-reference exposure data with building addresses.
• Lincoln City Code Enforcement handles residential property compliance at the municipal level. Tenants in any Great Place Properties building can file complaints directly.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you are a tenant in any pre-1978 rental building in Lincoln, you have federal rights. Before any renovation starts on your unit or in common areas, your landlord must give you the “Renovate Right” pamphlet. If they do not, you can report it directly to EPA Region 7. Know your neighbors. Talk to the people in the other units. Document everything. Take photos. Keep records. A landlord who skipped lead notifications once is statistically more likely to skip them again. Organized tenants who know their rights are the single most effective accountability mechanism that exists at the building level. Connect with local housing justice organizations in Lincoln, attend city council meetings on rental housing policy, and demand that local enforcement agencies prioritize pre-1978 housing inspections. A $5,000 fine did not change Fisher’s incentive structure. Tenant organizing can.