Quincy Housing Authority gets money to remove lead paint and asbestos

QUINCY (WGEM) - Officials at the Quincy Housing Authority say they have gotten grant funding to improve the quality of their housing.

Officials said they will use a $4 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to remove lead-based paints and asbestos tiles in buildings.

Executive Director Jerry Gille said they’ve already removed the lead paint from most of the buildings in their Indian Hills apartments but he said there’s still a few units which still have lead-based paint around the baseboards, windowsills, and doors. He said all buildings have asbestos tiles.

Fr. Joseph Zimmerman, who sits on the Quincy Safe and Livable Housing Committee, said it’s important they remove those hazards.

“It affects children more than adults and it doesn’t take a whole lot of lead paint to mess up a child’s brain and so that’s I think the main reason you want to worry about that,” Zimmerman said.

Gille said it takes a lot of money to remove lead paint and asbestos because there’s a lot of guidelines to remove and dispose of them. He said currently the paint and tiles remain intact, but they don’t want them in the unit.

Gille said $1.75 million should cover the cost of removing the rest of the lead paint but he said they still don’t know how much it will cost to remove the asbestos.

“We will at some point in time hear soon, work up this project with our A and E firm and we will go, we will take it out to bid,” he said. “We’re not entirely sure yet what the cost is gonna be, nor are we entirely sure how far $2.5 million is gonna get us in asbestos flooring removal.”

He said if they run out of money for the asbestos project, they’ll apply for more grants.

Gille said they plan to start work in the spring and said he projects should take two to four years.

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