Should You Ban Smoking at Your Properties?

The smoking ban started on airplanes, spread to restaurants and bars and now ready to affect a rental near you! Portland-based property management company Guardian Management LLC will prohibit smoking in half of its 6,000 metro-area apartments starting Sept. 1.

So how will they pull this off? New renters must agree not to smoke; existing renters must do the same when their lease expires or on Jan. 1, whichever comes first, said Jim Wiard, Guardian's portfolio manager.

Off-limit areas include apartments, porches and balconies, common areas and any area within 25 feet of the building. The ban applies to tenants, their guests and anyone else who sets foot onto the property.
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Wow, that's a stiff policy, huh?

With 12,000 units nationwide, Guardian is the largest property management company in the nation to sign on to a multi state push by public health departments and nonprofits to end smoking in rental properties, said Kylie Meiner, tobacco prevention coordinator for Oregon's Multnomah County Health Department.

"After workplaces, the apartments were the next largest places where people were being exposed," Meiner said. "Research shows that when you implement smoke-free policies, whether in a workplace or another setting, it encourages people to quit and prevents youth from starting to smoke."

The American Lung Association got involved after receiving "countless calls from renters about secondhand smoke drifting in from windows and vents," said Colleen Hermann-Franzen, the association's smoke-free housing coordinator.

The coalition set out last year to convince landlords that smoking bans could make business sense. A lung association survey of 400 renters last summer in Multnomah, Clackamas, Clark and Washington counties found that while one-fourth of apartments in the area were smoke-free, about three-fourths of renters wanted smoke-free homes. About 19 percent of smokers smoked daily, and 11 percent of them lit up outside to prevent smoke-damaged apartments.

Source: PAIGE PARKER, The Oregonian