Butting in
Pasadena council considers banning smoking in apartments and condos
By Jake Armstrong 12/03/2009
Kathy Braidhill teaches Pilates and rides a bike, so the smoker’s cough she developed over the past year was a real surprise — especially since she doesn’t smoke cigarettes.
But the neighbors who a year ago moved into the unit below her Pasadena condo do light up, and through her open windows wafts secondhand smoke that she says tarnishes furniture, stains curtains and harms her health.
“It’s like waking up in the middle of a bar at closing time. It is the most horrendous, distressing thing I can imagine,” said the author and former Pasadena Star-News reporter.
Braidhill said she even pressed the board of her homeowners’ association to act on the issue, but its members had no idea how to handle problems beyond loud stereos or barking dogs.
But Pasadena’s policy-makers are expected to begin discussions on an ordinance limiting smoking in condos, apartments and other multi-family complexes, potentially joining a growing group of California cities reaching into living rooms to impose restrictions on smoking.
About a dozen cities, Glendale included, have already approved restrictions ranging from a ban on smoking in laundry rooms and other common areas to prohibiting smoking outright. Leaders in South Pasadena and Santa Monica are set to discuss similar bans in the next two months.
If history is any lesson, any proposed restrictions are bound to meet cries that city leaders are encroaching too far into residents’ lives and restricting a personal right to take part in a legal activity.
But without a ban, condo owners and tenants have only the drastic option of moving if they are bothered by smoke, said Wes Reutimann, director of community programs for Day One, an organization that works to reduce problems with alcohol, drugs and tobacco locally.
“There’s no reason second-hand smoke shouldn’t be considered as much of a nuisance as some the other things renters have recourse to do something about,” he said.
Last October, the Pasadena City Council unanimously outlawed smoking outdoors at shopping malls, bars, restaurants and near lines for ATMs or movie tickets. Five years prior, the council voted to prohibit smoking in city-owned parks and within 20 feet of workplace entrances.
Councilman Steve Madison, one of the key council members behind the 2003 smoking ban in parks, said the path the city is charting on smoking is apparent. “I do think that clearly the trend is moving in this direction of prohibiting smoking anywhere that it can affect other people. And we’ve tried to move deliberately and yet progressively,” he said.
Madison said he sees the need for restrictions as the convergence of two factors: a societal trend toward discouraging smoking and a steady increase in the number of multi-family units in Pasadena. That puts squarely before the council the question of how to protect from second-hand smoke the increasing number of residents living in those units.
“It’s a confrontation here between two trends,” Madison said. “I don’t think any right-thinking person could say that if you live below me and you are smoking two packs a day that it is not going to impact me. The question is; what is the right balance to strike from a public policy perspective?”
Day One has fielded a number of smoking complaints from residents in multi-family complexes, Reutimann said.
“Unfortunately, there is little that can be done in this city because the city of Pasadena has not moved into this area like other cities,” Reutimann said.
So the group began circulating a petition — it’s gathered a few hundred signatures so far — and has been pushing the council to put in place at least basic safeguards for apartment dwellers living among smokers, such as disclosures for new tenants or designating areas as non-smoking.
A Pasadena Health Department report on the costs and challenges other cities have faced in enforcing multi-family unit smoking bans will likely go before the council’s Public Safety Commission next month, said Dr. Takeshi Wada, the city’s health officer.
The Glendale City Council, which a year ago voted to ban smoking in common areas and require property owners to notify prospective tenants of smokers living in the building, may consider enhancing the city’s restrictions in January, said Steven Koszis, an administrative analyst for the city. The council may move to set a percentage on the number of smoking units allowed in a complex.
So far, the city’s enforcement efforts have been educational and the community has been receptive, though a few $100 citations have been issued to repeat scofflaws, Koszis said.
“A lot of people have embraced it and they have been waiting for it for a long time,” he said.
In a recent measure of Pasadena’s anti-smoking efforts, the American Lung Association gave the city a B grade — up from a C last year — in its annual assessment of smoking controls in local governments across the state. Glendale, which last year passed restrictions on smoking in common areas of multi-family units, was the only city in the state that received an A. Pasadena was one of 11 cities and counties to get a B.
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Comments
It is apparent to me that councilman Madison has lost his mind. The city has no right to tell me or anyone that I cannot smoke in my apartment. I pay rent and that is my living space.
This woman Kathy Braidhill is another one who has lost her mind. Does she seriously believe that smoke from a floor below is actually going to do the harm she says it is and tarnish her furniture? It is rising from an entire floor below from OUTSIDE!
Seeing as how Kathy rides a bike perhaps it is all the pollution she is breathing in from the cars driving around the city that is causing her smokers cough.
After this what is next? Is the city going to ban the consumption of alcohol inside your apartment or chewing gum? Where does it end? The government whether it be local, state, or federal has no business inside our homes. I would love to sit down with Kathy and councilman Madison and chat with them about this at any time.
I also live in a condo and I have a neighbour below who likes to smoke on the balcony. Well, of course it is some discomfort for me, but I believe he has right to do everything he wants in his apartment. In my turn I like to listen to loud music (I often find it at music search http://www.mp3hunting.com ). I'm sure it bothers my neighbor but at the same time music brings a lot of pleasure to me. That is why though I don't like when people smoke I think that every person can smoke or do whatever he or she wants at home.
If you'd like additional information about the issue of drifting tobacco smoke in housing, including how to support this local effort and what steps other California cities have taken to protect their residents from unwanted exposure to drifting tobacco smoke in their homes and how to get involved, please check out the Pasadena coalition's website here:
www.center4tobaccopolicy.org/Pasadena-Sm...