Opinion: A lot of smoke

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It’s been odd to see how sides line up over what’s been billed as a smoking ban for apartments in California. Landlords are for it, Republican legislators, who often agree with landlords, are largely against it, and in any case, SB 1598 isn’t really a smoking ban for apartments at all.

What it does is give landlords the right to impose a smoking ban on their buildings. That makes sense. Smoking is hard on a building. It can stain the walls over time, its smell penetrates carpets and draperies, and it’s a fire hazard. Not to mention the complaints from non-smoking tenants. The question is, why haven’t landlords had this right all along?

In truth, though it’s not written into law, they have. Smokers might tussle with landlords, but smoking is not a protected activity. Landlords have generally been able to ask prospective tenants about smoking, and write rental agreements that ban smoking in their apartments.

Who can argue, then, with putting this in writing? Well, for one thing, owners of rent-controlled apartments can’t partake in this new power if the law passes. (Why not? Aren’t their buildings just as affected by ash? Don’t their healthy-living renters suffer just as much from second-hand smoke?) The one new power this bill could have given landlords — since owners of rent-controlled buildings already can’t make any material changes in their rental agreements, which includes banning smoking — isn’t in there. And if the law sets up one group of landlords who officially have this right, and another that doesn’t, it implies that landlords are not generally free to set reasonable rules that might affect their buildings. This law could ostensibly be used as a precedent to argue that unless landlords are officially given rights over their buildings, they don’t have those rights by implication.