Respect elderly tenants' rights

Opinion

The sight of workers, cafe patrons and others huddling outside to grab a smoke, as they used to say, is a common one, even in winter, that hasn't merited as much as a wink in years. Most of the public would be cringing, though, if this scene were moved to the courtyards of senior citizen housing complexes and those shivering smokers were grandma or grandpa.

And that's one likely result if a bill at the Statehouse to limit smoking in state-assisted senior housing passes. The proposal by state representatives Ann Gobi, D-Spencer, and Theodore Speliotis, D-Peabody, would require larger senior complexes to dedicate at least one building as smoke-free and smaller facilities to ban smoking in at least 20 percent of the rooms.

There's little to argue with about segregating smoking rooms for non-smoking, as has been a longtime practice at hotels and many apartment buildings. But the details of such ought to be worked out by the local housing authorities in accordance with their local situations as part of policy of which new tenants would be advised before moving in.

Given the experience of the Attleboro Housing Authority, where the vast majority of senior tenants are non-smokers, that could result in an even higher percentage of non-smoking rooms than the bill provides.

Putting the full force of law behind the idea, however, will push elder smokers out into the cold, or the heat, or the rain. Unless, of course, someone expects an octogenarian or nonagenarian smoker to kick the habit as soon as someone tells them "hey, that's bad for your health." Even worse, if this bill were to become law, it would reduce the status of elderly housing occupants from tenants to serfs. Big Brother would be telling them what they can and can't do in the privacy of their own homes.

We're happy to see state reps Betty Poirier, R-North Attleboro, and Bill Bowles, D-Attleboro, steadfastly oppose the bill on privacy grounds. It's even better that the House, though the bill has cleared committee, has scheduled no vote on it. This bill may be allowed to simply fade away in the current legislative session.

Even so, the bill has its fans. Rep. Steve D'Amico, D-Seekonk, with the kind of thinking that gave the nation an ill-advised Prohibition of alcohol for a decade and a half, has declared "anything you can do to get people to stop smoking is good for them and good for society."

In the event that this new prohibition proposal hangs around or returns, we would advise local housing authorities to review their smoking policies and their ventilation systems. Non-smoking tenants have a legitimate gripe when smoke from a neighbor's apartment wafts in. But such problems ought to be solved with local wisdom rather than Big Brotherly arm-twisting.