Guide
East Lansdowne's Lead Ordinance No. 613: Rental, Daycare, and Home-Sale Requirements
East Lansdowne's Ordinance No. 613 ties lead-safe certification to rental licenses, daycares, and condemned properties on a three-year cycle - here's what the codified Chapter 11 text says, and what about home sales is still unconfirmed.
Published August 16, 2026 · East Lansdowne, PA
Photo: Mr. Matte, CC BY-SA 4.0On December 12, 2022, East Lansdowne Borough adopted Ordinance No. 613, codified as Chapter 11 (Housing), Part 4, “Lead Poisoning Prevention and Lead Hazard Control.” It made East Lansdowne one of the first Delaware County municipalities to tie a lead-safe or lead-free certification to routine borough approvals – a rental registration license, a child-care operation, and the removal of a condemnation placard all now run through it. Do not confuse this borough with the separate, larger Lansdowne next door; Ordinance 613 is East Lansdowne's own law.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4 (Ordinance No. 613, 2022)
What Ordinance 613 covers
The ordinance states its own purpose plainly, and it is broader than rentals alone:
“to protect and promote public health, safety and welfare through the identification and elimination of lead source hazards in the built environment,” covering “all dwellings constructed prior to 1978, child-care facilities, abandoned properties and condemned properties.”
In other words, the trigger is the building and its use, not just a rental transaction. A pre-1978 dwelling, a daycare, or a condemned structure is in scope regardless of who occupies it.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4, purpose and scope
The rental-license trigger, in the code's own words
This is the requirement most East Lansdowne landlords will meet first, and it is stated as a hard precondition on the license itself:
“The Borough shall not issue a rental registration license or renewal thereof unless the Borough has received a lead (paint) safe report or lead (paint) free report…”
The certification is not a one-time filing. The ordinance sets a fixed three-year cadence, again in its own text:
“A new lead paint inspection with corresponding report shall be required with the submission of a rental license and/or registration every three years.”
Practically: plan on a fresh inspection and report every third rental cycle, not a certificate you file once and forget. The rental-licensing mechanism itself (three license types, renewed annually by June 1) is the workflow this certification attaches to.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4, rental-license trigger and three-year cycle
Daycares and condemned properties
Two triggers here are independent of any lease. First, child-care facilities are named directly in the covered-structures list above, so a daycare operating in a pre-1978 building in East Lansdowne falls under Ordinance 613 whether or not the property is ever rented.
Second, the ordinance ties a lead inspection to lifting a condemnation. Its text on this point is unambiguous:
“for structures that are a condemned property, a lead paint inspection shall be performed and the corresponding report shall be submitted prior to authorizing and/or removing any condemnation placard.”
This is the same structural pattern Norristown uses: before the borough will authorize or remove a condemnation placard, the lead inspection and report have to be in hand. A property owner working a condemned structure back into use in East Lansdowne clears this step first, not last.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4, condemned-property placard clause
The home-sale trigger, stated honestly
What we can confirm about the sale requirement, and what we can't
The rental, daycare, and condemned-property triggers above are quoted directly from the codified ordinance text. The home-sale trigger is different, and we will not present it with the same confidence.
The only confirmation we have that a home sale triggers a lead test is a plain-language description in the borough's 2022 announcement – that “when residents go to sell their older properties, they will also need to get their home tested for lead.” We were not able to independently match that description to a specific operative section of the ordinance's own text. So treat a pre-sale test as likely required for an older East Lansdowne home, but confirm it directly with the borough before you rely on it for a closing date.
One related caution: a “Beginning January 1, 2022” effective-date claim for the sale requirement appears in some online summaries. That date predates the ordinance's own December 2022 adoption and appears to be a cross-contamination artifact from a different town's summary. Do not rely on it.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough passage announcement, quoted via PA Lead-Free Promise Project (2022)
Who can perform the inspection
Ordinance 613 does not let just anyone sign off. It names the credentials and the exact evidence the borough will accept:
“a form must be submitted to the Borough from a licensed lead-based-paint risk assessor or by a certified lead dust sampling technician certifying that a visual inspection and dust wipe samples have been taken from a dwelling or dwelling unit, that it does not have visible deteriorated paint, and that interior dust-wipe samples were collected in compliance with EPA regulations, were tested and were found to not contain lead-contaminated dust in excess of EPA dust level standards.”
Two things follow from that. The inspection has to be done by a licensed risk assessor or a certified lead dust sampling technician, and the finding rests on actual dust-wipe samples tested against EPA dust-lead standards – not a visual once-over.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4, approved-performer language
What it costs
Ordinance 613 sets no fixed dollar figure for the lead certification itself. The Housing Code defers the number to a separately adopted borough fee-schedule resolution, and that resolution is not published anywhere online we could locate. The only concrete figure in the Housing Code is a general $50 use-and-occupancy fee, which is not lead-specific and should not be read as the lead-certification cost.
The real cost a landlord or seller pays is the private inspection. We publish our own inspection pricing in full on our pricing page – no call for a quote.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough Code, Ch. 11 Pt. 4 (no lead-specific fee stated); borough forms page
Why East Lansdowne passed it
The borough framed Ordinance 613 as child-safety infrastructure, not paperwork. At passage, Mayor Majovie Bland put the local stakes plainly:
“While lead is often considered a thing of the past, in Delaware County, almost 250 children are still poisoned every year… But with this new ordinance now in place we are ensuring our kids are safe and protected from this 100% preventable problem.”
Source: East Lansdowne Mayor Majovie Bland, quoted in PA Lead-Free Promise Project passage release (2022)
The mayor's figure is a round estimate. The more precise, state-verified count is close to it: 285 Delaware County children ages 0–71 months had a confirmed elevated blood lead level in 2023 – and because only a fraction of that age group is tested county-wide, the true number of affected children is very likely undercounted, not just underreported.
Source: PA Dept. of Health, 2023 Childhood Lead Surveillance Annual Report (2023)
What isn't public, said plainly
East Lansdowne is a small borough of roughly 2,300 residents, and some things a landlord might expect to look up simply are not published anywhere we could find:
- No public roster of licensed rentals.
- No landlord registry.
- No condemned- or unsafe-property list.
The ordinance creates the licensing mechanism, but the actual roll of who holds a license is an internal record, not a public directory.
The borough also publishes no council meeting minutes or agendas online, so the day-to-day enforcement posture of Ordinance 613 is not observable from outside. That is not evidence the ordinance is dormant – the text is clearly drafted and the triggers are real – it is simply unobservable from public records, which we would rather state than read into. The borough's own forms page does list a “Lead Paint Letter” and an “Annual Rental Inspection Application,” consistent with an active program.
Source: East Lansdowne Borough website and forms page (2026)
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