Smoking Isn't Welcome Everywhere!

With more people staying home, more people are smoking in their homes. This is not always good, especially if you live in an apartment. From a reader:

I live at Magnolia Gardens here in Florence, Alabama. When I moved here in 2016  residents were allowed to smoke on the outside only.   I’ve never been a smoker and had no real problems with this rule. 

In 2018 HUD implemented a rule stating that no smoking would be allowed in public housing. It also stated that you had to be at least 25 feet from the building to smoke outside. I guote “ A landmark rule that requires all public housing in the U.S. to be smokefree is quickly approaching its July 31 implementation deadline, which will give 2 million public housing residents the ability to breathe easier at home. This rule is an important step in protecting nonsmokers and families from exposure to a serious health hazard where they live. Tenants in an apartment building or other multi-unit housing share the air. Smoking in one unit leads to secondhand exposure for other families and residents in the building.”  https://no-smoke.org/hudruleimplementationjuly31/

Well within the pass four weeks my apartment has been inundated with second hand smoke from smoking tenant(s) inside their apartments. I wake up coughing so bad I can’t sleep at night. They smoke all day and night. I’ve complained on numerous occasions to the property manager, Sarah Willis, about my concerns. She states that tenants can smoke in their apartments and that Magnolia Gardens doesn’t fall under HUD’s rules and that they can do what they want to do. However they posted newly made signs on the doors and bulletin boards about the soon to be implemented no smoking rule.  They have sense taken those signs down.    She further stated that they were a LTD. I looked this up and it is a term mostly used in European countries. It’s the equivalent of a LLC used here in the States. 

Magnolia use federal housing dollars issued by HUD so this statement of them being a LTD makes absolutely no sense to me!  I’m here suffering in my apartment from this smoke and they simply do not care. I’ve never smoked in my life and knowing that this stuff kills is no comforting though. IF the above is true why would HUD allow one Housing Authority to implement this rule and allow another to not implement the rule?  That’s sounds unfair to me!!  My life is just as important too. 

Please any help you can provide would help me and all the other non smoking tenants here.