Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly.

[Refugee 7]

BELMONT, Calif. — During her 50 years of smoking, Edith Frederickson says, she has lit up in restaurants and bars, airplanes and trains, and indoors and out, all as part of a two-pack-a-day habit that she regrets not a bit. But as of two weeks ago, Ms. Frederickson can no longer smoke in the one place she loves the most: her home.

Ms. Frederickson lives in an apartment in Belmont, Calif., a quiet Silicon Valley city that is now home to perhaps the nation’s strictest antismoking law, effectively outlawing lighting up in all apartment buildings.

“I’m absolutely outraged,” said Ms. Frederickson, 72, pulling on a Winston as she sat on a concrete slab outside her single-room apartment. “They’re telling you how to live and what to do, and they’re doing it right here in America.”

And that the ban should have originated in her very building — a sleepy government-subsidized retirement complex called Bonnie Brae Terrace — is even more galling. Indeed, according to city officials, a driving force behind the passage of the law was a group of retirees from the complex who lobbied the city to stop secondhand smoke from drifting into their apartments from the neighbors’ places.

“They took it upon themselves to do something about it,” said Valerie Harnish, the city’s information services manager. “And they did.”

Public health advocates are closely watching to see what happens with Belmont, seeing it as a new front in their national battle against tobacco, one that seeks to place limits on smoking in buildings where tenants share walls, ceilings and — by their logic — air. Not surprisingly, habitually health-conscious California has been ahead of the curve on the issue, with several other cities passing bans on smoking in most units in privately owned apartment buildings, but none has gone as far as Belmont, which prohibits smoking in any apartment that shares a floor or ceiling with another, including condominiums.

“I think Belmont broke through this invisible barrier in the sense that it addressed drifting smoke in housing as a public health issue,” said Serena Chen, the regional director of policy and tobacco programs for the American Lung Association of California. “They simply said that secondhand smoke is no less dangerous when it’s in your bedroom than in your workplace.”

At a local level, the debate over the law has divided the residents of the Bonnie Brae into two camps, with the likes of Ms. Frederickson, a hardy German émigré, on one side, and Ray Goodrich, a slim 84-year-old with a pulmonary disease and a lifelong allergy problem, on the other.

And, as with all combatants, there is a mix of respect and animosity.

“She is one tough old woman,” Mr. Goodrich said.

Ms. Frederickson is less loving.

“I would not acknowledge that man for anything in the world,” she said. “He started this as a vendetta against other residents.”

A soft-spoken North Carolinian who grew up playing in tobacco warehouses as a child, Mr. Goodrich hardly seems the vendetta type, but he did say he noticed smoke drifting in from neighbors’ rooms soon after he moved into Bonnie Brae in 1998.

“It gave me an instant headache, kind of like an iron band around the head,” Mr. Goodrich said. “I could be sitting and have the air filters going, which eliminated the visible smoke, but the smoke was still there.”

He finally decided he had had enough after a fire broke out in a smoker’s room in the complex in 2003, a blaze that was fed by the tenant’s oxygen tank.

“I came around the corner, and there was just a giant puff of black smoke, and I knew I wasn’t going to last five seconds in that,” Mr. Goodrich said. “It was like Dante’s inferno up there.”

Determined to root out smokers, Mr. Goodrich began a letter-writing campaign, petitioning everyone from local officials to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps finance the privately managed Bonnie Brae, which serves low- and middle-income seniors.

“We need your help,” read one of Mr. Goodrich’s letters in July 2006. “A barking dog disturbs our sleep but will not kill us. Secondhand smoke is killing us.”

That letter caught the attention of several members of the Belmont City Council, including Dave Warden, a Belmont native and software consultant who served on the council until 2007. Mr. Warden said council members were particularly moved when Mr. Goodrich followed up with repeated visits to council meetings, often joined by other Bonnie Brae tenants — using walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen tanks — and telling harrowing tales of life surrounded by secondhand smoke.

“I think that they didn’t have a grand strategy, I think they just wanted some change, and they didn’t know how to get it,” he said. “And once it got discussed seriously, they got very encouraged.”

But as word spread, council members also started to receive complaints — including threatening e-mail messages — implying that Belmont, about 20 miles south of the liberal climes of San Francisco, had become a “nanny state.” Mr. Goodrich was also feeling the hate, he said, getting “cold stares and dead silence” from smokers at the complex.

“The worst place you can be is between an addict and their fix,” he said. It did not help, he said, that most of the smokers were younger — “they don’t live as long,” he said — and more vocal.

But finally, after more than a year of deliberation, the Council passed the law in October 2007, barring smoking anywhere in the city of about 25,000 except in detached homes and yards, streets and some sidewalks, and designated smoking areas outside.

The law took effect on Jan. 9, after a 14-month grace period that allowed apartment buildings time to comply with the new rules — like rewriting lease agreements to ban smoking — and tenants who objected to the changes to move. The law brings with it the threat of $100 fines, though city officials say no penalties have been levied yet.

Mr. Goodrich says his days in politics are over.

“I’m working on my second retirement,” he said. “The smoking stuff was my last hurrah.”

He says he suspects that some residents still smoke secretly late at night, while others crowd the small outdoor areas where smoking is still allowed.

Ms. Frederickson is one of those, at least for the time being; after all, she says, she is looking to move out of Belmont if she can find something cheap enough.

Until then, however, she seems defiant, despite feeling like a criminal in Belmont.

“And I’m going to keep being a criminal, let me tell you that,” she said.

[Square One 0]

My stepdad passed away four years ago from lung cancer and my mom was recently diagnosed with lung cancer from smoking most of her life - she is a "tough (sweet) old woman" and won't acknowledge anyone's perspective on her smoking - and now she has to go through hell to take care of the damage done. Ms. Frederickson is lucky she hasn't crossed that path yet. It's one thing to acknowledge you have an addiction and that it's hard to kick but to act and talk ignorantly is just...... ugh.....I have a low tolerance.

hope I don't offend anyone who smokes! ;(

[brandonwood20 0]

^Great comments. Sorry to hear about your folks. Not an easy thing for you to deal with either!

I have to say, I think we are treading dangerously close to limiting freedom here. I know it's not a smart thing to do, smoke, and I don't do it but I don't think I can tell someone else not to smoke in their own house....

What do you all think?

[Square One 0]

Brandonwood20, I do agree with you on that - I don't think we should be telling people they can't smoke in their own homes, but I do wish people would be a little more cognizant of how it affects (if not themselves) other people around them. My mom growls at me (in a sweet way - lol) whenever I bring it up. This has gone on for years and finally the surgeon lit into her last week while discussing the next step and she admitted to him that she is still smoking ....

[Refugee 7]

This isn't that woman's own home. This woman is living in a government-subsidized retirement complex. She does not own the apartment she lives in. She's just a "guest" paying rent.

If I owned an apartment complex, darn right I would forbid smoking. It's a fire risk and the smell and discoloration the smoke leaves is damaging and is just nasty.

I have really bad asthma and allergies, I'm also a former two pack a day chain smoker. Guess how I got asthma?

Sorry, you want to ruin your health, you go right ahead, be my guest, but don't take me down with you.

Smoking is not an act of freedom. It's a bad habit.

[brandonwood20 0]

^Yeah those are very true comments. Ref, I would do the same thing as far as not allowing smoking in MY apartment complex! It's a bad habit I agree! However, there are milllions of bad habits and we can't outlaw them all.

I think that if you knowly move into a unit that doesn't allow smoking, that's one thing. But if you have lived in a place for 30 years and they say all of a sudden you can't smoke there I would be upset too.

I missed the part about it being a Government owned apartment. If that's the case then I can see that.

[brandonwood20 0]

By the way, I don't mean to offend. I'm bad at phrasing things so if it seems upsetting I probably didn't mean for it to be!!!

[LizzieB 0]

I'm with you, Ref. When it impacts other people, you don't have the right to smoke whenever and wherever you want. I'm all for banning it in public places, even if that is public housing.

I'm sure it pisses off the smokers, but they just don't understand how pervasive cigarette smoke is.

[brandonwood20 0]

Well, I think I'm out voted... Sorry smokers I tried!!

Thanks for talking with me about this guys!!

[Echosoftom 3]

My younger sister went through this very issue in her last apartment. The people downstairs (husband and wife) both smoked heavily. The smoke easily found it's way up to her bedroom. She'd be coughing and choking in her sleep because they smoked all hours of the day and night. Cigarette smoke comes through walls, doors, windows, everything. It would be nice if more apartment owners adopted this policy.

My other sister fell out with her ex mother-in-law because my sister refused to let her smoke in her brand new car. She got angry, got out of the car and stomped back into the house. My sister's attitude was too bad, too sad!

Cigarette smoke kills and it causes alot of damage not to just the smokers but the innocent bystanders (non-smokers) as well.

When are people going to get that through their heads? :confused:

I'm so glad I finally stopped!

[Marzirose 0]

While I do not like smoking (the smoke messes up my asthma something bad), you can't really tell a woman who's lived in an apartment 10+ years she all of a sudden can't have a cigarette in her home. I can see why she's upset.

He finally decided he had had enough after a fire broke out in a smoker’s room in the complex in 2003, a blaze that was fed by the tenant’s oxygen tank.

^And why did this dude light up while on oxygen?

[Refugee 7]

^ That's a risk no other tenant in that building should have to be exposed to.

Once again, that woman is just renting. She does NOT own that unit. They can tell her whatever the hell they want. May not be fair, but that is the way it is.

[Wingspan91089 0]

^ I agree with you Ref. Other people will rent that apartment when she's done with it, and other people after them, and so on.... they might not like living with the permanent smell of smoke in their walls.

[angelic_22 0]

or the smell of old people

Who are they going to go after next once they have outlawed smoking?

Will it be:

a) people who drink alcohol

people who get sun tans

c) people who are overweight

d) people who listen to music too loud

e) people who sit too close to the TV

f) people who don't exercise 30 min a day

etc. etc. etc.

Oh the list is endless. Everyone is on it. Get ready folks, your turn is coming up soon!

[Carol 0]

All kinds of rights will keep going away. No doubt about it.

Sorry Ref but your wrong about renting versus owning. Once you rent the property it becomes the "renters" property. I can't think of the legal words but that is the way it is. It most certainly is the renter's property.

Sorry folks no pets no meat no smoke no music no you can't have a life if you rent. I don't think so.

Tenant's do have property rights.

[Refugee 7]

So do the owners, lol.

[Carol 0]

That's what I thought. I just got rid of some tenants that proved that wrong. So they got away for about $2,000 of rent and more for damages. Watch who you rent too.

Anyway, yes smoking is really a horrible habit.

[Refugee 7]

^ That sucks, Carol.

I think CA has stricter laws than CO in regards to landlord/tenant and they seem to favor the landlord more.

Can you take them to small claims court to recoup your losses? Or...is that a waste of time?

[Carol 0]

Waste of time and money. I don't believe they had the money so they squatted on the place. I couldn't even go on the property to start the yard clean up without a lot of legal papers.

I'm just glad they are gone.

There are so many foreclosures I can only imagine that all of this is going to get a lot worse.

No handguns either! Of course, I'm not going to know what they are doing. Imagine if he decided to use a gun or something.

I felt like I had the right to pay for everything and was liable. That was all.

[Refugee 7]

^ I'm very sorry to read that, Carol. That really does suck.

[Carol 0]

Thanks.

I think that law actually prevents the landowner from being responsible for things like illegal drugs and what not that may go on due to the tenant.

It's their private property until eviction is complete.

They just need to separate living areas.

You do need to put in new carpet and paint for smoker's kids and pets.

That's added into the rent for people with those type of lifestyles.

Carry on. Just my 2 cents.

[agirl 0]

I say good for them!! I'm so sick of having to smell other peoples smoke. Smokers don't realize that it permeates into everything. Carol, alot of places now put it into the lease, no smoking in or around the apartment or house. But this is CA.

[wild1forever 152]

This is a semi-local story for me, so I'd already heard about this issue.

the Council passed the law in October 2007, barring smoking anywhere in the city of about 25,000 except in detached homes and yards, streets and some sidewalks, and designated smoking areas outside.

In general, I'm opposed to nanny-state laws. In this case, though, I have no problem with this law as long as there is a designated smoking area available outdoors.

[brandonwood20 0]

Relic has a point though. What about deep fat fryers? They start fires, they make people fat, they stink up the joint something terrible? Outlaw deep fat fryer in homes?

Ouch Carol! That is terrible. Why don't some people take responsibliliy for their actions??