Corporate Misconduct Case Study: Homeworks Construction and Its Impact on Indiana and Michigan Families

An Invisible Poison

Imagine an invisible poison unleashed in your home. You can’t see it or smell it, but it’s there. It settles on the floors where your toddler crawls, coats the toys they put in their mouths, and silently attacks their developing brain. This here was the very real risk that Homeworks Construction, Inc. created in communities across Indiana and Michigan.

Lead dust is the most common cause of lead poisoning in children. The damage it causes is not a scraped knee or a broken bone; it is severe and, worst of all, irreversible. We’re talking about stolen potential—reduced IQ, learning disabilities, and behavioral problems that can shadow a child for their entire life. This is the stakes.

It’s ultimately about protecting a child’s future. And it’s a responsibility Homeworks Construction shrugged off time and time again.

The Corporate Playbook: How the Harm Was Done

Between 2018 and 2021, Homeworks Construction performed renovations on at least 17 older homes. Because these houses were built before 1978, the law rightly presumes they contain lead-based paint, a known neurotoxin. Federal law provides a simple, clear set of rules—the Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Rule—to keep people safe during this kind of work.

But according to the government’s complaint, Homeworks Construction had a totally different playbook.

Instead of following basic safety regulations, the company allegedly cut corners that put families, workers, and the public in danger.

They failed to assign a “Certified Renovator” to direct the work, meaning the person in charge may not have known how to handle toxic materials safely.

They didn’t make sure their other workers were trained in lead-safe practices. They failed to contain the work areas, potentially allowing invisible clouds of lead dust to contaminate the rest of a family’s home.

And in a move that shows a profound level of disregard, they failed to give homeowners a simple but vital pamphlet, “Renovate Right,” which explains the dangers of lead and how to stay safe. They robbed families of the knowledge they needed to protect their own children.

Worst of all? This wasn’t a one-time mistake. Even after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began investigating them, Homeworks Construction till failed to recognize that its other projects were subject to the same safety rules. It wasn’t just an oversight; it was a pattern.

A Cascade of Consequences: The Real-World Impact

Public Health & Safety Crisis

The company’s actions created a genuine public health threat.

By disturbing lead paint without proper containment, they risked generating lead dust that is easily inhaled or ingested. For a child, this exposure can mean a lifetime of challenges. For adults, it can lead to hypertension and kidney failure. The company’s failure to keep proper records also meant that the EPA couldn’t effectively monitor their work, leaving the public in the dark and at risk.

Economic Ruin

The documents (attached at the bottom of this article as always) don’t detail the financial ruin of any single family, but the economic consequences are clear. The families living in these older homes, who are often working-class people, were left with a potential contamination nightmare. Proper lead abatement is an astronomically expensive process, a cost that should have been prevented by Homeworks Construction simply following the law.

Instead, the company pushed that financial risk onto its customers. Beyond cleanup, the long-term healthcare costs for a child with lead-induced learning disabilities represent a life sentence of financial and emotional strain. The company chose to save a little money, and in doing so, gambled with the entire financial future of the families they were hired to help.

The table below, derived from court documents, shows the timeline of the 17 projects where Homeworks Construction failed to meet its legal and moral obligations.

A System Designed for This: Profit, Deregulation, and Power

Let’s be clear: Homeworks Construction isn’t just one bad apple. Its behavior is a predictable, logical outcome of an economic system—neoliberal capitalism—that relentlessly prioritizes profit above all else. In this system, public health regulations are not viewed as a sacred duty but as costly burdens on the bottom line.

The choice to not hire certified renovators or buy the right equipment wasn’t an accident. It was an economic calculation. In a marketplace that rewards companies for cutting costs and underbidding competitors, the safety of children in South Bend becomes an “externality”—a cost pushed onto someone else. This is a feature, not a bug, of our economic system. It’s designed to produce victims, and those victims are almost always the ones with the least power to fight back.

Dodging Accountability: How the Powerful Evade Justice

After creating this public health risk, what was the price for Homeworks Construction’s admitted failures? A paltry $10,000 civil penalty.

To add insult to injury, the company doesn’t even have to pay it all at once; they get an installment plan.

Why was the fine so laughably low? The government itself provides the answer in the settlement documents. The penalty was reduced solely because of the company’s “documented inability to pay” a higher amount.

Let that sink in. A company can endanger the public, risk the permanent cognitive development of children, and then get its punishment discounted by pleading poverty. The fine is no longer a deterrent. It is simply a minor “cost of doing business,” a rounding error that gets factored into the next bid. There is no jail time for executives. There is no order to pay for the medical monitoring of the children who may have been exposed. There is only a settlement that allows the company to continue operating.

Conclusion: A Story of a System, Not an Exception

The story of Homeworks Construction is the story of late-stage capitalism in miniature. It reveals a system where the pursuit of profit is so absolute that the potential poisoning of children becomes a manageable business expense. This case is an inevitability. This consent decree, buried in the court docket, is a window into a political and economic system that privatizes profits while socializing the devastating and irreversible costs of its own negligence.

All factual claims in this article are derived from the Complaint (Case 3:25-cv-00749, Document 1) and the Consent Decree (Case 3:25-cv-00749, Document 2-1) filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.

Please visit this link to read about the EPA’s settlement with Homeworks Construction from the DOJ’s website: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndin/pr/epa-reaches-settlement-homeworks-construction

You can also see the lodged consent decree by visiting here https://www.justice.gov/enrd/media/1413351/dl?inline