A study published recently by the American Journal of Public Health finds that landlords save money when they prohibit smoking everywhere in the building, even inside private apartments.
The California landlords surveyed in the study saved an average of $5,000 a year per smoke-free building. (With the cost of everything higher here, we can only imagine that the savings is far greater in NYC.)
Smoking-related costs included cleaning, repairs and maintenance of recently vacated units; painting and decorating; trash collection and fire damage; property and fire insurance; and legal, administrative and other operating costs.
In California, about one-third of apartments are in smoke-free buildings, according to the study.
Not so in NYC.
We don't have stats, but a quick Google search for non-smoking rental buildings in NYC surfaced just a handful of prospects, including downtown's Tribeca Green and The Sierra in Chelsea (both owned by top-notch landlord the Related Company) and the upscale 1510 Lex in Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side.
A recent StreetEasy search of available listings found that only 6 apartments out of 8,990 listings were advertised as non-smoking or smoke-free. (The non-smoking total went up by 10, to 16, when we examined the individual StreetEasy pages for two of the non-smoking buildings listed above--the Tribeca Green and The Sierra. Somewhat oddly, neither the apartments nor the building are being advertised as smoke free on StreetEasy.)
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NYC landlords, we'd love to hear from you: Why aren't more of your buildings kicking the habit?
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