Chester's Lead Ordinance: What Changed for Landlords in Delaware County's Oldest City

Chester is one of Pennsylvania's oldest cities, and its housing stock reflects it: a large share of its rowhomes and multifamily buildings predate 1978, the year the federal government banned lead-based paint for residential use. In 2023, the city attached a new, standing obligation to that older stock. The Chester Lead Poisoning Prevention & Lead Hazard Control Ordinance requires the owner of a covered pre-1978 property to certify that it is lead-free or lead-safe – and, notably, it applies whether or not a child lives in the unit. That last point is the real change for landlords: certification is no longer something that only matters once a young child is present.

Where the confirmed facts come from

The clearest public account of what the ordinance does comes from the PA Lead-Free Promise Project, the advocacy coalition that pushed for it and announced its passage in an April 27, 2023 press release. That release describes the scope in plain terms:

“The Chester Lead Poisoning Prevention & Lead Hazard Control Ordinance will require lead paint inspection and testing for any rental property, child day-care centers, condemned buildings, and any building involved in property transfers built before 1978… landlords and building owners will be required to certify that the property is lead-free or lead-safe, regardless of a child residing in the property.”

Source: PA Lead-Free Promise Project, Chester ordinance press release (2023)

Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland publicly backed the ordinance, and testimony was given to City Council on April 12, 2023. One honest gap in the public record: no confirmable bill or ordinance number for the 2023 passage vote itself could be located, because council minutes from that period are not posted on the city's current website structure. The ordinance is codified at City of Chester Code Chapter 174 (“Building Construction”), Article IV, §§174-18 through 174-22 – not a standalone “Lead” chapter, which is why it is easy to miss when searching the code.

Source: City of Chester Code, Chapter 174, Article IV (2023)

What the ordinance covers

The press release confirms four distinct triggers, each limited to buildings constructed before 1978:

• Any rental property.
• Child day-care centers.
• Condemned buildings.
• Any building involved in a property transfer.

The universal framing – certification is required “regardless of a child residing in the property” – is the feature a Chester landlord should internalize. It puts the obligation on the building and the transaction, not on the presence of a specific at-risk tenant, so a vacant pre-1978 rental or a pre-1978 building being sold is squarely in scope.

Source: City of Chester, Licenses & Inspections (2026)

The real cost context: Chester's rental fees

Chester's rental-registration fee schedule is separate from the lead ordinance and lives in Chapter 442 (“Rental Property”). These figures were fetched directly from the codified fee schedule, so unlike the lead-specific numbers above, they are confirmed – they just are not a lead-certification fee:

Source: City of Chester Code, Chapter 442, 'Rental Property' fee schedule (2026)

Chapter 442 also sets penalties that give a sense of how the city treats registration compliance: up to a $1,000 fine or 90 days for a first offense, a failure-to-register penalty of not less than $500 per unit per month, a $1,000 charge for occupying a unit condemned as unfit for human habitation, and $1,000 per illegal unit.

Source: City of Chester Code, Chapter 442, 'Rental Property' (2026)

There is one paperwork wrinkle worth knowing. The city's 2026 Rental Registration Application contains no lead-certification field or question at all – it is pure property, owner, and tenant intake. That suggests lead compliance is administratively separate from base rental registration in Chester, and may be checked at the inspection or license-issuance stage rather than captured on the registration form. A landlord should not read a blank registration form as evidence the lead requirement does not apply.

Source: City of Chester, 2026 Rental Registration Application (2026)

The money behind enforcement

Chester funds a dedicated Rental Inspection Fund – budgeted at $730,255 for calendar year 2026 in the city's 2026 budget ordinance – real, earmarked inspection capacity separate from the general fund.

Source: City of Chester, calendar year 2026 budget ordinance (Bill No. 7), December 10, 2025 council minutes (2025)

There is also fresh, specifically lead-directed money in the pipeline. At the January 14, 2026 council meeting, Health Commissioner Dr. Kristin Motley reported that the city had received $1.3 million in funding to address lead in Chester homes and had been awarded $4.4 million from HUD. That is remediation money rather than certification-enforcement money, but it signals that lead is an active priority at the council level right now.

Source: City of Chester Council meeting, remarks of Health Commissioner Dr. Kristin Motley (2026)

When inspection lags: the Banneker Plaza warning

The ordinance treats a condemned building as a direct certification trigger, which makes one recent Chester case worth studying. The city's Act 47 receiver documented a roughly 50-year-old, roughly 160-resident Section 8 building – Banneker Plaza – that a May 7, 2025 inspection found with an out-of-service elevator, no working fire alarm or suppression, raw sewage in the basement, mold, and inoperable stoves, toilets, and outlets. It scored 6 out of 100 on HUD's NSPIRE inspection scale, where anything below 60 is a failure. By August 2025 the city had gone to Delaware County Court seeking an emergency injunction to compel repairs.

Source: Receiver for the City of Chester, filed status report (Dec. 1, 2025), pp. 27-32 (2025)

The receiver's report singles out “absentee landlords who let their properties deteriorate” and notes that LLC ownership structures make code enforcement hard to serve. Two honest takeaways for a landlord: first, Chester's inspectors do re-inspect known problem properties and will escalate to court when warranted, so enforcement capacity is real. Second, the trigger at Banneker was a life-safety crisis, not a routine lead-certification check – today's posture is closer to reactive, complaint-driven enforcement than proactive lead-cert sweeps. That is exactly the environment in which a compliant owner benefits from getting certified before a complaint, a transfer, or a condemnation puts the building on the city's radar.

What a Chester landlord should do now

If you own a pre-1978 rental, day-care building, or a pre-1978 property you intend to sell in Chester, the ordinance already asks you to certify it lead-free or lead-safe, with no child-present condition to wait on. Because the exact fee, cycle, and inspector-credential language are not verifiable from the published code text, the right move is to certify through a qualified inspector and confirm the current filing requirements directly with the city rather than relying on a number from a secondary source. We test, the lab verifies, and we help you get the certification on file.