Smoking ban secondhand news in some housing units

A new push by the state to make public housing complexes smoke-free is old news to some housing authorities in the Lowell area.

Gov. Deval Patrick's administration earlier this month released guidelines encouraging all of the state's local housing authorities to implement no-smoking policies in units that receive state funding.

In towns like Chelmsford and Billerica, resident requests have already led housing-authority officials to ban smoking in at least some of their properties.

The board of the Chelmsford Housing Authority, where two elderly housing buildings are already smoke-free, will vote May 5 whether to make its anti-smoking rules universal.

"We recognize that people have the individual decision to make about their health and their desires, but if it begins to impact their neighbors, that's when it can become a problem," Chelmsford Housing Authority Executive Director David Hedison said. Hilton Gold

Housing authorities are already required to ban smoking in all common areas of state-aided developments, including offices, lobbies, laundry rooms, hallways, elevators, stairways and community rooms.

Anti-smoking policies encouraged by the Department of Housing and Community development would take that a step further, banning smoking in any of a housing authority's buildings and within individual units.

The policies cannot call for current or potential tenants to stop smoking or limit applications to nonsmokers, according to a letter sent earlier this month to all local housing-authority directors by Housing and Community Development Undersecretary Aaron Gornstein.

Local housing authorities "cannot limit applications for housing to applicants that do not smoke, nor can they force a tenant to quit smoking in order to maintain their continued occupancy of state-aided public housing," the letter reads. "Whether an applicant or tenant does or does not smoke has no bearing on the (local housing authority's) smoke-free housing policy."

However, the authorities will have to make information on smoking-cessation programs available to residents who express an interest in quitting.

The state recommends that housing authorities meet with tenants and conduct a written survey to ask them if they want to see their homes become smoke-free before making any changes. Potential consequences for violating the policy are left open to individual housing authorities.

Wilmington Housing Authority board members started talking last year about surveying their residents on a no-smoking policy.

The Billerica Housing Authority took a poll of its tenants a few years ago, resulting in its elderly housing development at 16 River St. going smoke-free in 2012.

"We had some people concerned about it, so we did a survey," Executive Director Bob Cox said. "It was overwhelmingly in support of enacting a no-smoking policy."

People who lived in 16 River St. before the policy was put in place were allowed to keep smoking in their own units, Cox said. Tenants who have moved in since then are held to a smoking ban within the units and within a 25-foot radius of the building.

The DHCD's new smoking-policy guidelines recommend against the practice of grandfathering units, saying it "prolongs the problem of drifting secondhand smoke and complicates enforcement."

Chelmsford's Hedison said "a number of residents" in the properties he oversees complain about their exposure to secondhand smoke, including some who are on oxygen and some who live in older buildings with less advanced ventilation.

"Our units were not designed or built in a way that keeps smells, from food or other odors, from transferring through the air," he said. "What we've found is, in some of our buildings, it's just really, really tough."

According to the state Department of Housing and Community Development, the common walls and central heating and air systems in most of the state's 45,600 public-housing units make it difficult to prevent smoke from spreading between apartments and to eliminate smoke odors fully. 

The state guidelines have been applauded by state Public Health Commissioner Cheryl Bartlett and the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Housing & Redevelopment Officials.

"Smoking is a serious safety and quality-of-life issue for all residents," said Tom Connelly, executive director of the housing officials' group. "Local smoke-free housing policies will address public health issues, reduce maintenance and insurance costs, lessen property loss by fire, and prevent personal injuries."

A national study conducted last year by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that eliminating smoking in all public-housing units in the country would provide an annual savings of $154 million a year, including $101 million from health-care costs related to exposure to secondhand smoke, $32 million from renovation expenses, and $21 million in losses from fires blamed on smoking.

Supporters say the goal of smoking bans would be to reduce health impacts and safety concerns, not to force any current smokers to quit.

"Quite frankly, we know that smoking is harmful," Hedison said. "But in the same breath, if you want to smoke, that's fine. But you have to go outside."