Rhode Island

Nearly four fifths of Rhode Island’s housing was built before 1978, the year lead paint was banned for residential use.

The state has built more law around that single fact than anywhere else in the country.

The Lead Hazard Mitigation Act of 2002 requires the owner of almost any pre-1978 rental unit to hold a Certificate of Lead Conformance, obtained from a licensed inspector and valid for two years, and the owner-occupied exemption that used to soften it was removed in 2023.

Since October 2024 every landlord must also register the unit on a statewide rental registry and file the certificate through it, with fines starting at $125 per unit per month for going without.

That reaches far beyond professional landlords, because a family that inherits a two-decker in Providence or Pawtucket and keeps a tenant in the downstairs unit is now inside the same regime as anyone else.

It also shapes the decision about whether to rent an inherited house at all, since mitigation has to be done and certified before the tenancy rather than after.

Rhode Island is the smallest state and one of the most densely settled, so the housing is close-packed triple-deckers, mill-town two-families and nineteenth-century stock, and the parcels behind them are small.

Foreclosure runs by power of sale rather than through court, faster than in its New England neighbours, which leaves an owner with a certificate problem on an old house very little time to solve it.