Landlords want cleaner air for social housing

By Rosa Saba

Landlords in Ottawa are being urged by tenant and advocacy groups — especially during National Smoking Week — to make their buildings smoke-free.

Many buildings in Ottawa are already smoke-free, including Beaver Barracks in Centretown, according to the Ottawa Council on Smoking or Health.

The council has been advocating for smoke-free housing since the 1970s, said organization president Carol McDonald.

“It’s been a long fight, but we’re getting there,” McDonald said, adding that the first workplace in North America to ban smoking inside was in Ottawa.

Ray Sullivan, executive director of the Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation, said that when a citizen brought forward a proposition several years ago for smoke-free housing, he was skeptical it would pass at the organization’s general meeting.

But the board of directors surprised him by endorsing the idea, which resulted in a new site under construction at the time being made entirely smoke-free.

“We chose those buildings because they were brand-new buildings, and everybody would be entering with the same clauses,” Sullivan said. “It’s a bigger challenge when you’re talking about existing buildings.”

McDonald said over the years, there has been a rise in smoke-free housing in Ottawa, especially in social housing, though many regular apartment buildings are becoming smoke-free, as well.

She said the organization still receives many complaints about smoke issues in apartment buildings.

“Ten years ago, I felt sort of hopeless about the situation,” she said, “but there is progress being made, and I think with all the new condos going up, this is the perfect time… there’s no excuse for a brand-new building to have smoking in it.”

Though Ontario is currently working on proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, which would give landlords more freedom when it comes to enforcing smoking bans, Sullivan said a signed agreement between the landlord and the tenant is enough, just like the corporation is already doing.

“The key is that it has to be recognized in the lease,” he said. “The lease is a contract between the landlord and the tenant.”

Sullivan said a few eviction notices have been served due to the ban, but nobody has been evicted.

“The notice is enough to let them know that this is serious,” he said.

Both Sullivan and McDonald stressed the fact that a fully non-smoking building does not discriminate against tenants who smoke and that a landlord does not have the right to choose tenants based on whether or not they smoke.

In older buildings, Sullivan said, the majority of tenants agree to change their leases in order to add a no-smoking clause. If they decide not to, he said this is their right, and that tenant turnover will eventually result in a fully non-smoking building.

Brett Boyden is a Carleton student and the landlord of a smoke-free house. Though he smokes himself, he said he thinks apartment buildings should be smoke-free, in part due to the damage smoke can cause to an apartment, and also as a matter of respect to the other inhabitants of the building.

“I think the standard should be smoke-free,” Boyden said. “Smoke just causes a lot of issues.”