Housing bans smoking
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PORTLAND — Tenants who live in Maine public housing— including three complexes in Aroostook County — will breathe easier starting next year as each of the state’s 20 housing authorities have now adopted smoke-free policies.
The Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield and Van Buren housing authorities are among those in the state whose policies go into effect Jan. 1, 2012. Though 250 public housing authorities throughout the nation have passed such policies, Maine is the first state to have all of its public housing authorities achieve this level of protection for their residents.
“We know that in Maine over 75 percent of tenants surveyed want to live in smoke-free housing. Our goal is to have the supply of smoke-free housing meet that demand,” said Tina Pettingill, a founder of the Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine which receives support from the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Coalition is a unique public-private partnership that has been working with public housing authorities and property owners throughout Maine since 2004. The Maine State Housing Authority has been a supporter of the smoke-free concept since the beginning of the Coalition’s efforts.
“Encouraging and supporting our public housing authorities and subsidized housing to adopt smoke-free housing policies has made perfect sense for us,” said Executive Director Dale McCormick. “Maine Housing’s mission is to assist people in obtaining safe and affordable housing, and we recognize that a building which contains tobacco smoke is not safe for the residents who live there.”
The dangers of secondhand smoke have been gaining attention over the past 10 years. The most recent U.S. Surgeon General’s report published in 2010 stated that, “The debate is over, the science is clear; there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) heard the message and responded with two memos strongly encouraging all HUD funded and subsidized properties to pass smoke-free policies. These memos have impacted property owners and managers in Maine, and throughout the nation.
In addition to the obvious health benefits, a smoke-free policy can also save housing authorities money.
“Property owners can save between $500 and $5,000 per unit at turnover,” said Pettingill. “Allowing smoking in a building damages and can ruin carpets, laminates, walls, appliances and furniture; where smoking is allowed, there is potential for costly damages to a property. The expenses associated with making these necessary repairs are prohibitive for most property owners and remedied by simply barring smoking in the building.”
The Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine (PTM) is the state’s tobacco prevention and control program at Maine CDC, Department of Health and Human Services. The PTM emphasizes that smoke-free housing policies are not about displacing renters or asking people to quit smoking. Years of research demonstrates that secondhand smoke travels between units, and the only way to protect people from involuntary exposure is to prohibit smoking inside the building.
“These policies are about requiring people who smoke to go outside of the building where the smoke cannot harm others,” said Dr. Sheila Pinette, director of the Maine CDC, noting that while smoke-free housing policies do tend to serve as a motivator for people to consider quitting, that is not the basis for the initiative. “This is about protecting the child with asthma, the elderly person with emphysema and the people living in multi-unit buildings who are being involuntarily exposed to secondhand smoke.”
The Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine is comprised of over 50 public health advocates, tenants, landlords, property managers, legal professionals, environmental health professionals and many others working since 2004 to protect Maine residents in multi-unit housing from involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke. The Coalition provides free technical assistance and tools for adopting, implementing and enforcing smoke-free policies in multi-unit properties throughout Maine.
To learn more, log onto www.smokefreeforme.org.
