Smokers got you down? Light up a line.

Complaints are increasing as people become more aware of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.

So the neighbor is polluting your place with cigarette smoke. Who you gonna call?

For a growing number of Southern Californians, it’s the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

For years, the department’s Tobacco Control and Prevention Program has manned a phone line for complaints about those who flouted state laws against smoking, and for years, those calls mostly involved bars, restaurants and workplaces.

Lately, however, secondhand smoke wafting into apartments, condos and nursing home units has kept the line buzzing, says Tobacco Control deputy director Monty Messex. In the last six months alone, he says, 88 such complaints have come in via the Tobacco Control complaint line, far more than in past years. Forty-two percent, he added, came from the City of Los Angeles.

“It’s possible that people are smoking more in their apartments now because there are fewer and fewer places anymore to smoke in public,” Messex says, “but I think it’s more about awareness. People are realizing they have a choice.”

Smoke-free housing has become the latest frontier in the tobacco control movement, as health advocates and apartment dwellers have sought to stop secondhand smoke from drifting out of patios, balconies and neighboring units into non-smokers’ homes.

Despite arguments from some smokers and civil libertarians who view the push as an inconvenience and intrusion, California has led the charge in clearing smoke from shared living spaces. The state Department of Public Health has aired popular TV ads depicting secondhand smoke rising from vents to threaten small children, and more than two dozen jurisdictions including Santa Monica and Calabasas have adopted ordinances that restrict smoking in multi-unit housing. Last year a state law went into effect giving landlords permission to manage smoking in rental properties. 

Next month, the Los Angeles County Housing Authority, which manages and owns 3,258 public and affordable housing units, is expected to seek approval on lease changes that would ban smoking within 20 feet of its buildings. Maria Badrakhan, director of the Housing Authority’s housing management division, says the move will affect some 7,000 renters from West Hollywood and Marina Del Rey to East Los Angeles and Long Beach, but so far, residents’ reactions have been overwhelmingly positive.

“We have a lot of seniors, a lot of families and people whose children have asthma, and we receive a lot of complaints from people who don’t want smoking in their buildings,” says Badrakhan, adding that the Department of Public Health has been working with the authority to help tenants quit smoking. 

“We’re trying to create a better quality of life.”

The Tobacco Control complaint line—which essentially rings during business hours into the Tobacco Control and Prevention Office at 213-351-7890—is just a small part of the county’s effort to connect victims of secondhand smoke with agencies and authorities who can help.

The DPH’s Messex says it’s a challenging assignment, given the 88 separate jurisdictions and the patchwork of municipal smoking ordinances in the county. Sometimes, he says, the response is as simple as sending a letter to the property manager or owner and referring the caller to the appropriate fire department or code enforcement unit. Often, however, the county also will send callers to organizations such as S.A.F.E. (Smokefree Air For Everyone), a Granada Hills-based advocacy organization that operates an online, smokefree apartment registry.

“More and more people have come to us from the county,” says S.A.F.E.’s associate director, Marlene Gomez. “We’re getting 5 to 10 calls a week, and email in droves.”

Some of the complaints are heart-wrenching, says Gomez. “I had one case where a mother called from a rent control apartment in Wilmington with three kids—a 4-year-old, a 5-year-old and a 4-month-old baby—and the 5-year-old has asthma and smokers had moved in downstairs.”

In that case, she says, she was able to persuade the landlord to move the family to a different apartment and to let him know that he could keep smokers away in the future by specifying units as non-smoking as they became vacant.

But for many of those who complain, Messex says, recourse is limited because restrictions have yet to be enacted by the state or by most of the municipalities in the county, including the City of Los Angeles, and the bans that do exist vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

“There’s not a lot we can do,” he says. “And in some cases, the situation is pretty severe.”

Apartment dwellers like Cris Borgnine say comprehensive restrictions would make a difference. Borgnine, a 46-year-old cameraman and photographer with two little boys at home, aged 3 and 7, says he started searching for help after smokers moved in not only next door, but also around the corner and downstairs from his North Hollywood apartment.

“It’s been really frustrating,” Borgnine says. “The smoke comes up through the kitchen fans and the heating ducts. When the onshore breeze blows, it comes in through our bedroom window. When you’re having dinner, it’s awful.”

In addition to his concern for his family’s health and the impact on his quality of life, Borgnine adds, his irritation had a personal angle: His father, the late actor Ernest Borgnine, had to have throat surgery at one point in his life because of complications from smoking. So when calls to the apartment manager failed to persuade his neighbors, he started dialing.  

Eventually, he says, he got through to the county’s complaint line, only to learn that little could be done in his jurisdiction, other than sending his property manager a letter.

“We really need to do something about this,” he says. “Fortunately, my family and I have the resources to move to a new place, but the next person to move in is still going to have to deal with it.”

Reports of secondhand smoke in apartments have county phone lines buzzing. Photo/New York Times

Posted 2/14/13