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How to Convert or Create a Smoke Free Policy in Your Building Smoking is limited by law in many common areas of social gathering. We see more bars and restaurants excluding tobacco smoke on the premises. Other solutions to the growing demands of non smokers are to demand that smokers be limited to certain areas. Transportation platforms and offices also exclude smoking. Perhaps the time has come for a smoke free policy in residences. Landlords can adopt a policy which requires all or part of a building to be smoke free including individual apartments and condominiums. There is no law which prohibits this. Smokers are not a protected class. That means there are no Federal or State laws anti discrimination that protect smokers. Furthermore, There is no constitutional or other legal right to smoke, even in one's own rental unit or all in common areas such as hallways, elevators and even private grounds outside the property. Therefore, as an owner or manager of property you can discriminate against smokers by not allowing them into your rental units. This is good business.
Why Prohibit Smoking? Smoking can cause other tenants to complain as smoke drifts into no smokers apartments. Under certain circumstances an owner can be required to move a tenant. If you have a tenant that is disabled or ill, second hand smoke can cause a habitability issue. A smoke free environment is also good business because smoking is unsafe and can cause a fire. A smoke free building will lower your insurance premiums. We had a situation where a tenant put a cigarette out on a top floor unit with a wooden deck and burned the unit and the roof down. The damage was almost one million dollars and all the other tenants had to be moved until the repair was complete. Tars and Nicotine are dirty and cleaning the unit for new rentals is more costly and time consuming and promoting a healthy and clean environment is more desirable making it easier to rent
How to Establish a Smoke Free Policy If the building is vacant then you are in luck, simply don't rent to smokers and include a no smoking addendum in your lease. 1.Read your lease, it may ban smoking and then simply enforcing a no smoking policy is easy. 2. Notify all tenants that you will be moving towards a smoke-free building. 3. Put up no smoking signs in all the common areas of the building. In some cases the ban will be upheld if it is an enclosed place where people work. 4. Existing smokers stay, but you have some tactical choices. First you convert your property to the new smoke-free policy at the time of lease renewal. Second, If you have existing tenants that smoke you could issue a change of terms with a thirty day notice. This could cause bad feelings and it might not be enforceable because you generally cannot make unilateral changes to existing arrangements. Finally, you could ask that smoking be prohibited to certain areas. Its surprising how many people understand that their smoking habit is offensive to others and will comply. 5. You may also want to establish a smoke free environment for new tenants and grandfather the existing smokers. Your building would gradually becoming a non smoking residence as the older tenants move. 6. Place a sign below the non-smoking sign asking tenants to call if smoking is seen in the building or in non smoking areas. Landlords have suggested this to us and say that it is very effective in curbing smokers. Smoking in a non smoking area can be grounds for termination of the lease. 7. HUD has produced a smoke free policy letter that landlords may use - you can find it here.
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