Landlord Awareness

1
Why the Voluntary Approach Works in Maine
2

• The Smoke-Free Housing Coalition of Maine is
  group comprised of over 50 public health
  advocates, tenants, landlords, property managers,
  environmental health professionals and many
  others.

3

• Our Mission
• To reduce the number of multi-unit
• housing residents who are
• involuntarily exposed to
• secondhand smoke.
• Our Vision
• A State where all citizens can live free from
• exposure to secondhand smoke.

4
A coalition based model

• We have the time, expertise and funding to
• Develop relationships
• Educate landlords and the general public
• Develop materials
• Offer technical assistance
• But NOT to develop ordinances in each
  town in Maine or at the state-level

5
Consider your political climate

• Historically, Libertarian ideologies define the
  citizen opinion in Maine.
• Strong and progressive State laws but we draw the
  line when it comes to peoples homes.
• Maine people are in favor of smoking bans when
  the primary goal is to protect children.

6
Cost vs. benefit analysis

• Time spent on organizing and policy making vs.
  time spent convincing folks of voluntary policy.
• Portland example.
• The financial and health benefits are an easy
  sell- mandatory legislation is not.

7
Why not just educate?

• Many times legislative campaigns and policies are
  used to educate the public.
• We have found that developing key relationships
  with rental housing associations, housing
  authorities, etc. produces the same result.

8
Its all about relationship building

• People like us because we save them money
• We are offering them something to increase their
  investment, rather than mandating their behavior.
• We get invited to speak or display at more
  conferences then we can currently accept.
• Our friends have opened new doors for us such as
  developing Green Building Standards language.

9
The Enforcement Issue

• Hypothesis landlords who voluntarily implement
  policies enforce more uniformly and consistently
  then when the policy has been legislated.
• Antidotal evidence no landlord has ever called
  us stating they are going to abandon their
  smoke-free policy, blamed us for giving them bad
  information or stated it was not feasible to
  maintain the policy after the fact.
• Discussion do landlords with voluntary policies
  have more of a vested interest sense of
  responsibility/ownership?

10
Voluntary policies pay off in Maine

• Approximately 90,000 units or 40 of multi-unit
  population protected.
• 50 of our Public Housing Authorities are
  smoke-free.
• Nearly 1700 units on our smoke-free registry.
• 21,500 average hits per month to website.

Smoke-free housing should be the norm, not the
exception!