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Letter to Apartment Owners and Management
Companies
Thank you for visiting the Smokefree Apartment House Registry.
We would be pleased to send you a packet of information about
regulating smoking in multi-unit housing. Please be assured that
it is legal for any landlord, nationwide, to require no smoking
in an entire apartment building including the units, or to designate
certain buildings or sections of buildings as non-smoking.
There is no law that prevents managers and owners of apartment
buildings from regulating the use of tobacco on the premises,
both inside individual units and outside in common and private
use areas. The reason: there is no constitutional right to smoke
and people who smoke are not protected by Fair Housing laws.
HUD does not prohibit non-smoking policies in affordable housing.
There are obvious advantages to maintaining some or all
units as non-smoking.
1. A unit that has been smoked in is more expensive to
prepare for the next tenant.
2. It may be possible to secure a discount on insurance
for a non-smoking building.
3. Fire danger is diminished.
If tenants are complaining about drifting tobacco smoke, we
hope you will take action to protect them. We believe that environmental
tobacco smoke is a nuisance in the same way that loud noise or
an infestation of rats or insects would be considered a nuisance.
A nuisance includes:
"...smoke, odors, noise, or vibration everything that
endangers life or health, gives offense to senses or obstructs
reasonable and comfortable use of property An offensive annoying,
unpleasant, or obnoxious thing or practice; a cause or source
of annoyance, especially a continuing or repeated invasion or
disturbance of another's right, or anything that works a hurt,
inconvenience or damage." (Black's Law Dictionary, sixth
edition)
Unfortunately, there is no known safe level of exposure to
secondhand tobacco smoke. It is a group A carcinogen in the same
group as asbestos. The California Environmental Protection Agency
states that secondhand smoke can cause cancer, heart disease,
and sudden infant death syndrome. If a person has a chronic illness,
the illness will be aggravated by the tobacco smoke.
The California Air Resources Board in January 2006 identified
tobacco smoke as a Toxic Air Contaminant (TAC). That means it
is formally identified as an airborne toxic substance that may
cause and/or contribute to death or serious illness.
If a resident is injured or made seriously ill by involuntary
exposure to tobacco smoke in one of your buildings and chooses
to take legal action, your insurance coverage might not cover
that liability. The pollution exclusion in the Commercial General
Liability policy (CGL) could cause coverage to be denied for
claims resulting from exposure to secondhand smoke.
If a resident or prospective resident has a disability or
chronic illness which is made worse by exposure to tobacco smoke,
Fair Housing Laws will require a reasonable accommodation. The
reasonable accommodation could be a move to another unit.
Or the smoker who is causing the problem could be asked to
move to another unit. It is not really possible to accommodate
a person with allergies, a family whose child has asthma or a
person with heart disease unless there is a designated non-smoking
section or building.
Providing smoke-free choices to apartment residents should
be considered a new amenity. It has worked very well in hotels
which now offer 65% of rooms nationwide as non-smoking, and is
much desired by apartment residents.
We urge you to consider developing some no-smoking policies.
There are several ways to begin. You might want to conduct a
one-question survey of your residents: "Would you prefer
to live in a totally non-smoking section or building including
the units and the balconies?" Responses to this question
will enable you to identify which sections or buildings can become
non-smoking most easily. (Balconies and patios of non-smoking
units should also be maintained as non-smoking in order to protect
residents.)
You could transition the buildings which you plan to designate
as non-smoking. As people who smoke move out, advertise a "smoke-free"
apartment or "non-smoking." Inform your tenants that
you are transitioning the building or the section of the building
to non-smoking.
Or you could notify all of your tenants that as of a certain
date, smoking will not longer be permitted in units, on balconies
and patios and common areas inside and outside.
However, it is helpful to set up a smoking area outside in a
location where the smoke will not affect non-smoking residents.
In fact, many people who smoke prefer not to smoke in their own
apartment homes.
The letter that you send to all of your tenants about your
new smoke-free policy could contain the following language:
Due to the known health effects of secondhand tobacco smoke,
and the fact that smoke drifts (and can drift into windows and
doors of adjacent units), as of (date), smoking will no longer
be permitted in the following areas:
List the non-smoking areas and then add whatever language
you would usually use to explain how the new policy will be enforced
and call for everyone's cooperation.
If you should decide to transition at least half of your buildings
or units to a smokefree status, please let us know. We will be
pleased to list your vacancies on our web site. Our service is
free to landlords and tenants. However, a building of 15 units
or less would need to be totally non-smoking in order for us
to list it.
(Note: A building under rent control cannot immediately
adopt a non-smoking policy for the units. Units can only be transitioned
to smoke-free status as residents move out or with the written
agreement of tenants who smoke.)
Our goal is to encourage and provide support to apartment
owners who wish to adopt smokefree policies. Please visit our
web site, www.smokefreeapartments.org
for additional information. Another web site containing information
on this issue is www.Landlord.com.
Sincerely,
Esther Schiller, Director
Comments? Questions? EMail Smokefree
Apartment House Registry
Created 10.27.2005 - Updated 02.20.2006
- Built by Nightwatch
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