Public housing authorities across the country have refused to find and remove radioactive gas from inside tenants’ homes, leaving children, senior citizens and other vulnerable people unnecessarily exposed, an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.

Radon seeps in through flooring and is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the United States, killing an estimated 21,000 Americans each year. Federal health officials declared indoor radon “a national health problem” more than 30 years ago.

But local housing authorities ignored the danger.

And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development let them, disregarding a decades-old legal mandate from Congress to ensure the problem got fixed.

Thomas Faison, 37, has late-stage lung cancer that his doctor suspects is from radon exposure. Faison grew up in Northeast Portland, including about seven years in a home owned by the housing authority.

More than 400,000 public housing residents live in areas at gravest risk for indoor exposure to the carcinogen, according to an analysis of federal data by The Oregonian/OregonLive. As many as half of all tests from private homes in these areas reveal radon concentrations so high that owners are advised to install specialized ventilation systems. Tens of thousands have done so.

But when it comes to homes the government owns for the benefit of America’s poorest families, officials in radon hot zones commonly choose not to test, according to the newsroom’s reporting on 64 local housing authorities nationwide.

Those that have checked for radon often did so in only a tiny percentage of their public housing units. Some sat on or forgot about the results without making fixes. Some never told tenants they were living in a potential cancer cloud.

In three cities where authorities tested only occasionally, only in the 1990s or not at all, The Oregonian/OregonLive and affiliates of its corporate parent, Advance Local, readily found high levels of radon. One location was an in-home day care. Others were home to elderly people who’d breathed the air for years.

Denver resident Norma Flores, 69, deployed test kits provided by the newsroom and found her apartment had radon at double the level the federal government says should be fixed.

“I’m really concerned,” said Flores, who moved into her unit at Westridge Homes 15 years ago after a sickness left her unable to work. “Scared to death, actually.”

The Denver Housing Authority’s executive director, Ismael Guerrero, dismissed the results from Flores and other tenants with elevated radon levels because the tests weren’t performed by a professional.

“We’re not going to comment on those test results,” said Guerrero, whose agency has tested a small percentage of its other public housing units and removed radon when it was found.

He declined to have Denver follow up on units testing high during the newsroom’s investigation.

Maribel Rivas with three of her five children: Itzae, 2; Aries, 8; and Jose, 13. Their Townhouse Terrace apartment in Southeast Portland had radon nearly six times the level federal authorities say calls for a specialized ventilation system.

Housing agencies can neglect radon because HUD doesn’t require them to do testing on the nation’s 1 million public housing units. The most the federal housing department did was to “strongly encourage” local authorities to test in 2013.

HUD never bothered to see if anyone listened. So The Oregonian/OregonLive checked.

The newsroom contacted housing agencies from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, spanning 26 states and nearly 125,000 units of public housing. Reporters distributed test kits to residents and filed dozens of public records requests with housing authorities, reviewing thousands of pages of congressional records, HUD documents, federal radon studies and local agencies’ testing results.

Learn:

The effort took more than a year, producing the only national picture of radon efforts by public housing authorities and HUD.

Among the newsroom’s findings:

HUD shrugged off requirements set by law. Congress in 1988 ordered the agency to write a policy ensuring public housing tenants “are not exposed to hazardous levels of radon.” HUD leaders did not deliver even after government auditors admonished them for failing to meet the basic requirements of the radon law, proceeding to repeatedly miss deadlines and make promises they didn’t keep.

The housing department tossed aside its own 2013 advice encouraging radon testing in public housing. During the five years following that recommendation, HUD did not test a single apartment owned by the 10 troubled local housing authorities that it operated directly. The administrator who issued the guidance became Detroit’s housing authority director this year. She hasn’t ordered radon testing for her city’s public housing.

Local housing authorities show little interest in tackling radon, despite concrete evidence the danger is real. Fewer than one in three agencies surveyed by the newsroom last year could provide testing records showing they looked for radon. Most that did test found high radon levels in at least one home or common space. Two agencies have discovered more than 100 units containing radioactive air.

Informing tenants is a low priority. In Oregon, Portland’s housing authority requires workers to tell a supervisor if they plan to spend more than five hours in an apartment with radon inside. They’re told to open all windows and bring in a fan to circulate air. But when the housing authority discovered radon in dozens of units earlier this year, residents who breathed the air all day long weren’t given any such advice. In fact, many first learned about the test results from a reporter.

Some housing authorities neglect to eliminate the radon they find. Officials in Pittsburgh, Omaha, Nebraska, and Portland, Maine, didn’t fix units that tested high for radon months or years earlier until questioned about it by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Omaha’s housing authority announced a top manager’s departure the same day the newsroom obtained emails showing he received tests results months before.

“Avoid it at all costs”

HUD officials declined repeated requests to make Secretary Ben Carson available for an interview and did not respond to written questions. But the agency has taken action since the newsroom began its inquiries last year.

Federal officials in September proposed rules to require radon testing in one narrow situation: when housing authorities renovate a public housing development and switch the type of subsidy that pays the rent. An estimated 100,000 units are expected to fall into that category in coming years, about 10% of public housing.

Separately, HUD formed a radon “workgroup,” spokesman Brian Sullivan said in early October. The agency was “very close” to an announcement that would be shared with housing authorities nationally, said Sullivan, who has since left HUD.

“We have to give credit where credit is due,” Sullivan said at the time, “even if it means getting a kick in the pants from The Oregonian.”

The agency would not say what new policy changes, if any, it planned to make.

A study center in Portland, Maine’s Kennedy Park public housing development. Several apartments in Kennedy Park tested high for radon in 2014 and 2015.

HUD’s failure to protect public housing tenants from radon is “irresponsible,” said Rachael Malmberg, president of the advocacy group Cancer Survivors Against Radon.

She said HUD must do more than merely encourage local authorities to find and remove radon gas.

“A recommendation only goes so far as words on paper,” said Malmberg, 33, who has advanced-stage lung cancer she links to radon in her private childhood home in Minnesota. “There needs to be some sort of accountability.”

Congress should provide money for radon testing and removal systems, and HUD should require it, said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s inexcusable,” Yentel said. “And given the decades of inaction on the radon testing, it’s clearly purposeful.”

Action since contact from newsroom Portland, Oregon: Changed notification policy for tenants. Omaha: Installed radon removal systems. Pittsburgh: Installed radon removal systems. Portland, Maine: Installed radon removal systems. Lowell, Massachusetts: Tested basements in five buildings.

Jon Gant, a former HUD official with a key role in the agency’s 2013 decision to recommend but not require testing, said the newsroom’s findings showed the voluntary approach hasn’t worked as hoped.

“They ought to do the testing,” he said of local housing authorities. “It’s not that hard.”

If it turns out tenants have been breathing radon because the housing agencies weren’t required to test, he added, “then shame on us.”

To be sure, the nation’s housing authorities face a multibillion-dollar backlog of other needs. Congress covers most of the costs of public housing but doesn’t provide enough money for repairs. Contending with leaky roofs, moldy walls and broken elevators, some local officials do not prioritize the search for an invisible gas whose harms will lie dormant for years or decades.

Some openly acknowledge not testing for fear of having to spend money to fix what they might find.

“With testing comes the necessity to correct any deficiencies found,” Tony Shomin, director of facilities management in Kansas City, Kansas, said in a statement. He wrote that “with limited funding at this time this is not possible.”

Professional testing typically runs about $60 per unit. And at roughly $1,500 to $2,500, the cost of a radon removal system in one public housing unit is relatively small considering the magnitude of risk. Breathing elevated levels of radon over a lifetime makes a person’s chances of developing lung cancer as high as dying in a car crash, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Carol Leavenworth, 54, with her grandsons, Zyaire, 3, and Romario, 2. Housing officials inspected Leavenworth’s apartment at Townhouse Terrace in Southeast Portland this spring, 26 years after she moved in. They found radon levels 3 ½ times the level the federal government says should trigger repairs.

Public housing tenants are especially vulnerable. The same level of radon exposure is more likely to cause lung cancer in a smoker than a non-smoker, and smoking is roughly twice as prevalent among adult public housing tenants as the general population, a recent HUD study found.

While it’s impossible to know if radon caused lung cancer in a particular patient, the science on radon is clear and the danger is preventable, said Dr. Wallace Akerley, an oncologist and director of the lung cancer program at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

“Radon is radiation,” Akerley said. “You should avoid it at all costs.”

Oregon resident Carol Leavenworth didn’t get that choice.

Leavenworth moved into public housing in 1993 after spending time homeless and couch-surfing. She’s lived in the same outer Southeast Portland apartment ever since, raising two daughters and now two grandkids.

Leavenworth, 54, decided to quit smoking last year when her granddaughter, Zey’Elle, now 10, asked about her health. During stressful times, Leavenworth would burn through two packs of Marlboro menthols each day.

“I was coughing so bad,” Leavenworth said. “She was concerned. ‘Are you going to be around long enough for me to graduate from high school?’”

Housing officials finally tested Leavenworth’s home at Townhouse Terrace this spring, 26 years after she moved in. They found radon at 3½ times the level the federal government says should trigger repairs.

The thought of lung cancer worries her now more than ever.

“I feel robbed,” she said.

“Why should those living in ... HUD-assisted properties be exposed to higher levels of radon?” — U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., presses HUD to test for radon, Sept. 28, 1988

“Why should those living in HUD-owned ... properties be exposed to higher levels of radon?” — U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., presses HUD to test for radon, Sept. 28, 1988

A mystery in Pennsylvania

Radon soared three decades ago from an obscure element on the periodic table to a national health concern.

It all began with a mystery at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

In 1984, construction engineer Stanley Watras kept setting off a radiation detector each time he left the compound where he worked. No one could understand why. It didn’t happen to his coworkers.

One day, Watras tried something different. He walked into work and immediately headed back toward the exit. The radiation detector blared.

“It was like a lightbulb in my head went off,” Watras recounted during a recent interview.

Watras realized the source wasn’t his workplace. It was his own home. Power plant officials brought in a radiation detector and found astronomic levels.

Originally identified by a German physicist in 1900, radon is everywhere in the air. It gets released from the ground as uranium decays in rocks and soil. It’s quickly converted to polonium, another radioactive element, which can attach to dust particles before being deposited in lungs.

Until Watras’ case, concern about human exposure had been largely limited to miners. No one knew the odorless gas could build to such dangerous concentrations in a home.

Federal environmental regulators moved remarkably fast.

The EPA created its first radon guide for the public in 1986.

EPA officials started encouraging homeowners to test for radon in 1986, eventually estimating some 6 million homes had enough radon to warrant repairs. Basements and first floors were the main problem.

While the EPA says there’s no safe level of radon exposure, the critical threshold was set at 4 picocuries of radioactivity per liter of air. At that concentration, the agency says, people should install fan systems that pipe radiation away from the home.

Although some scientists at the time argued the government was using scare tactics without evidence, the EPA’s advice to homeowners had staying power.

“We don’t get much pushback anymore,” said Bill Field, a University of Iowa radon expert who served on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. “It’s generally accepted by the scientific community.”

In 2005, the U.S. Surgeon General warned that prolonged exposure “can present a significant health risk to families all over the country.” In 2011, the EPA called radon testing “an easy and inexpensive way to save a life — many lives.”

But from the moment the federal warnings started, some lawmakers worried the government would apply a double standard to the housing it most directly controlled.

“I believe that if a government agency is telling Americans to test for radon in their private homes, then the government should test for radon in HUD-owned and HUD-assisted housing including public housing,” the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, said in a 1988 floor speech.

President Ronald Reagan signed legislation backed by Lautenberg that year. It gave HUD 12 months to come up with a plan for radon education, research, testing and mitigation that would protect public housing tenants.

Radon testing by 64 housing authorities The map shows radon levels county by county, coupled with results from The Oregonian/OregonLive’s 2018 survey of housing authorities. Hover over a city or click on a county for more information. Sources: Local housing authorities, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. About the numbers County data show the U.S. EPA’s estimates of the expected level of radon in the average home. Data for lab results on tests by homeowners come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For public housing authorities, tests were counted if they were done in a housing unit, common space, or any part of a building where tests prompted repairs. All units were counted as being tested if a building had one shared entrance, or if a low-rise development had repairs done throughout. A result of 4 or more picocuries per liter of air qualified as “high.” If multiple tests occurred, an average reading of 4 or above was counted. Each high result represents one apartment or, with shared-entrance buildings, any test location with a high reading.

Three years later, HUD presented a lengthy report detailing why it needed another four years to formulate a strategy.

A top federal auditor pushed back. More delays meant tenants “may continue to be exposed to hazardous radon levels,” Richard Hembra, an auditor at what’s now known as the U.S. Government Accountability Office, told Congress in 1991. The proposal “does not meet the basic requirements” of the 1988 radon law, Hembra testified.

HUD promised to do better. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp said his agency would begin testing housing that HUD directly owned in high-risk areas, then roll out a fuller program nationwide.

But when tests on about 200 HUD-owned buildings turned up no radon, that was the end of it. As of 1995, there were “no plans to redesign HUD’s policy to provide for testing and mitigation programs for HUD-assisted housing,” the government accountability office wrote.

Infographic: How radon gets in your home How radon gets in your home

Nearly a decade passed.

In 2004, a group representing radon testing companies decided it was time to call out HUD’s inaction. Members bombarded Congress with letters accusing the agency of ignoring Lautenberg’s radon law, prompting a meeting at HUD’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“They just flat out said they weren’t required to do anything,” said Dallas Jones, the current executive director of the trade group, who attended the meeting.

The industry complaint eventually landed on the desk of HUD’s Inspector General, Kenneth Donohue. He pressed HUD attorneys to defend the agency’s position that no testing was required.

The lawyers twice pushed back their delivery date for a written legal opinion before saying it would be indefinitely delayed, Donohue wrote in a letter to then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, who was among the lawmakers who asked for the review. Donohue said the attorneys cited the “lengthy and complex” legislative history of radon and “possible policy ramifications.”

The case was closed.

HUD attorneys did write an analysis, however. The Oregonian/OregonLive received the memo 11 months after filing an open records request.

The subject line: “HUD Obligations and Responsibilities regarding Radon.”

The contents? Unknown. HUD blanked out all 10 pages, citing an exemption that walls off information prepared for decision-makers.

Crews prepare a radon removal system for Winchell Court on North Interstate Avenue in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. After installation, a pipe from the crawl space carries radioactive gas away from the building.

Regardless of the agency’s past legal arguments, HUD officials signaled a dramatic change of course in 2011.

Adding HUD’s name to a new “Federal Radon Action Plan” promoted by various cabinet agencies, federal housing officials promised to figure out how HUD employees could collect baseline data on radon during inspections of public housing. HUD would also incorporate testing and radon removal into “as many agency programs as possible,” including public housing.

Once again, the department failed to deliver.

Three times the agency pushed back its deadline before announcing it wouldn’t produce a plan for testing during inspections, blaming a lack of funding.

The possibility of forcing local housing authorities to test public housing for radon was also under discussion, said Gant, the former HUD official involved in radon planning.

Sandra Henriquez, HUD’s former assistant secretary in charge of public housing, said she could not remember why she and other officials opted for voluntary testing instead.

But Gant recalled the reason: Mandatory testing “was too hard.”

“It would require political support on the Hill ,” he said, “and it would have required a lot of money.”

Instead, Henriquez issued a memo in February 2013 warning housing authorities about “the dangers of radon.”

Voluntary testing was encouraged.

Henriquez went on to lead Detroit’s housing authority. She has not ordered radon testing in her city.

The Kennedy Park/Bayside East public housing development in Portland, Maine, where several apartments tested high for radon. In Maine, state law says landlords must do testing. Although the Portland Housing Authority uncovered radioactive gas in some of its 725 units in 2014, removal systems weren’t installed until this year. The failure to look

HUD’s toothless testing recommendation went widely ignored, The Oregonian/OregonLive found.

Not only did local housing authorities dismiss the plea. So did HUD.

The federal housing department operated 10 housing authorities between 2013 and June 2018, records show. The agency typically takes on this role temporarily to turn around longstanding and severe management problems.

HUD didn’t follow its voluntary testing guidance in any of the places it managed. These included East St. Louis, Illinois, an area where nearly half of tests in private homes reveal radon above the federal threshold.

Sullivan, the HUD spokesman, said last year that the agency takes over housing authorities to maneuver a “ship that’s turned upside down right side up.”

When pressed further to explain why HUD didn’t test after telling housing authorities testing was “strongly encouraged,” Sullivan said at the time: “You’ll just have to point out that we don’t.”

Dozens of large housing authorities haven’t performed tests, either.

Many provided no explanation for their inaction. Steve Finn, the housing authority director in the Boston suburb of Malden, Massachusetts, said simply that officials with his agency would start testing when HUD makes them.

Testing “is not required by HUD regulation,” Finn said in a statement. The agency “will conduct such testing if law or regulation is revised.”

One of the nation’s largest public housing operators, Minneapolis, would have to spend just $60,000 to test all 1,000 of its units with ground-floor exposure, based on amounts incurred by other housing authorities.

But the housing authority spends its roughly $14 million annual maintenance budget on “even more pressing safety and livability needs,” spokesman Jeff Horwich said in a statement. He cited pest control and broken faucets as part of a $152 million repair backlog.

“We operate in a bureaucratic world in which HUD ‘encourages’” housing authorities to do many things, Horwich said. “They require many more, which creates difficult choices when we would like, of course, to address every potential risk.”

To see if tenants were breathing radon in buildings where housing authorities have failed to look for it since HUD’s recommendation, The Oregonian/OregonLive and its partners did their own testing.

Reporters distributed a few dozen kits per city in the following locations: Akron, Ohio; Syracuse, New York; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Worcester, Massachusetts; Huntsville, Alabama; and Denver.

Reporters and tenants deployed 4-inch by 6-inch envelopes containing charcoal. To capture radon, test envelopes need to remain open and undisturbed for at least three days. Once they’re sealed up, they can’t sit too long before being delivered to a lab, or the radioactivity inside will diminish. Windows are supposed to stay shut during the test to keep radon from escaping.

It was impossible to ensure these steps happened consistently. Despite the hurdles, the newsrooms still found radon.

Initial tests turned up high concentrations at 13 units in Denver, Huntsville and Worcester. A second round confirmed high levels in seven of the apartments.

The Oregonian/OregonLive told officials at the three housing authorities about the high readings and provided addresses of tenants who agreed to share them.

None promised to conduct their own tests in response.

Gant, the former HUD official, said housing authorities have an obligation to act under these circumstances.

“If the public housing authority was unaware, and you make them aware, then they should start whatever steps are necessary to mitigate that danger,” he said. “Especially if children are involved.”

Testing by Advance Local’s MassLive last year found radon in an apartment at Great Brook Valley Gardens in Worcester, Massachusetts. The unit was vacant as of September, when a group of prospective tenants toured it.

In Worcester, testing by Advance Local’s MassLive last year found elevated radon in an apartment at Great Brook Valley Gardens used as an in-home day care. One test was twice the federal action level, and two more were just below, with the average surpassing the federal standard.

Radon professionals use the average as their benchmark because radon emissions in a house fluctuate.

Alex Corrales, executive director of the Worcester Housing Authority, said the results at Great Brook Valley were “inconclusive” and didn’t cause him to “jump off my desk and be in alarm.”

He said the housing authority won’t be following up with its own testing on the unit, which was vacant as of September. Worcester hasn’t tested any units in the past.

However, Corrales said, the agency is considering whether broader testing is warranted. “If we’re going to pursue radon testing, then it’s something that we want to do for the entire complex,” he said.

In the meantime, Corrales said there is “no reason” for tenants “to be alarmed that there’s a radon issue” in Worcester public housing based on MassLive’s limited sampling.

In Huntsville, agency leaders initially had nothing to say when informed of the newsroom’s test results. Mike Norment, the facilities manager, copied a reporter on an internal email.

“This guy is also calling me,” he wrote. “I’m not responding.”

Norment was willing to talk previously. Last year, he told the newsroom he personally tested more than 1,800 units citywide in the 1990s. He said he found high radon levels in 43. He provided a map showing places where radon removal systems were installed.

Advance Local’s AL.com visited one of those locations, a complex known as Butler Terrace, and found elevated levels of radon in seven units. After retesting, the average results in three units were still high enough that radon professionals would recommend a removal system.

“I would love to see it fixed,” said Shineka Howard, whose Butler Terrace apartment tested three times the federal action level.

Huntsville’s only response to the newsroom’s findings came from Sandra Eddlemon, the housing authority’s executive director. It consisted of an emailed copy of the Huntsville Housing Authority’s mission statement and two additional sentences:

“HHA uses the funds provided by HUD to fulfill this mission statement to the best of our ability,” she wrote. “Our residents are very important to us.”

Tests on Robert Minty’s Denver apartment were high for radon.

Photo: Joe Mahoney/Special to The Oregonian

Denver also wasn’t interested in the newsroom’s discoveries.

Three units at the Westridge Homes development registered above the federal action level in two rounds of tests. In addition, two units at Quigg Newton Homes tested high during one of the two testing rounds.

Guerrero, the housing authority’s executive director, said he had “no immediate knowledge” that radon was present in those units — even after the newsroom shared its findings with him.

The Denver Housing Authority has itself discovered radon in the past.

Spokeswoman Stella Madrid told the newsroom in 2018 that Denver had not tested public housing for radon and there were “no prevalent issues” in apartments owned by the housing authority.

The agency changed its story this year, saying Denver had, in fact, done some radon testing. And documents obtained through an open records request show the housing authority turned up big problems.

Radioactivity in a maintenance storage room in the basement of a public housing tower was 177.1 picocuries per liter, 44 times the federal action level. That was in 2005.

The Denver Housing Authority has yet to test 70% of its apartments for radon, including at the Westridge Homes complex. The Oregonian/OregonLive distributed its own test kits there, and three units showed high levels of the carcinogenic gas in two rounds of testing. (Photo by Joe Mahoney/special to The Oregonian)

Two of four units sampled at a large public housing complex had high radon levels in 2010. Even after crews installed a radon removal system throughout the complex, testing two years later still found one unit above the federal standard.

And in 2013, the agency tested a different public housing complex. Officials found high radon levels in 21 of the 28 units tested.

While those discoveries prompted repairs, Denver has yet to conduct any testing across 70% of its public housing units. Guerrero said the agency will check for radon during major renovations or redevelopment projects, as it has done in the past. But Denver’s construction schedule shows it will take until 2025 or longer to complete that work.

Some complexes have no renovations on the calendar.

“We feel we are being proactive in addressing this across the entire portfolio,” Guerrero said.

Robert Minty, 64, said the housing authority should have already checked his building and the many others that still await action.

The apartment where Minty and his grandson live exceeded the federal action level on two tests conducted with help from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

“As low cost as it is, they could have done the testing out of wasted money,” he said.

Nicole Auger said she was relieved when the housing authority placed a radon removal system in the basement of her home in Portland, Maine’s Sagamore Village this year. “I was just shocked that they actually did it,” she said.

Sitting on the results

Failing to test for radon isn’t the biggest form of neglect that housing authorities commit.

Some find radon and leave it there.

In Maine, where state law says landlords must test for radon, the Portland Housing Authority checked 725 units in 2014. The agency found four dozen with high radon levels, and roughly half of those showed high levels after a second test using a more sophisticated technique.

Officials met in 2015 to “discuss mitigation options,” documents show.

Then nothing happened. For another three years.

Mark Adelson, the agency’s executive director at the time, told the newsroom he decided to forgo radon removal systems in favor of addressing other problems. “It’s a risk analysis,” he said.

Adelson hired a radon contractor in 2018 after The Oregonian/OregonLive requested all of his emails discussing whether to repair the units that tested high. He called the timing “conveniently coincidental.”

“It was right there,” he said. “And, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, somebody’s calling about it. Yeah, I guess it’s time.’”

Rather than fix each unit that twice had tested high, Portland ordered a third round of testing, which eliminated most homes from the mix. In the end, the housing authority fixed only eight.

Nicole Auger, 33, with her fiance, Chris Wotton, 35, and children, from left: Jonathan, 9; Josh, 13; and Ariella, 3. The Portland, Maine, housing authority first detected a high level of radon in her unit in 2014 but didn’t make repairs until 2019.

Nicole Auger, 33, moved her family into one of the radon-tainted units last year. She signed a lease on her townhouse acknowledging she was made aware of the problem.

“I didn’t have any options to go anywhere else,” said Auger, who has three kids, one with special needs. “I just took it.”

She was relieved when crews placed a radon removal system in the basement of her home in Sagamore Village this year, following the housing authority’s reversal.

“I was just shocked that they actually did it,” she said.

In all, only 26 of 64 housing authorities said they had looked for radon as of summer 2018, when the newsroom conducted its survey.

But six had no testing records to back up their claims, and a seventh, Milwaukee, refused to provide documents unless The Oregonian/OregonLive paid $600. Of the remaining 19 housing authorities, six hardly did anything, checking a single basement, single apartment or single complex, for example.

In Pittsburgh, housing officials tested for radon at more than 100 units in the Glen Hazel Family Community development in 2017. They found heightened levels of radioactivity in four, and two tested high a second time.

Then nothing happened. The housing authority blamed poor internal communication amid a leadership change.

“It wasn’t really brought to the level it should have been,” Chuck Rohrer, a housing authority spokesman, said in 2018.

In response to the newsroom’s inquiries, crews have since installed radon removal systems in the four units that initially tested high for radon.

But officials did not tell tenants why the new machinery was being installed. The housing authority sent out a cryptic notice that it hired a contractor “to undertake improvements to your apartment.”

The agency also didn’t do any testing on the rest of its public housing units, omitting more than 90% of the apartments it owns.

It didn’t happen until four years later. This 2015 email is to Portland, Maine’s housing authority director Testing found 25 homes above the federal radon standard An employee suggested radon removal systems ... Starting with the unit with highest radon level.

In Omaha, officials launched an initiative late last year to check for radon in up to 285 units over five years. Workers from a local nonprofit, Omaha Healthy Kids Alliance, tested 38 vacant homes through May and found high radon levels in 16.

Then nothing happened. Essentially.

In all but one case, the housing authority allowed new families to move in without fixing the problem. The agency also didn’t tell those families about the radon found in their homes.

Joanie Poore, who joined the agency as chief executive in June, originally told the newsroom that the issue fell through the cracks during a series of leadership transitions.

“I don’t feel as though we were sitting on these results and no one would ever follow up,” she said.

But the agency was sitting on the results.

Poore said Terence Jackson, the agency’s public housing director, told her Omaha Healthy Kids didn’t send him testing results until July 30, when he was helping Poore prepare an answer to the newsroom’s inquiry about testing.

But according to internal emails obtained through an open records request, Jackson received high test results in December 2018 from a housing authority employee and in May directly from Omaha Healthy Kids.

Poore announced Jackson’s departure the same day she provided the emails to The Oregonian/OregonLive. Poore declined to say why Jackson no longer works for her. A severance agreement shows Jackson resigned and will be paid four months’ salary.

He declined repeated requests for comment.

As a result of the newsroom’s investigation, Omaha has told tenants whose homes tested high and has installed radon removal systems.

But Poore also decided to stop looking for additional radon problems. She suspended the Omaha Healthy Kids’ contract, which authorized testing in hundreds more units. She initially said her agency needed to get a better handle on how it processed test results.

Poore later said the agency’s board will have to decide whether to test at all, as a matter of policy. There’s no timeline for a decision.

Radon in Portland and Oregon The shaded map shows the percentage of radon test locations in each zip code that showed high levels of the carcinogenic gas. The Oregon Health Authority tracks the results of tests conducted by private homeowners and submitted to test manufacturers. No shading means no data, or only limited testing, exists for the zipcode. Source: Oregon Health Authority

What tenants weren’t told

Even housing authorities that test extensively and remove any radon they find can drop the ball in other ways. Portland, Oregon, is a prime example.

Officials with Multnomah County’s housing authority, Home Forward, knew they had radon in public housing as far back as 2011. Home Forward sold off one of its single-family units that year, and the private buyer wanted tests done first. The housing authority agreed to install a radon removal system, records show.

But Home Forward faced a backlog of other needs at that point, a spokesman said in a statement. The agency did not begin testing other public housing units in earnest until 2017. Even then, testing only happened when major renovations were scheduled.

Very quickly, Home Forward found radon. Tests during the second month of inspections revealed radioactivity in six units at Dahlke Manor in Northeast Portland, including one with radioactivity nearly eight times the federal action level.

Home Forward took three months to tell the tenants they were breathing a carcinogen in their homes. It took a full year to install a removal system, in part because of a permitting problem.

Home Forward could not produce a schedule for completing radon testing at other complexes when The Oregonian/OregonLive requested it in May 2018. Instead, a spokesman provided the agency’s renovation schedule calling for work elsewhere to be completed by spring 2021.

“They certainly should have been testing at other places,” said Ruth Cole, 59, the tenant with the highest recorded radon level at Dahlke Manor.

“They’re playing catch-up,” she said.

A worker shows a component of a radon removal system at Winchell Court in Portland, Oregon. The local housing authority did not start testing public housing in earnest until 2017. At Northeast Portland’s Dahlke Manor, the apartment of Ruth Cole, 59, had radioactivity nearly eight times the federal standard.

The agency has now discovered radon at a total of 17 public housing complexes. About half of those weren’t tested until April, when elevated radiation levels were found in nearly 100 units. Almost none of the 100 had been fixed as of late September.

A dozen tenants at Townhouse Terrace in outer Southeast Portland learned about their results in September — from a reporter. Home Forward’s radon policy at the time set no deadline for informing tenants.

Maribel Rivas’ apartment tested nearly six times the federal standard.

“My goodness, that worries me,” said Rivas, a mother of five who has lived in her apartment for seven years. “Not for me, but for my kids.”

Upset tenants complained to Home Forward during an October meeting.

One resident who learned about her results weeks earlier from a reporter told the gathered officials: “This person that didn’t know me is more concerned about the health of myself and my kids than the people who are supposed to be.”

As it turned out, the housing authority convened the meeting in a cramped Townhouse Terrace community room with elevated levels of radon.

People had no idea as they walked in the door.

Radon testing by Home Forward The map shows public housing complexes operated by Home Forward, the housing authority that serves Multnomah County, Oregon. Hover over a building to see details about radon testing. Source: Home Forward About the numbers Tests were counted if they were done in a housing unit, common space, or any part of a building where tests prompted repairs. All units were counted as being tested if a building had one shared entrance, or if a low-rise development had repairs done throughout. A result of 4 or more picocuries per liter of air qualified as “high.” If multiple tests occurred, an average reading of 4 or higher was counted. Each high result represents one apartment or, with shared-entrance buildings, any test location with a high reading.

That’s because Home Forward failed to display a radon warning in the room, even though the agency’s policy called for it.

Home Forward later announced it had revised its notification policy. The housing authority will tell tenants within six weeks of receiving a high radon result from the lab.

Michael Buonocore, Home Forward’s executive director, acknowledged missteps. He said agency officials have been in uncharted territory, unable to learn from other housing authorities because radon testing is so rare.

“We’re making mistakes as we make this up as best we can,” he said. “Yes, it is problematic.”

Today, seven current or former public housing complexes still owned by the agency have yet to be checked for radon. Officials recently announced they expect to finish testing homes and installing radon removal systems by the end of 2020.

Residents may inhale the radioactive gas until then, Buonocore acknowledged.

“It definitely concerns me,” he said.

Thomas Faison looks out over Northeast Portland while receiving an experimental treatment at Providence Cancer Institute. Eight private homeowners or landlords within 1,000 feet of his former childhood home, which was owned by Multnomah County's housing authority, have installed radon removal systems.

“How do I have lung cancer?”

Thomas Faison felt pressure on the right side of his chest. He thought it was a bad cold, maybe pneumonia.

The diagnosis — delivered two years ago this month — floored him.

“My immediate question was, like, ‘How do I have lung cancer, how bad is it?’” said Faison, now 37, a father of four.

The suspected cause of Faison’s cancer is only now coming into clearer focus: radon exposure growing up in a known radon hotbed, Northeast Portland.

It included roughly seven years in a home owned by Portland’s housing authority.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, during the years Congress was trying to make HUD tackle radon in public housing, Faison lived in a small ranch-style house two blocks north of Alberta Street. It was a decade before gentrification began to upend the historically African American neighborhood.

Radon repairs Buildings in red completed radon remediation between 2000 and 2019. Source: City of Portland

Radon was everywhere around Faison as a child.

Both his elementary school, Vernon, and his middle school, Whitaker, tested high for the gas.

And eight private homeowners or landlords within 1,000 feet of the spot where Faison slept have since installed radon removal systems, city data show.

It’s impossible to know how much radon Faison breathed in his childhood home. The housing authority sold it in 2007. A subsequent owner recalled a radon test indicating the house didn’t need repairs.

But in the house next door to Faison’s, a former owner found radiation in the basement at twice the federal action level, according to documents she provided. She later installed a removal system, just three steps away from where Faison’s house stood until it was demolished this year.

In a statement, Home Forward confirmed the address where Faison lived was public housing and said that “any time a person we serve is injured, ill or passes away, we grieve for them and their family.”

“The organization is continually making improvements to the safety conditions of the housing under its care,” the housing authority wrote.

Thomas Faison grew up in a radon hotbed. His bedroom was next to a neighbor’s wall that now has a radon removal pipe. Faison has lung cancer his doctor attributes to radon. “The timing and the location add up,” said Dr. Rachel Sanborn

Faison attended Grant High, where he ran track and wrestled at the 135-pound weight class. He moved around the country after graduation, working jobs that included cleaning food production equipment in the South. After returning to Oregon, he washed industrial-sized mixers that stir the dough used to make bread.

His initial cancer diagnosis made Faison wonder if the illness might have been caused by chemicals he inhaled at work. It wasn’t until he saw a naturopath and found a new oncologist that radon crossed his mind.

Faison agreed to let Dr. Rachel Sanborn from the Providence Cancer Institute speak with the newsroom about his condition. Faison’s late-stage cancer has spread from his right lung to his diaphragm and liver.

Sanborn said she is “very suspicious” radon caused Faison’s illness. She said Faison has a minimal history of smoking and that any chemical exposure from work was likely too recent to have developed into cancer. She said Faison’s upbringing in Portland was the most likely culprit.

“The timing and the location add up,” she said.

Faison fought the cancer. He took a prescription pill costing $19,011.40 a month, which insurance from his job on the production line at Nabisco covered.

Faison also began to eat vegan. During an interview, he rose from the couch in his Northeast Portland apartment to retrieve a guidebook, “Back to Eden,” which listed an array of natural supplements for cancer. “I did everything this book told me to do,” he said.

Early scans showed strong progress.

“I think I got somewhat complacent, comfortable,” he said. “Like, ‘OK, I’m cured.’”

Then the cancer came back.

Faison said he went to Tijuana, Mexico, in November 2018 to buy an herbal tonic that isn’t approved for use in the United States. He attended an alternative medicine conference in Florida in February.

“If I didn’t do all that,” he said, “there’s no doubt in my mind that I probably wouldn’t be here, or I probably wouldn’t be as healthy.”

But Faison’s health insurance doesn’t pay for alternative medicine. The GoFundMe campaign he set up to cover his costs is falling short of its goal, and he can’t afford all the alternatives he’d like to keep pursuing.

In April, Faison returned to the emergency room with a nagging cough and back pain. He is now participating in a clinical trial for a new drug.

“I really try to forget that I’m sick,” he said.

Until recently, Faison didn’t know about all the places from his childhood where radon was found. He didn’t know about HUD’s inaction or the failure of housing authorities to test for radioactivity in public housing.

The government should have shown more urgency in its effort to protect families from radon over the past 30 years, he said. Testing should be required.

“In the meantime, you’ve got little kids living in homes, like me, who might end up with lung cancer,” Faison said.

“There’s no way,” he said, “that we should still be living with this.”

Thomas Faison returns to the Northeast Portland block where he grew up.

Reporting and writing by Brad Schmidt of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Additional reporting by: Kaitlin Washburn, Mark Friesen, Eder Campuzano, Christina Morales, Beth Nakamura and Steve Suo of The Oregonian/OregonLive; Anna Claire Vollers and Jonece Starr Dunigan of AL.com in Alabama; Dan Glaun, Aviva Luttrell, Melissa Hanson, Steph Solis and Noah Bombard of MassLive in Massachusetts; Ginger Christ and Rachel Dissell of The Plain Dealer in Ohio; Daniel Simmons-Ritchie and Christine Vendel of PennLive.com in Pennsylvania; and Glenn Coin, Marnie Eisenstadt, Steve Carlic, Charlie Miller, Don Cazentre and Jacob Pucci of Syracuse.com in New York; and Molly Parker of The Southern Illinoisan. Visuals by Beth Nakamura and Dave Killen of The Oregonian/OregonLive and freelance photographer Joe Mahoney in Denver. Digital design and graphics by Mark Friesen of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Online mapping by Dave Cansler of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Copy editing by Megan Otto of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Print graphics and design by Jen Cieslak, Sean McKeown-Young and Dusty Altena of Advance Local.