UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. - There's a new push to limit smoking at apartment buildings in our state. Non-smoking tenants are taking a stand against neighbors who choose to light up and the landlords who allow it.
Nan Hogan enjoys the fresh air outside her University Place home. She's had asthma for years. But today, she's breathing a lot easier now that she no longer lives at the Lawn Court Apartments. When a smoker moved in one floor below, Nan says she had no choice but to move out.
"I just had no idea that smoke could come up through floors and walls and through the vents and into cracks and that kind of thing," she said.
Roberta Kowald used to work for the health department. Now, she works with Nan to try to change the landlord tenant law through the People United for Smoke-Free Housing, or PUSH.
"It's about something that's really having a serious health impact on people and on their rights to be in their apartment," says Kowald.
The group's goal is to include secondhand smoke as a nuisance in the landlord tenant act.
"Work with the smoking tenant, the non-smoker and the landlord and figure out something specific for their specific situation," says Kowald.
The county health department plans to consider PUSH's proposal next month.
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