Virginia Soto was 11 years old when she started smoking.
The little girl was hooked soon after her grandmother and great-aunt began asking her to roll cigarettes for them using some paper and a little tin of tobacco.
And 71 years later, Soto is still going strong. She puffs away every day at her home in the Alta Vista Senior Center.
Woman Smoking a Cigarette
Soto will be allowed to continue smoking in her apartment; but she is worried about many of her neighbors who will not be allowed that same privilege due to a no-smoking policy approved earlier this year by the Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority board.
When enforcement starts next January, residents of most of the nearly 600 low-income housing units the organization manages across Santa Fe – they include complexes targeted for seniors and for families – will have to be at least 25 feet away from a unit when smoking.
At the Housing Authority’s senior centers, where some residents may have been smoking all their lives and would find it tough to quit, smoking will be allowed in designated blocs of units – but some smokers will have to relocate into those apartments.
The 82-year-old Soto happens to live in one of the designated areas, so she can keep on puffing. Still, she is worried about her fellow residents.
“Summertime is all right. Seniors can go outside and smoke. But what are they going to do with them in the winter months? Let them catch cold? Let them catch pneumonia? Let them die? That’s what they’re looking at,” said Soto, who sits on the Housing Authority board and voted against the policy.
Those living in the new Villa Alegre complex on West Alameda Street won’t be able to light up at all. Smoking will be banned entirely from that campus when it opens later this summer, under the mandate of a multimillion dollar federal Department of Housing and Urban Development “green” grant accepted by the Housing Authority.
A Housing Authority survey determined that between 20 to 25 percent of the organization’s senior residents are smokers, Director Ed Romero said. People living in what will become nonsmoking units have the option of transferring to homes where smoking is allowed – Romero estimated that 80 to 90 percent of smokers will be accommodated. But no new residents will be allowed to smoke, with the idea that smoking will be eventually phased out entirely.
“It’s bad for (people). It’s bad for their units. There’s nothing good that comes out of smoking,” Romero said.
He said he’s heard plenty of comment from both sides. The discussion has been ongoing since 2009, and it took several meetings before the board decided to go forward with the policy, he said.
In the end, the Housing Authority decided that nonsmokers just “don’t have the right to smoke in a unit and affect somebody’s else health, or at all,” Romero said.
“The hard part is we’re juggling nonsmoker rights with smoker rights,” he said. But, “the smoker has options. He can choose to smoke or he can choose to smoke somewhere else. The nonsmoker doesn’t have those options.”
Dubby Harcharik, a social work student at Highlands University trying to bring attention to the issue, said the nonsmoking policy is a violation of people’s civil rights. “Where is the … expectation of privacy in one’s own home?” she said.
She also shared Soto’s concern that mobility is an issue for many. People who can’t get around easily are still going to smoke – in their homes, Harcharik added. And that could result in evictions and a flood of people finding themselves with nowhere to go.
“There are a lot of people who can’t get around easily. They can’t go 25 feet from the building. The whole thing, it’s just not well thought out. What about families with small kids?” she said.
There should be designated smoking units at all the housing complexes, she said.
But Romero noted that he’s received complaints from nonsmoking seniors with health problems affected by their neighbor’s smoking.
He also said the last thing the Housing Authority wants to do is “send old people out on the streets.”
“We’re not about evicting people, but we also have to have a safe place for nonsmokers to live. Sometimes it’s hard to make both of those things happen at the same time,” Romero said.
Soto, ultimately, was philosophical. She said she expects seniors, at least, to adjust to the new policy, if only because they don’t really have any other choice.
“Let’s face it, with rents as high as they are in Santa Fe and everywhere else, it’s kind of hard for low-income people to go and rent outside (city-subsidized housing complexes),” she said.
The Housing Authority has scheduled several informational meetings for today and Wednesday to help kick off awareness efforts. Romero said the Housing Authority will also provide resources such as smoking cessation classes, and residents are welcome to discuss the issue with him and other staff.
