Until Carmencita Robinson received a letter last July stating that her public housing complex would need to be evacuated due to toxic levels of lead and arsenic in the soil, she’d had no idea she’d been living on contaminated land for nearly a decade.
“I felt betrayed,” she said. “They knew that there was lead, and they misled the families that were there because they continuously accepted our rent and gave us no notice of lead.”
A month later came the second blow. When Mayor Anthony Copeland learned the extent of the damage, he directed residents to evacuate the West Calumet Complex and announced plans to demolish it. Residents received Section 8 housing vouchers and were told they had 60 days to secure housing.
[For more of this story, written by Leah Varjacques, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/po...ving-on-lead/531534/]
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