Tobacco.org

• For Some Smokers, Home’s Off Limits 

More landlords are moving to prohibit smoking in their apartment buildings, telling prospective tenants they can be evicted if they light up in them.

This month, the Related Companies will ban smoking at some of its downtown apartment buildings because of health concerns about secondhand smoke, according to company officials.

Smokers who already live in any of these buildings will not be affected, according to Jeff Brodsky, a president of Related, which is a national developer with 17 buildings in Manhattan.

But any new renters must promise not to smoke at home, even if they continue to elsewhere.

Kenbar Management, a local developer, is going a step further. When its new project, 1510 Lexington Avenue, opens in December, smoking will be banned in all 298 units, in addition to private and shared terraces.

And the typical smoker’s refuge — directly outside the building — is also off limits; tenants must agree not to smoke on any of the sidewalks that wrap around the building, which takes up most of a block in East Harlem, according to Kinne Yon, a Kenbar principal.

The trend has predictably divided smokers and nonsmokers in New York. . . .

So far, about 50 public housing agencies have now forbidden smoking, according to Betsy Feigin Befus, a lawyer with the National Multi Housing Council, a landlord trade group that has tracked the efforts.

Other cities, through legislation or by initiatives of developers, have taken similar steps.

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