LYNNFIELD — Cigarette smoking in residences has been an issue that, for years, the Lynnfield Housing Authority has tried to extinguish.
Executive Director Daniel Macintyre has been in charge of the Lynnfield Housing Authority since 2019. He said that despite his and the board’s best efforts, a select group of tenants in the authority’s Colonial Gardens campus, the residents of which are mostly older than 60, have continued to smoke cigarettes in their units — even though smoking is banned on the entire campus.
“It’s a running issue,” Macintyre said. “A majority of the residents are nonsmokers, but that being said… one cigarette can affect everyone in smelling distance.”
The no-smoking policy for buildings was put in place around a decade ago, and later became part of the lease agreements signed by all tenants when leases are renewed each year. The ban was later expanded to include all outdoor areas of the property a few years ago.
“It was as a result of the clear fact that secondhand smoke is a known carcinogen and a cancer-causing component,” Macintyre said. “It just became necessary that we had to go to the next step because we were concerned with people’s health.”
The no-smoking policy is consistent among all municipal-housing-authority properties in Massachusetts according to Macintyre, who said residents are consistently reminded of the policy before and after they move into the Colonial Gardens property. On paper, he said repeated violations could lead to residents being evicted, though that has not yet happened.
“It’s crystal clear that you can’t smoke inside the buildings,” Macintyre said. “A clear conversation is had about what the rules are and what the regulations are.”
Macintyre said the issue is relegated to a handful of residents in a few of the Ross Drive campus’ five residential buildings, and because of the strong smells it always becomes quickly apparent who the perpetrators are when routine inspections of units are done.
“It really isn’t socially acceptable to smoke inside anywhere,” Macintyre said. “It’s frustrating that some of the tenants do not have regard for their fellow tenants in mind when they break the rules and smoke.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 36.6% of people who live in rental housing are exposed to secondhand smoke, compared with 18.6% of people who own their housing. The CDC also reported that 11.5% of U.S. adults smoked cigarettes in 2021, down from 20.9% in 2005.
Macintyre said the issue not only leads to objections to the strong odor, but also to serious financial implications for the cleaning and maintenance of the units when they are turned over from one tenant to the next.
“It costs $10,000 to remediate the effects of smoking in one unit,” he said. “It should be a third of that to flip an apartment.”
Beyond the physical damage to the apartments, Macintyre said there can be emotional damage for those moving into the smokey spaces.
“They might be coming from a single-bedroom apartment or single-family home they’re lived in for decades,” Macintyre said. “Then you ask somebody to come into 450 square-feet and it smells like someone has been smoking a cigarette in there for the past few decades… it’s devastating.”
