Dubuque, IA Building Safety: Lead Paint (2026)

Dubuque folds federal lead-paint law directly into its own Property Maintenance Code. Section 305.3 of the International Property Maintenance Code, as amended by the city in section 14-1J-2, splits the duty in two. Subsection B covers federally assisted rental units: the owner must certify compliance with the Lead Safe Housing Rule at 24 CFR 35 and the Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act at 42 USC 4822, and if the unit was built before 1978, must hand every incoming occupant a notice covering the regulations, the hazards of lead poisoning, its symptoms and treatment, and precautions against it.

Subsection C reaches further, binding all residential property in the City, assisted or not, to the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992: known lead-based paint information must be disclosed before any sale or lease of housing built before 1978. Because Dubuque licenses every rental unit under City Code section 14-1J-3, Housing and Community Development/Building Services Department inspectors can tie a missing disclosure to the same file used for rental license renewal, priority-category review, and the biennial inspection cycle. The department also treats peeling, chipping, or flaking paint as a maintenance defect under section 305.3.A, correcting the physical hazard alongside any paperwork failure.

No penalty specific to section 305.3 is printed in the amendments, so a violation defaults to the City's general penalty in section 1-4-2: a municipal infraction carrying a civil penalty of up to $750 for a first offense and up to $1,000 for each repeated offense, with every day the violation continues counted as a separate offense.