City Health Chief Eyes Smoke-Free Housing

Amid a national movement towards smoke-free public housing, New Haven’s health director is preparing to motivate landlords to ban butts. Renter Clarence ​“Popeye” Dixon said no one should be able tell him what to do in his own home.

Dixon (pictured) said he’s normally a Kool man, but on a recent afternoon he puffed a Newport loosie while sitting at a concrete table in a courtyard in front of Farnam Courts, the housing project he lives in on Grand Avenue near Wooster Square.

“It’s none of their business what people do in their homes,” he said, when informed of a national trend that’s seeing an increasing number of public housing authorities ban cigarettes in their properties.

Karen DuBois-Walton, head of New Haven’s housing authority, said she’s aware of the trend but hasn’t begun to explore the notion of banning cigarettes in the authorities apartments throughout the city.

“I want to promote healthy living and also protect people’s individual rights,” she said. She said she plans to ​“look at the issue” and that no policy change will be made without extensive input from housing authority tenants.

Smoking is banned in public housing in Milford, according to Pat Checko, chairperson of Mobilize Against Tobacco for Children’s Health. She said non-smoking plans are also in place in Bristol, Newington and Norwalk, and smoking is banned in public housing in Boston, Seattle, and all of Maine. Checko said MATCH is looking to work with New Haven’s housing authority to create non-smoking policy here.

Mario Garcia (pictured), New Haven’s health department director, said he’s already begun talking with the authority about smoking cessation in its properties. He said he has a meeting with the authority lined up in January to discuss ​“promoting non-smoking policies in public housing.”

Garcia said he’s also preparing to roll out a program in the new year designed to encourage city landlords to convert their properties into non-smoking homes.

“We certainly would like to see policies or incentives for individuals to smoke less inside private spaces,” Garcia said. ​“We try to educate landlords on the benefits of smoke-free rentals.”

Those benefits include lower renovation costs and the ability to attract more tenants, since most people don’t smoke, Garcia said.

That’s apart from the health benefits of not smoking indoors. Even if people puff only in their own apartments, secondhand smoke still filters out into common areas. Up to 60 percent of the air in any one apartment in a multi-unit building is recycled from the air in other units, said Checko.

Ventilation doesn’t really work,” she said. ​“It may clear the smell, but it doesn’t really get out the over 700 toxins that are in smoke.”

It’s particularly dangerous for children, Garcia said. Mothers who smoke are more likely to have low-birthweight babies, and their babies are more likely to suffer sudden infant death syndrome, Garcia said. Children exposed to cigarette smoke are more likely to have respiratory infections and bronchitis, he said.

“We have about 3,000 children diagnosed with asthma” in city schools, Garcia said. Secondhand smoke can trigger asthma attacks in those kids.

Starting in the new year, Garcia said, the health department will contact property management companies and landlord associations to talk about the benefits of smoke-free rentals.

One of those benefits is cost reduction, Checko said. ​“It costs eight times more to turn over an apartment from someone who has been a heavy smoker than from someone who’s never smoked,” she said. ​“You may actually even see yellow walls from all the tars and nicotines.”

While it’s important to look at private housing, public housing is the front line of the battle, Garcia said. ​“A lot of the hard-core smoking population lives in public housing.”

Dixon said he’s lived in Farnam Courts off and on for 53 of his 55 years. ​“People should be able to smoke anywhere they want to smoke,” he said. ​“What are they going to come up with next? You can’t drink in your own apartment?”

Another tenant, who declined to give his name, acknowledged that secondhand smoke is bad for people’s health. ​“That does harm people!” he said. ​“Carbon monoxide — it harms people.”

“It still doesn’t give anybody the right to tell you where to smoke,” Dixon replied.

He said he draws the line at smoking around small children. ​“If you’ve got a baby in the house, you’ve got to respect that.”

“I think people shouldn’t smoke,” the other man said. ​“But you can’t tell people what to do.”

Nezzie Ransom (pictured), a non-smoker who said she’s lived in Farnam Courts for 46 years, agreed with the sentiment.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said of a hypothetical smoking ban. ​“When you pay rent, it’s your business. I don’t think you can stop nobody from smoking in their own house.”

Ransom said she thinks any attempt to ban smoking indoors would be unenforceable. ​“They’re going to smoke anyway. It doesn’t make a difference.”