More than 500 public housing authorities have already established smoke-free rules in at least one building, according to HHS. Banned by her grandmother from smoking in the apartment, she sneaks cigarettes in the stairwell, she said, and will continue to do so.
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A few of her neighbors acknowledge the health risk.
“I just think it’s unfair”.
“Our only concern is that there be enough protections and help, especially for people with mental illness or elderly people that have serious tobacco addictions, that they don’t end up losing their homes as a result of this”, Crowley said.
“It helps those of us who enjoy the outdoors”. The ban would also apply to administrative offices. For that matter, alcohol isn’t really good for you beyond a very reasonable amount of red wine. or so I’m told.
The federal government wants to ban smoking in and near public housing units nationwide within the next two years.
Uncle Sam may soon stamp out every cigarette in American public housing. She said her organization surveyed about 20 and found that, so far, there has been no significant push-back. “But I would have to comply with it”, said chain-smoker Dana Jones, shaking her head as she escorted her 11-year-old son past a clutch of smokers outside Bethel Towers, an apartment complex next to a church in downtown Atlanta. The Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to extend that to the other 940,000 units around the country, in cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta and Miami.
The impact of the prohibition would be felt most heavily by the NY City Housing Authority, which is known as Nycha and houses more than 400,000 people in about 178,000 apartments. It already runs large deficits and struggles to maintain its properties, so any costs associated with a ban would be burdensome. “The objective is to go smoke-free and to have healthier communities”, Castro said.
Executive Director Deniece CB Smiley said Thursday that she’s heard positive and negative reactions to the proposal. “Like, that’s ridiculous. It feels like you’re targeting”.
The agency said the ban was necessary to protect residents from second-hand smoke and to save money in healthcare and fix costs.
But there were a few opponents of the proposal who said that such a ban would infringe on the rights of smokers. He’s been smoking for 67 years, he said, and no federal edict is going to stop him from lighting up in his own house. NYCHA has 328 developments across NY City’s five boroughs, the Times reports, and Grand Canyon-sized deficits even without the proposal. And more than 34 percent of residents said they had a child with asthma or another respiratory problem.
“Proving smoking is another thing”, he said.
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HUD said there would be a 60-day comment period.
