Gosh, I remember the campaign against lead-based paint back in the sixties when I was a child! Do they even make lead-based paint anymore? Sounds like he and his family have lived off of disability checks for their whole lives. Disabled mother living in a rented house with lead-based paint? I can't speak for Baltimore - but I used to do house inspections for HUD and it was very important that no HUD rental contained lead based paint - and that was back in the eighties. I think it would be a safe bet that the family was living in HUD housing if they were disabled. Not to say that there were never any inspectors that turned their eye away for certain slumlords that made it financially "easy" for them to do so.
One thing I observed while working that job, a great many of the people applying for and receiving HUD rent money were shrewdly clever and although not able to find work, they were quite able to sniff out opportunities for government benefits - quite genius at it, actually.
Just an observation.
