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Settlement aids residents in move from lead-tainted housing

EAST CHICAGO, Ind. (AP) - A Chicago-based group's settlement with public housing officials in East Chicago is giving residents at a lead-tainted housing complex in the northern Indiana city a break on rent and more time to find new housing.

The settlement approved Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gives the more than 1,000 affected residents until March 31 to find housing away from the complex, which was built in the early 1970s on the footprint of a former lead smelter.

The East Chicago Housing Authority has also agreed to waive rent owed between July 22 and March 31, 2017. Residents also cannot be evicted, threatened with eviction or charged late fees, and will get help finding new housing.

Residents at the West Calumet Housing Complex praised the agreement, which follows a complaint filed in August by the Chicago-based Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.

"People have come to me and hugged me and thanked me," Sherry Hunter, a community activist with the coalition Calumet Lives Matter, told The (Northwest Indiana) Times (http://bit.ly/2fccem6 ).

Some yards in the housing complex in a blighted industrial corner of Indiana had lead levels more than 70 times the federal safety standard.

The Shriver center filed its housing discrimination complaint after East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland told the housing complex's 1,000 residents, including about 700 children, in July that they should move because of lead and arsenic contamination.

The compliant claimed that the East Chicago Housing Authority's relocation plan violated civil rights laws and called its resident relocation process "chaotic and troubling."

Jewel Harris Jr., the housing authority's attorney, said the parties all had the same goal in mind, of making sure residents had protections. "It was just a question of how and how do we get that plan in writing," he said Friday.

Katherine Walz, director of housing justice with the Shriver center, said Friday the agreement represents the organization's "collective best efforts" to protect families.

Under the settlement, residents who moved out before last summer's announcement will qualify for benefits if they can demonstrate they left because of lead- or arsenic- related health concerns or have children younger than 6.

Krystle Jackson, a mother of four who left the complex in mid-July because of her son's elevated blood lead levels, expects to receive a housing voucher within days and get priority access to public housing elsewhere in East Chicago.

"I just want a safe home for me and my kids," she said.

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Information from: The Times, http://www.nwitimes.com

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