Connected to—but an offshoot from—the other smokers’ rights thread in this forum. Do you feel that apartment owners or complexes should be able to designate certain buildings smoke-free if they so choose?
My mother—mentioned in that other thread—finds the garden-apartment complex she lives in problematic. A smoker lives right below her, and whenever he lights up, her apartment fills with smoke. She has to open the windows, turn the fan on, and wander from room to room, finding the least smokey. I must add that she would never think of asking him not to smoke in his own apartment! Which is the crux of the problem. Next time I move (which I hope will be soon), I plan to get a ground-floor apartment, as I too have had to breathe my downstairs neighbors’ smoke too often.
What do you all think? I know there have been fracases (and brouhahas) about “no children” apartments; has there ever been a “smoke free” one?
Yes. As much as i hate to say it, being a smoker, there are dumb smokers that start fires and it seems that the owner of the building, who pays the insurance against damage such as accidental fires that destroy the property, should be able to protect his investment in that most reasonable way.
If you mean, “No smoking on this property”, though, including, say, the balcony and such, then I think that is pushing things. Though some do disallow patio BBQs for just that reason (fire).
Sucks, but this smoker would bend (after raising hell and bitching about it, of course).
I should add, on that pretense, that candles and incense should also be banned as a similar hazard, except candles could have an exception which allowed their use during power-outages, or religious reasons.
We need a smoking religon, damn it. God gave me these lungs to smoke with! Amen.
But I am not talking about smoking as a fire hazard. I am talking about people being able to rent an apartment where they know they will not have to constantly breathe or smell the cigarette (or cigar or pipe or pot) smoke of other tenants in their own apartment.
You must be kidding. What kind of apartment construction is so poor that you can smell cigarette smoke from a downstairs neighbor? I can almost see it from an insurance perspective but I’m sure a kitchen fire is just as likely as a fire started by a careless smoker. I don’t see apartment complexes having a ban on cooking in the apartments any time soon.
I think I pay a bit more for insurance as a smoker, FWIW. I never smoke indoors though; that’s nasty.
Ditto DSeid I would only have a problem with it if the gov’t came in and legislated that a certain percentage of an apt building MUST be nonsmoking.
Eve I’m sorry about your mom. Has she complained to the landlord? I would agree with Rugburn about the poor construction of the building. When I lived in CA, I could smell the pot smoke drifting up from the apt below me, but that was only because we were both on our respective balconies. I smelled nothing when the sliding glass door was shut.
Eve, and the Clinton affair was only a quest for justice, right? If they can do it for one reason, they can do it.
I’ve never lived in such an apartment building. I didn’t even know they existed! But, if that’s the case, I want saurkraut banned, too. Gah! [barfs on keyboard at the thought of the smell]
That’s a pretty piss poor apartment she lives in if smokes from the apartment below her is bothering her. I wouldn’t have a problem with apartments banning tobacco smoke from any building they own.
I’ve lived in some pretty poor apartments, where everything- from the slightest noise to every puff of smoke- drifts into it’s neightboring apartments. There are some crappy apartements out there, and plenty of just plain old apartments. While most apartments in affluent areas were built in the seventies and eighties, a lot of inner-cities are filled with aparement complexes dating back to the twenties, thirties or fourties (like mine), a time far before modern building codes.
Not everyone can afford to live in well-maintained apartments. Still, people who live in cheap apartments don’t deserve to be exposed to signifigant and preventable health risks because of where they have to live.
Apartment complexes aleready regulate plenty of stuff- like if you can have pets or waterbeds or use your aparement for big parties. And semi-apartment settings, like college dorms, already ban plenty of things including smoking, christmas lights, drinking in the presence of underage people, etc. etc. I see no reason why a private aparement complex couldn’'t do the same.
There are apartment buildings for elderly/disabled people which ban smoking. Granted, they’re expensive, but you pay for what you get.
In my experience–and no, I don’t have cites and I’m not going to try and find any, plus the only apartments I’ve lived in have been in the Southwest–apartments from the first half of the century are either heavy plaster-over-lath or concrete block. Granted, the weatherstripping is minimal or non-existent, but the building I live in is 100 years old this year, and you can’t smell anything if your door and transom are closed.
I live in an apartment right next to some smokers and I can’t leave my bedroom window open without smelling their smoke. I also cannot walk out my front door without smelling it. I have no problem with them smoking, I used to be a smoker too. I don’t think it would be fair to tell them they can’t smoke in their own apartment though, or outside. I would of gone nuts if someone would of tried to do that to me when I was a smoker.
And to echo DSeid and ivylass, of course the apartment owner should be able to designate buildings (or the entire complex) as smokefree. Is that not the case now?
That said, dreamer raises an interesting point. If I were a smoker and signed a lease to live in some apartment for a year and subsequently the owner decided to ban smoking on the complex, I would be quite upset. Would that be grounds for vacating the lease or something?
Smoker here. I’m all for it. Hell, if my kickass landlords decided to ban it in their building, it would probably give me an incentive to quit, if only to keep the apartment.
Eh, probably. I would think, though, that this would defeat the entire purpose of establishing a smokefree apartment complex. I mean, I could advertise my apartment complex as “by this time next year, there will be no smoking allowed on these premises; until then, some people can and some people can’t,” but I’m not sure that really buys me anything until whenever the last lease before the ban was created expires. Certainly I have nothing against doing this, but it seems a little silly somehow.
Fortunately for all involved, I will probably never be in a position to have to worry about how I’m going to turn my apartment complex into a smokeless environment.
There are a lot of variables–whether your area is a renters’ market or a landlords’ market, for one–but some apartments offer leases as short as six or nine months. The smokers in the building will have until their lease expires, presumably within that six-or-nine month period that a new leassee would have the option to sign to quit smoking or move.
My mother and I both live in nice buildings, not tarpaper shacks! In fact, I hope to move into her garden-apt. complex someday soon. Hers was built c1970; fairly good construction (well, for the '70s). But she can smell the cooking and smoking odors of her downstairs neighbor. I live in a very sturdily-built house from the 1820s, and when I had smokers living below me, I could smell it, too.
No, she hasn’t complained to the landlord or to her downstairs neighbor: what would she say, “Don’t let Gerry smoke in his own apartment?” She certainly realizes the foolishness of that. So she just deals as well as she can with the situation and hopes a nonsmoker moves in after Gerry.
Her complex, by the way, used to designate several buildings as “no children,” but that fell by the wayside in the past few years.
" . . . and the Clinton affair was only a quest for justice, right?"
Eve, regardless of “how nice” your or your mother’s apartment is, you shouldn’t have to inhale your neighbor’s smoke. I hope that you can somehow resolve the problem.
It’s silly that everyone keeps saying “must be a crappy apratment.” That’s beyond the point, as this isn’t a socioeconomic issue.
