Currently, about 600 housing authorities in the US – representing 228,000 public housing units – are smoke free. “But we’ve also had tenants object because they feel like we’re taking their rights away”. More than 500 public housing authorities have already established smoke-free rules in at least one building, according to HHS. “You should be able to smoke in your own kingdom”. “Then I have to go in the living room”, Ray Bilal said.
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“What I do in my apartment should be my problem, long as I pay my rent”, Gary Smith told the NY Times, while smoking outside the Walt Whitman Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Daniel Ramirez, a 16-year-old aspiring actor, felt differently.
“It’s been a pretty positive thing for us here”, said Candy Draper of Village East Towers. “If I want to come out and sit in the esplanade and enjoy it, I don’t have to worry about smelling cigar or cigarette smoke”, Griffin said.
“People have privacy rights if they’re over 18”, he continued. “But if there are kids in the house, smoking is not good for them and it’s got to go. So yeah, I support a ban”.
In addition, secondhand smoke causes hundreds of newborns to die each year from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the surgeon general estimates.
Shauna Sorrells, director of public housing programs for HUD, told The NY Times in 2011 that one reason HUD hadn’t yet required a nationwide ban was that the mandate could result in families being evicted because one member smoked.
Banning tobacco in public housing also would save $153 million a year, including $94 million in health care related to secondhand smoke, $43 million in renovations and $16 million in smoking-related fire losses, the agency said.
The rule would prohibit smoking in public housing, including common areas and administrative offices on public housing properties.
There are 1.2 million public housing units nationwide.
The ban would likely not extend to e-cigarettes, which emit water vapor instead of smoke. HUD will take public comment for 60 days before making a final decision.
The policy will probably become part of each lease agreement, and enforcement will depend largely on complaints by other residents, Cabrera said.
Blumenfeld said the policy would benefit tenants who are concerned about secondhand smoke while outdoors and smoke coming into their private windows, balcony or private living area. “I wish they’d try”, Faubourg Lafitte resident Joyce Giles said. “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. But local officials say that it would be hard to enforce. “We just want to make our properties smoke-free so they’re safer for everyone”.
“And not because of the smell”, his 21-year-old son, Manuel Jr., added in English.
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“Remember public housing is not free”, Esman argued.
