Smoking may be uniformly banned in public housing across the U.S. — in common areas and in individual homes — if HUD gets its way. The agency announced the measure today.
“We have a responsibility to protect public housing residents from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, especially the elderly and children who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases,” HUD Secretary Julián Castro said in a statement. “This proposed rule will help improve the health of more than 760,000 children and help public housing agencies save $153 million every year in healthcare, repairs and preventable fires.”
A number of public housing authorities in cities around America have already banned smoking. Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) banned smoking in all PHA units, becoming the largest city in the country so far to do so. The PHA system has about 80,000 residents.
The New York Times reports that HUD’s proposal would significantly impact the New York Public Housing Authority (NYCHA). Over 400,000 people live in its approximately 178,000 apartments, making it the largest public housing agency in the country. Those numbers alone have the potential to form a considerable challenge to HUD from residents pushing back on losing control over what they can do at home.
There are 1.2 million public housing units nationwide. Public housing agencies in Houston, Boston, Detroit and Maine have also already implemented smoking bans. The Times reports that over 600 agencies housing 200,000 households have voluntarily banned indoor smoking since 2009, when the federal government’s push for smoking bans in public housing began.
The Times also notes how the rule could worsen existing struggles for public housing agencies trying to enforce rules already in place.
“It’s a fraught process, because to do it properly you need community buy-in,” Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, told the Times. “To do this successfully, it can’t be a top-down edict, because you want people to comply with the policy.”
Marielle Mondon is an editor and freelance journalist in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia City Paper, Wild Magazine, and PolicyMic. She previously reported on communities in Northern Manhattan while earning an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University.
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