Via Radio Iowa:
The state’s registry of smoke-free rental properties is undating its features to appeal to more users.
Emily Vogt, who helps coordinate the Smoke Free Homes Registry for the Iowa Department of Public Health, says the detailed list of more than 1,200 smoke-free properties has been online since 2016 as a community resource. Vogt says, “The Smoke Free Homes program is a program to promote smoke-free rental housing to renters in Iowa and also to assist property managers and landlords in implementing the smoke-free policy.”
The website is updated with new options so potential renters can learn more about the neighborhood they’re considering.”If they are looking for a smoke-free rental property, they can also see — we’ve recently added to the registry a map view,” Vogt says, “so you can see where the nearby grocery stores are, where the parks are, the transit stops and farmers markets.”
If apartment managers set aside a few individual units in a buiding as non-smoking, Vogt says those units likely won’t be as healthy as renters would hope. “We know that the smoke travels between units,” Vogt says. “The air in a multi-unit building is all being shared among everybody. Somebody down the hall is getting exposure to second-hand smoke if somebody on the floor above them or below them or several units down is smoking.”
To make the registry, a property must have at least one building that is 100-percent smoke-free and must have this specified in the lease language. More than 80% of all Iowans are non-smokers, according to Vogt, and 74-percent of Iowa renters say they would choose to live in a non-smoking building.
