MILWAUKEE - A big I-Team investigation uncovered children living in toxic homes and the landlords who get away with it.

The Milwaukee Health Department gets millions of dollars from the Feds every year to help hundreds of property owners remove poisonous lead paint from their properties. The thing is, the money only goes so far, and it comes with a lot of strings.

The I-Team tagged along with lead removal specialist Willie Anderson earlier this month as he and his crew replaced 20 crumbling lead-painted windows from a home on Milwaukee's north side.

"Right now there's no window pane in there,” Anderson pointed out as he assessed a back bedroom's windows. "You can see the lead everywhere."

The money he gets for all that work won't just come from the landlord; about two-thirds of it will come from taxpayers through a Health Department grant.

"This is a chronic, insidious, environmental health problem that impacts children within our community," explained Paul Biedrzycki, Director of Disease Control and Environmental Health for the City of Milwaukee Health Department.

There is a catch, though. The grant to remove the lead paint from the homes where Anderson and his team work only covers replacing the windows. There's still a pretty good shot there's still lead in the paint on the window sills, the walls, the baseboards, even the doors.

The landlord will have to pay to clean up all that, but other renters, like four-year-old Maurice Wells and his mom, whose landlords won't lift a finger to remove lead paint from their homes, won't get any help at all.

The bank recently foreclosed on their north side duplex and city policy doesn't allow the Health Department to throw good money on top of bad.

"That's a very, very difficult situation," admitted Biedrzycki. "In some ways our hands are tied."

And the department's hands will stay tied until properties, like the one Maurice lives in, are to someone who can afford to get the work done.