The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is working on new regulations that would bar people living in public housing from smoking tobacco not only in the buildings’ indoor common areas and administrative offices, and not only within 25 feet of the buildings, but also in their own apartments.

It’s one thing for a private property owner set the terms of a lease when the potential tenant has the freedom to pass up a unit. But people in public housing generally don’t have another option, and for the government to insist that the poor refrain from engaging in a legal activity in the privacy of their own homes suggests a kind of creepy nanny-state overreach.

But ultimately we think the government’s decision is the right one. Smoking, as we all know, is unhealthful, and secondhand smoke is a silent killer. Nonsmokers in public housing are also there because they can’t afford to live elsewhere, and they deserve protection at least as much as the smokers do. Nonsmokers with physical disabilities shouldn’t be forced to inhale neighbors’ secondhand smoke.

Further, the cost of renovating and maintaining units falls to the taxpayers, and property management experts say it costs up to four times as much to clean an apartment vacated by a smoker. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated last year that ending smoking in public housing would save $153 million a year by reducing renovation costs, saving on repairs from fires caused by smoking and lowering healthcare costs from secondhand smoke.

The proposed ban would go into effect in complexes only after discussion with tenants, who will help decide building-specific rules, such as where to place designated smoking areas outside the 25-foot zone.

Unanswered is how HUD intends to enforce the rule. In a recent interview, a resident of a Washington public housing complex pointed out that police have been unable to keep people from smoking marijuana in their apartments. Banning tobacco would just add more responsibilities to an already ineffective policing effort.

There’s some history to this. HUD in 2009 began urging the public housing agencies it finances to make their properties smoke-free, and more than 600 agencies complied. Expanding and formalizing the ban would cover all of the nation’s 1.2 million public housing units, which house some 775,000 children. It would also include 500,000 units inhabited by at least one elderly or disabled person. Banning smoking in such facilities would not only improve the overall quality of life for most tenants but would also reduce smoking-related costs for the taxpayers. Those gains trump the disadvantages.

— Los Angeles Times