Iowa’s largest apartment complex makes buildings smoke-free
Iowa’s largest apartment complex is making nearly 25 percent of its 1,076 apartments smoke-free, owner Keith Denner said Tuesday.
The move is designed to improve the health and safety of residents, said Denner, who owns and manages the Sun Prairie and Vista Court Apartments in West Des Moines, which are adjacent to each other and include 40 buildings.
Advertisement
“This is supply-side economics at its best,” said Bonnie Mapes, director of the Iowa Division of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control.
“This is not government-driven. It’s a business decision” that makes sense when only 14 percent of Iowans smoke.
Denner’s 80-acre apartment complex straddles the county line between Polk and Dallas counties at the southwest corner of the west interchange of Interstates 35, 80 and 235.
Nine of the 40 buildings will now be smoke-free, Denner said.
“That’s a great idea,” said Des Moines allergist Dr. Ahmad Al-Shash.
Secondhand smoke penetrates doors and ventilation systems in apartment buildings, he said, and is particularly harmful to the health of children and adults with allergies, even when the smoke is from a neighbor’s apartment.
Smoke-free apartment buildings are “a great option,” agreed West Des Moines Fire Chief Don Cox.
The Sun Prairie complex is the first in West Des Moines and one of the first in the state to include smoke-free units, Cox said.
Mapes said there are no statewide statistics on smoke-free apartments.
But, she added, the West Des Moines complex is on the cutting edge of smoke-free housing.
Smoke-free apartments are gaining ground in several states, including Michigan, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine and Illinois, Mapes said.
From a safety standpoint, said Cox, smoking has always been a major cause of apartment fires. It has become even more of a problem, he said, with apartments that have decks, because smokers occasionally throw unextinguished cigarettes onto dry plants on the deck or mulch piles on the ground.
Denner said he timed the announcement to coincide with the sixth anniversary of a fire at his complex that resulted in the loss of one building and a million dollars’ worth of damage.
It is also, he noted, almost one year since Iowa’s no-smoking law went into effect for all public buildings, including workplaces and restaurants.
Housing units were excluded from the law, but the economics of smoke-free living are likely to cause other landlords to follow Denner’s example, Mapes said.
Denner said he started thinking about making some apartments smoke-free while the Iowa law was being debated in early 2008.
A tenant survey in April 2008 found that three out of four respondents favored living in a smoke-free building, he said. Even some residents who smoked replied that they did not smoke in their apartments because of concerns for the health of family members, Denner added.
The nine buildings that are converting to smoke-free contained the fewest number of smokers, Denner said. Only 33 apartments of the 265 that are going smoke-free contain smokers, he said.
Residents of the complex were told about the change on Monday.
“Residents who smoke will be given the choice to abstain from smoking in their apartments or relocate to one of our other buildings” where smoking is allowed, Denner said. There will also be outdoor smoking areas within 100 yards of the smoke-free buildings where visitors can smoke, he said.
Denner said that he expects his insurance rates on the smoke-free apartment buildings to drop.
He also said the policy should help lower maintenance costs, because it is more expensive to maintain apartments where smoking occurs. Furniture, fixtures and even some appliances can be damaged by secondhand smoke, he said.
In addition, the Iowa Department of Public Health says: “Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25-30 percent and their lung cancer risk by 20-30 percent.”
In children, secondhand smoke causes respiratory symptoms and slows lung growth, according to the department’s Web page. It can be a contributor to “sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), as well as acute respiratory infections, ear problems and more frequent and severe asthma attacks in children.”
