PHA's smoking ban leaves a few fuming

Fred "Bubble" Carter lit a cigarette in his left hand Friday afternoon as he stood on the grounds of the Spring Garden Apartments and savored something that early next month will be against the rules.

Carter is a regular smoker, but he recognizes the habit's health risks, so he understands the impetus behind the Philadelphia Housing Authority's ban on smoking in its properties.

"I'm not going to say it ain't going to work, but you can't just go into somebody's house and tell them not to smoke," he said. "People smoke in their rooms. This is going to be a mess."

Carter is not alone in his skepticism. PHA's board of commissioners reached quick consensus Thursday in unanimously approving a smoking ban, but on Friday, some public housing tenants, smokers and nonsmokers, were more mixed in their reactions.

Outside the Spring Garden complex, at 715 Brandywine St., residents gathered, some watching their children zoom around on scooters in the sun, others chatting with neighbors - and enjoying a smoke.

Starting Aug. 5, that will be prohibited, a policy that officials say will minimize smoking's negative effects on the health of smokers and those around them, and push residents to quit.

Philadelphia's ban will affect more than 30,000 residents, according to a spokesman, and follows the decisions of more than 500 housing agencies to go smoke-free in the face of mounting federal pressure.

Still, several public housing residents and their guests said Friday that the restriction represents an unfair imposition on their rights.

"They can't do that," smoker Reginald Holmes, 50, said when informed about the ban. "If you pay rent, you should be able to do what you want in your own house."

Said Collieon Davis, "I don't think they should tell people how to live."

Spring Garden resident Sincere Robinson, 36, posed a rhetorical question in response to the ban: "Cigarettes are still legal, right?"

Like some other tenants, Robinson questioned whether his neighbors would follow the rule. Residents of existing units, such as Spring Garden, will not face eviction if caught smoking despite the ban.

"The sad thing is that at the end of the day, people are going to do what they want in their homes," said Robinson, who does not smoke. "Legal or illegal, people will do what they want behind their own doors."

Carter, who grew up at Spring Garden but no longer lives there, argues that the ban makes sense from a health standpoint. "I don't look at it as an invasion of privacy," he said. "It's a health issue."

Still, Carter cautioned, enforcement is another issue. Next to him, Toya Little, a maintenance worker for PHA, nodded and said residents will choose not to follow the rule, or will light up nearby. She pointed past Spring Garden's red and orange brick homes to neighboring private property.

"They can go smoke across the street," she said. "Kids walk to school there."