Majority Of Renters Support Smoke Free Apartments: Poll
Posted March 27, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
You can’t smoke at work.
You can’t smoke in bars and restaurants.
You can’t smoke on a plane.
Will you soon be unable to smoke in your own home?
It’s a possibility, if a new poll is accurate.
An Ipsos-Reid survey by Canadian Cancer Society-affiliate The Ontario Tobacco-free Network claims 64 percent of tenants in this province favour the idea of banning smoking in apartment buildings.
At least 70 percent insist smoke from puffing neighbours in the complexes is a serious annoyance.
The group believes the numbers speak for themselves and urge tenants to do the same when it comes to trying to influence the policy in their own buildings.
“We want landlords and tenants to hear there’s this information,” advises Irene Gallagher. “This is a big issue. Second-hand smoke is a health issue. There are 4,000 chemicals in secondhand smoke, 50 of which are carcinogens. There are options.”
Cigarette-free buildings already exist in Manitoba and in Michigan, and both are said to have achieved some surprising levels of success.
“In our experience with hundreds of landlords, getting cooperation from residents with voluntary smoke-free policies has been excellent,” reports Jim Bergman of the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Ann Arbor.
Renters are required to sign leases pledging they’ll remain cigarette-free before they move in. Violating that agreement could get them turfed out of their own place. But that hasn’t happened.
“There have been no problems and certainly no evictions,” Bergman outlines. “When it’s a matter of free choice, people play by the rules. If they sign an agreement saying they’ll follow a smoke-free policy, they do.”
A condo project in Vancouver has also attracted huge crowds who want to live in a place where smoking is only a word, not an action.
“Neighbours tend to know when others are being un-neighbourly and not following the agreed rules,” relates Richard Morantz of Globe General Agencies, a landlord out west.
That hasn’t been Kelly Juhasz’s experience. She lives in a Toronto apartment plagued by second hand smoke.
“You’d walk into the bathroom, and all of a sudden you just have this horrible stale, dirty smell of smoke,” she relates.
It was coming through the wall and the vents, forcing her to use weather stripping to try and shut it out. But it hasn’t worked.
So she’s raised a stink of her own. A lot. So much, in fact, that she’s now on bad terms with some of her puffing neighbours. “We don’t speak, you know, because I have complained,” she admits.
Sam Singer lives in the same building as Kelly and is also a non-smoker. But he doesn’t think anyone has the right to tell him what he can do behind his own closed doors.
“It’s your own apartment,” he argues. “I mean this is your castle.”
Others contend the policy is not only unforceable, but could be open to legal challenges.
And many are adamant it’s outright discrimination.
“We’re against institutionalized policies that discriminate against smokers where you have a major landlord in town that controls the majority of access to rental units who would institute a smoke-free policy of that nature which would clearly discriminate against smokers,” argues Nancy Daigneault of mychoice.ca, a tobacco industry sponsored organization.
“We did a similar survey on this back in the fall … We asked non-smokers specifically if they agreed whether smokers should be discriminated against when seeking housing. Sixty-seven percent in Ontario said no.”
The Network responds that it’s not trying to stir up trouble between neighbours. It just wants to get a dialogue going – one that’s smoke free.
Poll Particulars
Asked: 1,800, many who already live in an apartment.
64%: would choose a smoke-free building over one where smoking is permitted
46% have had tobacco smoke odour enter their unit in the past 12 months from somewhere else in their building
The tobacco smoke odour usually seeps in primarily via the hallways (47%), windows
(41%), shared ventilation (21%), air leaks (18%) and through bathroom or kitchen fans
(13%)
Of those multi-unit dwellers bothered by the smoke:
70% say it bothered them
14% either moved (4%), or considered moving (10%), as a result of the smoke
41% consider it a personal health hazard and 32% consider it an infringement on their life and privacy
27% made suggestions or grievances to their landlord or another outside agency about the smoke
60% who made complaints didn’t get a response, while 30% were told that there was nothing that could be done
16% of those with units affected by second hand smoke say that they or someone in their household suffered from a smoking-related illness or worsened condition.
How can you make your apartment smoke free?
Convince your building owner it won’t hurt their bottom line
Many condo or apartment building owners think that converting to a smoke free policy will lessen the value of the property and discourage people from moving into it.
But experience in Michigan and Manitoba shows the opposite may be true. Proponents claim the turnover is lessened and vacancy rates lowered by the idea. And they insist it costs less to keep a smoke free building maintained.
How do I institute it?
Cold turkey may not work. A phased in approach with a deadline is likely your best bet. Start by banning smoking in common room areas. Send letters to all tenants informing them of the change, along with an in-house survey asking them if they would like to see it building-wide.
If some want it and others don’t, another possible step is to make certain floors “non-smoking” only. Take a page from Ontario’s pit bull ban law. All smokers who currently reside there can be allowed to stay, but new ones won’t be permitted.
What about legal challenges?
If you believe the folks in Manitoba and Michigan, there’s never been a single challenge launched on the issue. Smokers may complain about discrimination, but instituting a no smoking policy isn’t against the law.
What if it’s violated?
Send them a warning letter, followed by penalties and fines. If they’ve signed a no smoking agreement in their lease, eviction is a last resort.
Won’t this engender bad feelings?
The majority of smokers aren’t bad people. They don’t want you or your kids choking on their output. Most will take their smoking outside if the majority supports the idea.
What if I can’t get the policy in place and second hand smoke is still bothering me?
Check places in your apartment where the offending smoke comes in. Try to seal it off if possible.
According to the OTN, “if the owner-manager is not at all supportive of these remedies, it’s possible that a residential tenancy official/tribunal could rule that drifting second hand smoke constitutes an unreasonable disturbance and thus order some form of remedy.
“The remedy might include repairs to the building to minimize the drifting smoke, permission to break your lease, or some other solution.”
For more information, including a fact sheet for tenants and landlords, click here.
For the other side of this issue from mychoice.ca, click here.
