Free Georgia Lead-Based Paint Disclosure

A Georgia lead-based paint disclosure is the federally mandated form a landlord delivers to a prospective tenant before any lease of residential property built before 1978. It carries the fixed federal lead warning statement, states the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint and hazards, lists the records being handed over, documents the tenant’s receipt of the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home, captures any agent’s acknowledgment, and is signed and dated by every party. Authority is 42 U.S.C. 4852d (Section 1018 of Title X, the Residential Lead-Based Paint Hazard Reduction Act of 1992), implemented at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F (EPA) and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A (HUD). Georgia imposes no separate lead paint disclosure statute — that duty is purely federal. What Georgia does have is a state lead programme most pages never mention: the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act at O.C.G.A. 31-41-1 et seq., an EPA-authorized renovation programme under Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 391-3-24, and, since 1 July 2024, a non-waivable warranty of habitability at O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b) covered in our Georgia habitability laws guide. Generate the form below, then read on for what actually applies.

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Georgia lead-based paint disclosure overview

The lead-based paint disclosure — often called the Section 1018 disclosure, after the 1992 statute that created it — is the formal federal notice a Georgia landlord delivers to a prospective tenant for any residential property built before 1978. It does four things in one document.

First, it puts the tenant on notice of potential lead exposure through the federally mandated lead warning statement, the fixed language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) that must be attached to or included within the lease.

Second, it transmits the lessor’s actual knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the dwelling. The lessor picks one of exactly two positions: known lead-based paint or hazards are present, with a description of what is known; or the lessor has no knowledge of lead-based paint or hazards in the housing. There is no third box, and there is no “maybe”.

Third, it transmits any reports the lessor holds from prior inspections, risk assessments, or hazard-reduction work. The lessor either provides copies of all available records and lists them, or affirmatively states that no reports or records exist.

Fourth, it documents the tenant’s receipt of the disclosure and of the EPA pamphlet. The signed acknowledgment is the landlord’s primary defence in any later EPA or HUD inquiry or private civil action.

The disclosure is not optional and the duty is not waivable by agreement. A pre-1978 Georgia rental leased without one exposes the landlord to government civil penalties and to a tenant’s private action for triple damages plus fees. Compliance takes fifteen minutes; non-compliance is the most expensive paperwork failure in pre-1978 rental practice.

Georgia has no state lead paint disclosure statute — but Georgia does have a lead law, and almost every page on this topic gets that wrong in one direction or the other. The honest answer needs two halves, because the sloppy answers fail at both ends: some pages invent a “Georgia disclosure rule” that does not exist, and others tell you Georgia has nothing at all, which is equally false.

The disclosure half. There is no O.C.G.A. section requiring a Georgia landlord to disclose lead-based paint to a tenant. If you are hunting for the Georgia statute number, there isn’t one. Every disclosure requirement described on this page comes from federal law: 42 U.S.C. 4852d, 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart F, and 24 CFR Part 35 Subpart A. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs publishes a disclosure form and the EPA pamphlet on its site, but that is DCA distributing the federal form, not Georgia imposing a state duty.

The other half — what Georgia actually does have. Georgia carries three distinct legal overlays that touch lead in rental housing. None is a disclosure rule. All three matter.

1. The Georgia Lead Poisoning Prevention Act — O.C.G.A. 31-41-1 et seq.

Georgia’s General Assembly passed the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act in 1994, codified at O.C.G.A. 31-41-1 and following, and amended it four times since, most recently in 2010 and 2011 to reach renovation activities. Article 2 of that chapter, Childhood Lead Exposure Control (O.C.G.A. 31-41-10 through 31-41-19), is the operative part for rental housing. Its definitions section at O.C.G.A. 31-41-12 defines terms that have no federal analogue at all, including lead safe housing and a maintenance standard that contemplates repairing deteriorated paint, cleaning to remove dust hazards, and providing lead hazard information.

The practical edge for a landlord is the investigation trigger. The Act is administered through the Georgia Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at the Department of Public Health, and DPH states its threshold plainly: the state health department conducts investigations when a child has a confirmed blood lead level of 3.5 µg/dL or higher. That number is new. Georgia legislation in 2022 lowered the threshold for confirmed lead poisoning from 20 µg/dL to 3.5 µg/dL, aligning Georgia with CDC guidance and funding additional state lead inspectors. The compliance consequence is blunt: a Georgia case that would have drawn no state response a few years ago now can, and a home investigation that finds lead in your unit becomes a record in your possession — which permanently forecloses “no knowledge” on every future disclosure for that property.

2. Georgia is an EPA-authorized renovation state — Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 391-3-24

This is the overlay no competing Georgia page mentions, and it is the one most likely to catch a landlord out. Georgia’s lead rules — the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Management Rules, Chapter 391-3-24 — were promulgated in 1996 and amended in 1998, 2002, and 2010; per Georgia EPD, the 2010 amendments added the Renovation, Repair and Painting programme. Georgia is one of a minority of states authorized by EPA to operate its own RRP programme in lieu of the federal programme.

What that means in practice: for renovation work on your pre-1978 Georgia rental, the certifying authority is the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, not EPA. Georgia regulates the disciplines of Lead Inspector, Lead Risk Assessor, Lead Project Designer, Lead Supervisor, and Lead Worker, and a Georgia-certified Renovator must complete a Georgia-approved training course and pass the exam. A contractor waving an out-of-state EPA renovator card is not automatically what Georgia requires, and “I hired a certified guy” is not a defence if the certification is not Georgia’s. Details are in the renovation section below.

3. The Safe at Home Act — O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b), effective 1 July 2024

Georgia’s Safe at Home Act (H.B. 404, 2024) is the newest and most under-reported overlay, and it changed Georgia landlord-tenant law materially for leases entered or renewed on or after 1 July 2024. It added an express warranty of habitability to O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b), which now provides that “any contract, lease, license, or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place is deemed to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation.” Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b)(1), that warranty cannot be waived — landlords and tenants may not waive, assign, or contract away the duties or remedies attached to it, even by agreement.

Why a lead page cares: deteriorated lead-based paint in a pre-1978 unit is the paradigm habitability defect, and until 1 July 2024 Georgia had no express statutory warranty for a tenant to point at. Now it does, it is non-waivable, and O.C.G.A. 44-7-24 protects a tenant who reports unsafe conditions to code enforcement from retaliatory eviction. The statute does not define “fit for human habitation”, so Georgia magistrate courts look to local housing codes — which is precisely where peeling pre-1978 paint tends to be addressed.

Because the disclosure obligation is federal rather than state-specific, the same disclosure applies to a rental in any state — our federal lead-based paint disclosure form is the generic version of the Georgia form on this page.

Most guides list “three things” a landlord must do. The regulation is more precise than that. 40 CFR 745.113(b) requires six distinct elements in the lease or an attachment to it. A disclosure missing any one of them is defective, regardless of how professional the form looks. This is the checklist to audit your own paperwork against.

Note what is not in that list: no inspection window, no testing requirement, no filing with any agency, and no obligation to remediate. The rule is an information-transfer rule. It makes you tell the truth about what you know and hand over what you hold; it does not make you go looking.

“Target housing” is the federal term for property subject to the rule. The definition at 40 CFR 745.103 is residential dwellings constructed before 1 January 1978, subject to the narrow exclusions in the next section.

Why 1978 — and which 1978 date actually governs. The operative cutoff comes from the definition itself: 40 CFR 745.103 defines target housing as housing constructed prior to 1978, meaning construction before 1 January 1978. The historical reason that year was chosen is the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s ban on lead-containing paint at 16 CFR 1303.1 — but that ban applies to paint manufactured after 27 February 1978, which is not the same date. Competing pages routinely merge the two and report the CPSC ban as effective 1 January 1978. It was not. The distinction has no practical effect on your compliance answer, because the construction cutoff in 745.103 is what decides coverage, but it does tell you which cite to trust: for whether your unit is covered, read 745.103, not the CPSC rule. Housing constructed from 1 January 1978 onward sits outside the disclosure regime entirely.

How to verify the build year in Georgia. The county tax assessor’s record is the fastest authoritative source, and most Georgia counties publish parcel data online. The original certificate of occupancy, the building permit file, and title records also establish it. The lessor carries the burden of correctly identifying target housing — “I think it was around 1980” is not a defence, and a guess that turns out wrong is a knowing violation waiting to happen.

Renovation does not reset the clock. A 1962 building stripped to the studs and rebuilt in 2001 is still target housing. The original construction date controls, not the date of the most recent renovation. This trips up owners of heavily rehabbed older stock constantly.

Common areas in multi-unit buildings. If the building predates 1978, the disclosure scope reaches the common areas as well as the leased unit — hallways, stairwells, porches, laundry rooms, and shared storage. This has a practical consequence for records, covered below: a building-wide evaluation is disclosable to every tenant in the building, not just the one whose unit it sampled.

Georgia context. Georgia’s pre-1978 stock concentrates in the older urban cores — substantial parts of Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, Augusta, and Columbus, along with the mill-town housing that runs through the state’s smaller cities — while most metro-Atlanta suburban development postdates the trigger. Savannah’s historic district and Atlanta’s intown neighbourhoods are heavily pre-1978. Portfolio landlords with mixed-vintage holdings are the ones who get caught, because the compliance answer differs unit by unit. When in doubt, verify against the assessor record rather than relying on the exemption.

Even pre-1978 property can fall outside the rule. The carve-outs are narrow, and they come from two different places in the regulation — which is why competing lists of “the lead paint exemptions” disagree with one another. Some are exclusions written into the definition of target housing at 40 CFR 745.103: a unit that meets one of those was never target housing in the first place. The others are transaction-level exemptions listed at 40 CFR 745.101: the housing is target housing, but this particular deal is outside the subpart. The compliance answer is often the same either way, but knowing which provision governs tells you which text to read and which facts matter. Verify against the current rule before relying on any of them.

• Housing built in 1978 or later (40 CFR 745.103). Not target housing at all.
• Zero-bedroom units (40 CFR 745.103, definitional). A dwelling in which the living area is not separated from the sleeping area — efficiencies, studio apartments, dormitory housing, military barracks, and rentals of individual rooms. This exclusion became conditional when 745.103 was amended effective January 13, 2025 (89 FR 89416): the child-under-six condition now attaches to this limb too, so a 0-bedroom dwelling is target housing where a child under six resides or is expected. It sat outside target housing whether or not a young child lived there only under the pre-2025 rule, which stale charts still repeat.
• Housing for the elderly or persons with disabilities (40 CFR 745.103, definitional), where the housing is specifically designated as such — unless a child under six resides or is expected to reside there.
• Short-term leases of 100 days or less (40 CFR 745.101(c)), where no lease renewal or extension can occur. Vacation and short-term rentals typically qualify; a month-to-month tenancy does not, because it renews.
• Certified lead-free housing (40 CFR 745.101(b)). Property inspected by a certified inspector and found free of lead-based paint. Retain the certification; it is the only proof of the exemption. In Georgia the inspector who can produce that certification is a Georgia-certified Lead Inspector under Chapter 391-3-24.
• Qualifying lease renewals (40 CFR 745.101(d)). A renewal of an existing lease where the lessor already made every disclosure required by 745.107 and no new information described in 745.107 has come into the lessor’s possession. Note the cite: the renewal exemption turns on 745.107 — the substantive disclosure duties (pamphlet, disclose known paint and hazards, hand over records) — not on the 745.113(b) certification elements. If anything new reached you, the exemption is gone.
• Foreclosure sales (40 CFR 745.101(a)). Exempt — but note this is a sales exemption, and it is the one most often misread on rental pages. A purchaser at foreclosure who then leases the pre-1978 property owes the tenant the full disclosure.

Federal law requires the lessor to give the prospective lessee the EPA pamphlet Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home before any lease obligation attaches. This is a separate duty from the disclosure form, and failing it is a separate violation supporting independent damages. Handing over a beautifully executed disclosure without the pamphlet is a violation.

Where to get it. The pamphlet is published jointly by EPA, HUD, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission and is free at epa.gov/lead. The Georgia Department of Community Affairs also hosts it alongside its disclosure form, which is convenient for Georgia landlords who want both documents from one place. It is available in English, Spanish, and additional languages. EPA refreshed the pamphlet in recent years; deliver the current edition rather than a decade-old PDF sitting in your templates folder.

Language. The disclosure must be provided in the language of the contract. An English lease takes the English pamphlet; a Spanish lease takes the Spanish edition. Landlords marketing to non-English-speaking tenants should match the pamphlet to the lease language, not to the conversation.

Delivery. Hand delivery with the lessee initialing receipt is the gold standard. Electronic delivery is permitted subject to the E-SIGN conditions covered below. What does not satisfy the rule is pointing at a website: posting a link is not delivery. The pamphlet must be transmitted as a complete document, on paper or electronically.

Existing tenants. The leasing disclosure duty attaches to new leases, not to sitting tenants mid-term. There is one important exception, and it is the renovation rule: if you disturb paint in an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive the lead hazard information regardless of when their lease started. That is covered in the renovation section below.

The rule does not require you to test for lead, and it does not require you to remove it. EPA states this plainly: the disclosure rule does not require sellers or landlords to test or remove lead-based paint or lead-based paint hazards, and it does not cancel leasing or sales contracts. It is a disclosure rule, not an abatement rule. A tenant who discovers undisclosed lead does not thereby get the lease voided; the remedy is damages and penalties, not rescission.

The standard is actual knowledge, not constructive knowledge and not a duty to investigate. If the unit has never been tested and you hold no reports, “no knowledge” is the honest, lawful answer, and checking it exposes you to nothing.

The trap is the opposite direction. “No knowledge” becomes fraud when you actually know something:

• You hold a risk assessment, inspection report, or abatement record for the unit or the building.
• A previous tenant’s child had an elevated blood-lead result traced to the unit — in Georgia, the event that now triggers a DPH investigation at 3.5 µg/dL.
• A code-enforcement notice, insurance report, or contractor flagged deteriorated paint.
• You know the property was tested and the report is inconvenient, so you never collected it.

Note the asymmetry the rule creates. Testing is optional; disclosing is not. A landlord who tests and finds lead must disclose it, and many owners conclude — rationally — that they would rather not know. That is lawful. What is not lawful is knowing and papering over it, because 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) attaches its treble-damages remedy to knowing violations, and a fact-finder deciding what you knew will look at every document in your file. And in Georgia, remember the second half of the equation: the Safe at Home Act warranty at O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b) does not care what you knew. It cares what condition the unit is in.

This is the most widespread error on the lead-disclosure internet, and it is worth being precise about, because form vendors routinely bolt a “10-day inspection opportunity” checkbox onto rental disclosures — and some pre-tick it on the landlord’s behalf, which manufactures a tenant acknowledgment of a right that does not exist. On the Georgia queries specifically, the generated AI answers put “buyers have up to 10 days to check for lead” directly beside the landlord’s duties, as though the two belonged to the same transaction. They do not.

Read the regulation. 40 CFR 745.110(a) provides that before a purchaser is obligated under any contract to purchase target housing, the seller shall permit the purchaser a 10-day period (unless the parties mutually agree, in writing, upon a different period of time) to conduct a risk assessment or inspection for the presence of lead-based paint and/or lead-based paint hazards. Purchaser. Seller. Purchase. Every operative noun is a sales noun. The statute behind it, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(a)(1)(C), says the same thing in the same terms.

Now read the lessor rules. 40 CFR 745.113(b) — the six elements listed earlier — contains no inspection-opportunity item. Neither does the EPA lessor disclosure form. EPA’s own guidance lists the duty as “provide homebuyers a 10-day period to conduct a paint inspection or risk assessment”, and it appears only under the homebuyer heading, never the landlord one.

Where the error comes from. It is a copy-paste artefact with a specific source. The sales disclosure at 40 CFR 745.113(a) contains an item — (a)(5) — in which the purchaser states that they either received the 10-day opportunity or waived it. That received-or-waived statement exists on the sales form only. When a vendor builds a rental form by editing a sales form, that line is the one they forget to delete, and the result is a lease document asserting a waiver of a right the tenant never had.

What this means for you. A Georgia landlord owes a prospective tenant no statutory inspection window. You may offer one voluntarily, and doing so is a reasonable gesture for a tenant who asks — but do not describe it as a federal right, and do not put a checkbox on your disclosure asserting the tenant received or waived a right the rule never gave them. A form that documents a fictitious waiver is worse than one that stays silent: it is an inaccurate statement on a document every party signs certifying accuracy.

Complete the fields below to generate a federally compliant Georgia lead-based paint disclosure. The generated PDF reproduces the lead warning statement, the lessor’s disclosure items, the lessee’s acknowledgment items, the agent’s acknowledgment, and the certification of accuracy with signature and date lines for each party.

40 CFR 745.113(c) requires the lessor to retain a copy of the completed disclosure for no less than three years from the commencement date of the leasing period. That is the entire legal requirement, and it is also the single highest-leverage thing in this whole guide, because the signed disclosure is the only artefact that proves you complied.

Think about how a lead dispute actually unfolds. A tenant alleges no disclosure. There is no agency database to consult; nothing gets filed anywhere. The dispute reduces to whether you can produce a signed document. If you can, the claim usually ends. If you cannot, you are defending a knowing-violation allegation with your word against theirs, and the statute puts treble damages and fee-shifting on the other side of that argument.

What belongs in the file:

• The executed disclosure with every party’s initials, signatures, and dates.
• A note identifying which pamphlet edition was delivered, and how.
• Copies of every record and report you handed to the lessee.
• The lease itself, if the disclosure was inserted rather than attached.
• For electronic delivery: the consent record and the delivery/access log.
• For Georgia specifically: any Georgia EPD certification paperwork for renovation work, and any DPH correspondence about the unit.

The rule itself says the three years is not the measure of your exposure. 40 CFR 745.113(c)(2) provides that the recordkeeping requirement “is not intended to place any limitations on civil suits under the Act, or to otherwise affect a lessee’s or purchaser’s rights under the civil penalty provisions of 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3).” Read that carefully, because it is the sentence that should govern your retention policy: three years is how long you are required to keep the file, not a limitation on the tenant’s rights. A landlord who shreds the file on the three-year anniversary has discharged the duty to retain while keeping every bit of the liability that file would have defended.

Practical retention advice. Three years is a floor, not a target. Georgia’s limitation periods for the underlying claims run longer than three years, and a lead-poisoning claim brought on behalf of a minor can surface many years after the tenancy ends. Retention is nearly free; destroy the file on the three-year anniversary and you have optimised for the wrong risk. Keep it for the life of ownership and hand the file over at sale.

Electronic disclosure and e-signature are permitted. The signed electronic disclosure is the same legally binding document as a paper one, under the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C. 7001. Almost no competing guide states the conditions EPA attaches, so here they are.

If you provide the required disclosure information electronically, EPA expects you to give the tenant:

• A clear statement of the right to receive paper documents. Electronic delivery is the tenant’s option, not your default imposition.
• The procedure to withdraw consent, and the consequences of withdrawing. Spelled out, not implied.
• How to access and retain the electronic records. A file the tenant cannot open or keep has not been delivered.
• Consent demonstrating they can actually access the materials. You need affirmative consent showing the tenant can receive the forms in the format you are using.

The underlying principle: the use of electronic technology must give the tenant complete access to all disclosure materials. A portal link buried in a welcome email, a PDF the tenant cannot download, or an e-sign flow that shows the signature page without the pamphlet all fail that test even though a signature comes back.

Retention is identical. Three years, same as paper — but electronic records need a real home. An e-signature vendor account you stop paying for is not a retention plan. Export the executed PDF and the audit trail into storage you control.

The disclosure rule governs leasing. A different rule governs work on the building — and in Georgia, that rule is administered by the State, which is the single most consequential Georgia-specific fact on this page.

The RRP rule, Georgia edition. The federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule sits at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, but Georgia is EPA-authorized to run its own RRP programme in lieu of the federal one, under the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Management Rules at Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. Chapter 391-3-24, administered by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and authorized by the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act at O.C.G.A. 31-41-1 et seq. Renovation, repair, or painting that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 target housing or a child-occupied facility must be performed by a certified firm using certified renovators and lead-safe work practices — containment, prohibited practices such as open-flame burning and uncontained power sanding, and cleaning verification. This is not a paperwork rule; it dictates how the work is physically done, and it applies to a landlord’s own maintenance staff, not just outside contractors.

Georgia certification, not EPA certification. Georgia regulates the disciplines of Lead Inspector, Lead Risk Assessor, Lead Project Designer, Lead Supervisor, and Lead Worker, and a Georgia-certified Renovator completes a Georgia-approved one-day training course and passes the exam. Because Georgia is the authorized programme, the certification your contractor needs is Georgia’s, and enforcement comes from Georgia EPD rather than an EPA region. Georgia landlords who hire on the strength of an EPA card issued for work in a non-authorized state are relying on the wrong credential.

The 60-day information duty. Where the renovation affects an occupied pre-1978 unit, the occupants must receive lead hazard information no more than 60 days before work begins — the EPA renovation pamphlet, delivered to the tenants in the unit. This duty runs to sitting tenants who already have a lease and already received their leasing disclosure years ago.

Common areas trigger building-wide notice. If the work affects common areas of a pre-1978 multi-unit building, notice must go to every unit in the building describing the nature and location of the work and the dates it is expected to begin and end. Every unit — not merely the ones adjacent to the work.

Note also that entering an occupied unit to carry out that work is its own question under Georgia law — see our Georgia landlord entry laws guide for the notice practice a landlord should follow before entering to renovate.

Why it matters in Georgia. Repainting between tenancies is the most routine task in the business, and Georgia’s older stock in Atlanta, Savannah, Macon, and Augusta turns over constantly. Scraping and repainting a 1958 duplex’s window trim with in-house staff and no Georgia certification is a violation of Georgia’s own rules with its own penalty exposure, entirely independent of a flawless leasing disclosure. There is a second-order effect too: work that disturbs paint can create the very hazard you then have to disclose to the next tenant, it can generate the records that make “no knowledge” unavailable to you going forward, and since 1 July 2024 it can produce a condition your tenant can raise under the non-waivable warranty at O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b).

Search this topic and you will be told the penalty is a specific number per violation. You will see several different numbers, none dated, most copied from an old page. On the Georgia searches for this page, two AI-generated answers on the same day gave two different figures — one said up to $21,018 per violation, the other up to $10,000 — neither dated and neither sourced. That is the state of the information, and it is why this page prints no figure at all. Here is the accurate structure, which has two entirely separate limbs.

Limb one: the tenant’s private action, 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3). Any person who knowingly violates the section is jointly and severally liable to the purchaser or lessee for three times the amount of damages that person incurred. This multiplier is written into the statute; it does not move with inflation. Section 4852d(b)(4) adds that a court may award court costs together with reasonable attorney fees and expert witness fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The fee-shifting is what makes small disclosure violations economically worth suing over.

Limb two: government civil money penalties. These are assessed by EPA and HUD, and they are inflation-adjusted — annually, under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act, with the operative amounts published in the table at 40 CFR 19.4 for EPA-assessed penalties. Knowing violations can also carry criminal exposure. Georgia’s own rules under Chapter 391-3-24 carry separate state enforcement for the renovation and certification side.

The asymmetry is what should drive behaviour. Completing this form correctly costs fifteen minutes. The downside is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s legal fees attached, plus an agency penalty, plus — if a child was actually poisoned — a tort claim in which the disclosure violation supplies a ready-made negligence theory.

Georgia is unusual here, because three different agencies can look at your pre-1978 rental, and they are looking for different things. Most guides mention only the first.

• EPA and HUD — the disclosure rule. EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics and HUD’s Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes jointly enforce the Section 1018 disclosure duty. Enforcement has historically concentrated on larger landlords and property managers, where one practice failure replicates across hundreds of tenancies.
• Georgia EPD — the renovation and certification rules. Because Georgia runs the authorized RRP programme under Chapter 391-3-24, uncertified renovation work in a Georgia pre-1978 rental is a Georgia enforcement matter, not an EPA one.
• Georgia DPH — childhood lead exposure. The Healthy Homes and Lead Poisoning Prevention Program investigates the residence when a child’s confirmed blood lead level reaches 3.5 µg/dL, under O.C.G.A. 31-41-1 et seq.

How a case starts. Rarely with an inspector at the door. Usually one of four ways: a tenant reports a missing disclosure; a child’s elevated blood-lead result triggers a health-department investigation that works backwards to the paperwork; a private lawsuit’s discovery exposes a systemic gap; or an agency initiative targets a market and requests files from a portfolio owner. In Georgia the second route matters more than it used to, precisely because the 2022 threshold change pulled far more cases into the state’s investigation net.

Where violations get reported. Tenants can report a disclosure violation to EPA at epa.gov/lead/violation or to HUD at the lead regulations mailbox published on HUD’s enforcement pages. The National Lead Information Center, 1-800-424-LEAD, fields questions from both landlords and tenants. Georgia-specific renovation complaints go to Georgia EPD’s Land Protection Branch. Nothing about the process requires the tenant to hire a lawyer first, which is precisely why a clean file matters more than a good argument.

What an inquiry asks for. Signed disclosures for the tenancies in scope, proof of pamphlet delivery, and the records you disclosed or certified you did not have. That is it. An owner who can produce the file usually ends the matter at the document-request stage; an owner who cannot is negotiating over the size of the penalty, not whether there is one.

Federal disclosure is the compliance floor, not the whole picture. Georgia habitability law applies independently to the underlying condition of the paint — and as of 1 July 2024 it applies with considerably more force than it used to.

O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(a) has long required a Georgia landlord to keep the premises in repair for the duration of the tenancy. The Safe at Home Act (H.B. 404, 2024) went further for leases entered or renewed on or after 1 July 2024, adding subsection (b): any contract, lease, license, or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place is deemed to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation. Under O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b)(1), the parties may not waive, assign, or contract away the duties or remedies related to that warranty. A lease clause purporting to do so is unenforceable.

The Act does not define “fit for human habitation”, so Georgia magistrate courts look to housing and property-maintenance codes adopted locally, together with general nuisance law, when a tenant raises the defence. Deteriorated lead-based paint — peeling, chipping, chalking, cracking, or damaged — is squarely the kind of condition those codes address, and where children under six reside, even modest deterioration of pre-1978 paint supports the claim. O.C.G.A. 44-7-24 then protects a tenant who complains to the landlord, a government agency, or code enforcement from retaliatory eviction, which means the tenant who reports the paint is protected while the complaint plays out.

The distinction landlords miss: disclosure and habitability are independent. Disclosing a hazard does not licence you to leave it in place. A perfectly executed disclosure that says “known lead-based paint present, peeling in the second bedroom” is a complete defence to a disclosure claim and simultaneously a written admission in a habitability claim. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 Georgia unit should be remediated by a Georgia-certified firm before re-rental — both to comply with Chapter 391-3-24 and to remove the habitability exposure that disclosure does nothing to cure. Our Georgia habitability laws guide covers the condition-based duties in full.

The federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601 et seq., adds one more edge. It prohibits familial-status discrimination, and a landlord who steers families with young children away from pre-1978 units to dodge lead obligations has swapped a disclosure problem for a fair-housing complaint — a considerably worse trade. See our Georgia tenant screening laws guide for where screening practice and familial status intersect.

Skipping disclosure on a pre-1978 unit

The most common violation, and the one with the worst risk-to-effort ratio. There is no penalty for over-disclosing and a severe one for guessing wrong. When the build year is uncertain, deliver the form.

Assuming Georgia has no lead law at all

Georgia has no disclosure statute, which many owners hear as “Georgia has nothing”. Wrong in a way that costs money: Georgia runs its own certification programme for anyone disturbing pre-1978 paint, and Georgia investigates residences on a child’s 3.5 µg/dL blood-lead result.

Hiring a contractor with the wrong certification

Georgia is an EPA-authorized RRP state. The renovator working on your pre-1978 Georgia rental needs Georgia certification under Chapter 391-3-24. Confirm it before the crew arrives, not after EPD asks.

Delivering it at signing instead of before

The disclosure must be delivered before the lessee is obligated under the lease. A disclosure produced with the lease packet at the signing table, signed in the same motion as the lease, does not give the tenant the pre-obligation information the rule exists to provide. Send it in advance and let the tenant read it.

Wrong build-year assumption

“Around 1980” is not a defence. The county tax assessor record, permit file, or certificate of occupancy establishes it. A 1976 building renovated in 1985 is still target housing.

Failing to provide the EPA pamphlet

The form alone is not compliance. The pamphlet is a distinct requirement and a distinct violation, and substituting your own lead handout does not satisfy it.

Verbal or implied disclosure

Disclosure must be written, signed, and retained. Conversations, text messages, and oral assurances do not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113 — and cannot be produced three years later when an inquiry asks for the file.

Rewriting the lead warning statement

The language at 40 CFR 745.113(b)(1) is prescribed. Tightening it, modernising it, or folding it into your lease’s own warranty language can defeat the disclosure. Reproduce it as written.

Pre-ticking the tenant’s acknowledgments

A landlord cannot acknowledge, on the tenant’s behalf, that the tenant received the pamphlet. Forms that invite you to do this create a false statement on a document certified for accuracy by every signatory. The acknowledgment items belong to the lessee and are completed by the lessee.

Treating “no knowledge” as a place to hide

Honest when nothing is known; fraud when something is. A landlord aware of prior peeling paint, a prior report, or a child’s elevated blood-lead result cannot check “no knowledge” and expect it to hold.

Relying on a waiver clause for condition

Since 1 July 2024, O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b)(1) makes the habitability warranty non-waivable. A Georgia lease clause in which the tenant accepts the unit “as is” does not defeat a claim about deteriorated pre-1978 paint.

Failing to disclose to every lessee

If multiple tenants sign the lease, each must receive the disclosure and pamphlet and each must sign the acknowledgment. One signature on a four-tenant lease leaves three undisclosed tenancies.

Forgetting the records for the rest of the building

A building-wide evaluation covering common areas or other units is disclosable to this tenant. Owners routinely disclose the unit-specific file and sit on the building report.

Tenants of Georgia pre-1978 rentals hold meaningful rights under federal and state law. Landlords benefit from understanding them, because they define the consequences of a defective form.

The right to the disclosure before being obligated

Delivery must precede the lessee’s obligation under the lease. A disclosure produced afterwards does not satisfy 40 CFR 745.113, and the timing violation stands on its own even where the substance was accurate.

The right to the EPA pamphlet

Independent of the form. Non-delivery is a separate violation supporting separate damages.

The right to triple damages plus fees

Under 42 U.S.C. 4852d(b)(3) a tenant injured by a knowing violation recovers three times actual damages, and under (b)(4) the court may add costs, reasonable attorney fees, and expert witness fees. The knowing standard is broad enough to reach reckless disregard.

The right to report to EPA, HUD, or a Georgia agency

Tenants may report violations without filing suit — to EPA or HUD for the disclosure duty, to Georgia EPD for uncertified renovation work, and to Georgia DPH where a child’s blood-lead level is involved. Agency action can bring civil penalties, consent decrees, injunctive relief, and ongoing compliance monitoring across a portfolio.

The right to a habitable unit — now express and non-waivable

Independent of disclosure, O.C.G.A. 44-7-13(b) entitles Georgia tenants under leases entered or renewed on or after 1 July 2024 to premises fit for human habitation, and O.C.G.A. 44-7-2(b)(1) forbids waiving it. Deteriorated lead paint can support that claim regardless of what the disclosure said.

The right to be free from retaliation

O.C.G.A. 44-7-24 protects a tenant who complains in good faith to the landlord, a government agency, or code enforcement about unsafe conditions, or who requests repairs, from retaliatory eviction and other adverse action.

The right to tort damages for actual exposure

Where a child or pregnant tenant suffers lead exposure, ordinary tort remedies apply — medical costs, pain and suffering, future treatment, and lost earning capacity. A disclosure violation supplies a ready foundation for a negligence theory, which is why the paperwork failure and the injury claim tend to arrive together.

The right to fair-housing protection

The Fair Housing Act prohibits familial-status discrimination. Avoiding families with young children to sidestep lead obligations is itself actionable.

The bottom line for landlords. Compliance is cheap and mechanical. The failure mode is a treble-damages judgment with the tenant’s fees attached, an agency penalty that rises every January, a state renovation citation, and — in the worst case — a poisoned child and a tort claim your own file helps prove. The form above handles the mechanics; the rest of this page is what the form cannot do for you.

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