When I first arrived in Portland last fall, I blogged about the extreme anti-smoking policies in area apartments, which often extend even to the outdoor parts of properties. The Portland Tribune has picked up on the excess of residential smoking bans, noting that they’ve become so pervasive that they hamper efforts to get the homeless placed into public housing:
A year ago, Guardian Management, the largest manager of private apartments in Portland, made its nearly 70 buildings containing about 6,000 apartments smoke-free. Tenants cannot smoke in their apartments, and they cannot smoke in the hallways.
Last month, the Housing Authority of Portland began sending out notices to tenants announcing all its buildings, containing more than 6,200 apartments, will be going smoke-free. Tenants who need to smoke will have to make their way outside buildings to designated smoking areas, rain or shine. [...]
Andy Miller, interim executive director of Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development, is, like Weinstock, worried about what the new rules do to the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness.
For the last four years, the city’s plan has focused on what it calls a “housing first” philosophy. The policy has meant that rather than insist the homeless conform to good tenant behavior before they can stay in subsidized housing, housing is used to stabilize their lives so they can then address problems such as substance abuse.
Many of the homeless – having battled drug addiction, alcoholism and mental illness – smoke. The city wants those people housed.
“The last thing we want to do is create barriers to people entering affordable housing,” Miller says.
Miller would like to see the housing authority consider continuing to allow smoking in some of its buildings, or in parts of some buildings.
While I vehemently oppose legislative bans on smoking in apartments, there are good reasons why some buildings might want to privately impose smokefree policies. Smokers’ apartments cost more to clean when a tenant moves out, other residents might complain about the smell, and smoking creates a fire hazard. The trend threatens to get out of hand, however. In my own building, for example, smoking is forbidden indoors, on balconies, and even in the large open air courtyard. My cigarette smoking guests have to walk down a long hallway, take an elevator down four flights, and stand outside next to a busy street just to light up. People who’d like to take a longer smoke with a pipe or cigar are completely out of luck.
Many of these bans have gone beyond all rational justification to become simple discrimination against unpopular smokers and it’s likely that more cities will follow suit. Smokers and tolerant allies will need to be prepared to speak out against their spread.
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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George Orwell is laughing at us.
I agree with Jacob Grier’s central point against generalized (especially the idea of government imposed) smoking bans in apartments. However I disagree with the extent of his three consolatory reasons offered in support of such bans.
1) Apartments are generally cleaned and painted between tenants. I seriously doubt there is usually a significant extra cost involved if the previous inhabitant had been a smoker. This is not to say there is NEVER a cost: a heavy smoker, particularly one favoring strong cigars or one who had lived in a place for a very long time, might be an exception. But so too would there be a problem with longtime devotees of fried chicken. Just see an apartment complex try to outlaw fried chicken and listen to the uproar that would ensue.
2) Neighbors complaining about the smell of fried chicken would fall into the same boat. And throwing up the red-herring of “but that smell isn’t *KILLING* people doesn’t work: there’s never been a study done giving even the *MILDEST* indication that the smell of smoke from another apartment is killing anybody.
3) Jacob’s final point, about fires, would seem superficially to be valid, but it misses the boat on two counts: One, I believe cooking and electrical problems are greater causes of fires… Should apartments insist tenants stick to “unfired foods” or unplug their VCRs? And Two, banning smoking in an apartment building may actually *INCREASE* the risk of fires as tenants resort to hidden smoking, hasty disposal of butts under couches when they hear a knock at the door, and disposal of incriminating ashtrays for safely putting out their illicit butts.
So in sum, I *STRONGLY* disagree with generalized, particularly government-imposed apartment bans.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
Now, if we could only make the entire city of Portland smoke free . . . .