Amidst Opposition, Cambridge Housing Authority Bans Smoking in Public Housing Buildings

Cambridge Housing Authority commissioners voted 3-1 Wednesday to ban smoking in all city-owned public housing, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from residents and other community members.

The ban, which follows in the footsteps of a similar 2011 Boston Housing Authority decision, was first presented to commissioners this past May as part of the Housing Authority’s Healthy Air Initiative, aimed at improving public health.

Under the ban, tenants who wish to smoke must move to designated areas located at least 25 feet away from building doors or windows. Tenants caught smoking repeatedly after the enactment date of Aug. 1, 2014 can be subject to warnings or even legal action.

Opponents of the smoking ban say it is unfair to tenants and infringes on their privacy. One of these opponents, Stephen Helfer, a retired employee of the Harvard Law School library and a smokers’ rights advocate who is not a Housing Authority tenant, expressed concern about the ban’s impact on senior and disabled residents.

“The ban would require elderly and disabled people, some of them who have been smoking more than 50 years, to go out even at night or in the snow to have a cigarette,” Helfer said in a phone interview Thursday evening. He added that he believes issues like these are “more about social control than are protecting the health of the public.”

Another opponent, Paul Neff, a Cantabrigian who does not live in Cambridge Housing Authority public housing, claimed that the ban’s supporters are “attacking something that has been a human tradition for god knows how long.”

Prior to Wednesday’s meeting, Helfer and other opponents submitted a petition protesting the ban that has garnered almost 800 signatures from city residents, according to Helfer.

Despite this opposition, a survey conducted by the Cambridge Housing Authority in January 2013 found that a significant majority of Housing Authority residents actually approve of such a ban. Among the 538 responses to the survey, 77 percent endorsed smoking bans both inside and outside, while nearly 80 percent said they wanted to live in a smoke-free environment.

The same survey recorded comments from Housing Authority tenants. Referring to the dangers of secondhand smoke, one smoking-ban advocate who responded to the survey wrote, “I would hope to die from natural causes, not from the negligence of someone who didn’t care.”

The approved ban proposal originated primarily from health concerns related to secondhand smoke. According to a recent National Cancer Institute study cited in a report on the survey results, non-smokers who live in Cambridge public housing are exposed to daily secondhand smoke intake equivalent to smoking between one quarter of a cigarette and a full cigarette.

The Housing Authority also held a 60-day public comment period on the ban proposal, during which multiple hearings at the Housing Authority’s largest housing developments took place. Helfer said that about 80 percent of residents who spoke at these hearings “strongly” opposed the ban.

Though Neff said he “wasn’t surprised” by the Housing Authority’s decision Wednesday, both Neff and Helfer said that they plan to continue fighting the issue.