Smoking in multi-unit housing may become prohibited in San Francisco
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Categories: Homes Property Management Safety
Published 11/21/2020
Photo by Andres Siimon on Unsplash
Smoking in multi-unit housing and apartments may become prohibited in San Francisco soon. The City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors are considering an ordinance that would change the health code to “prohibit smoking inside all private dwelling units in multi-unit housing complexes containing three or more units.”
Introduced on November 3rd, this ordinance will face a vote before the full Board of Supervisors on December 1st. If the board votes for the change, San Francisco would be among 63 cities and counties in California to have smoke-free multi-unit housing. Crowning San Francisco as the largest city in the country to adopt a smoke-free policy. This new ordinance will also extend those rules to smoking or vaping in rented units. Almost half of San Francisco residents live in multi-unit housing and would be affected by this change.
Currently, the city prohibits smoking in enclosed common spaces of housing complexes like entryways, elevators, stairways, and mailrooms. Additionally, landlords of multi-unit residential properties, including Single Residency Occupancy Hotels (SROs) are required to: designate all units as smoke-free or smoking-optional: include the designation in vacancy listings, and provide a list of smoking-optional units before offering a unit to an applicant. Buildings with 100% smoke-free units are exempt.
As always, we will keep you updated on the development of this ordinance in a later post.