While HUD has announced that it will make it illegal for public housing tenants to smoke in their apartments, the Obama administration apparently will do nothing about the health of Americans who don’t live in public housing. Millions of Americans take subsidies in the form of the Home Mortgage tax deduction. Why not make that deduction contingent on being smoke free? Why should taxpayers subsidize people who endanger their neighbors with second hand smoke?
Could it be that the Obama administration cares more about public housing tenants that it cares about condo owners and single family home owners?
Or maybe it’s just that they love pushing around people who have nowhere else to go, and wouldn’t dare mess with anyone’s precious tax deduction.
Obama only cares about Public Housing Tenants, the rest of us can all gag on Second-Hand Smoke
Please share widely!
Christopher says
I’d love it if nobody smoked, but the government as landlord can make more regulations on its own property than what it doesn’t own. Single-family units mean you only affect your own and even multi-family privately owned buildings still have the prerogative to make their own rules. This frankly sounds like the Obama derangement I expect from the right.
bob-gardner says
. . . but as for the rest of them, condo owners, and people in single family houses who don’t live alone, why should we taxpayers subsidize their spreading second-hand smoke?
The government can make rules for tax deductions just as easily as it can for public housing tenants.
And cut the patronizing bullshit, Christopher, about “Obama derangement” that you “expect from the right”. I try on this blog to make any irony so broad that no one could possibly miss it– yet it still sails right over your head.
If Obama and HUD want to go after second hand smoke, fine. But don’t dump this patronizing, top-down, intrusive policy only on people who are powerless to resist–as if cigarette smoke only affects poor people. That’s not based on science, or reality.
fredrichlariccia says
I have friends who live in public housing and have been breathing in noxious second hand smoke for years. They are overjoyed with this new smoking ban. And why shouldn’t they be? This is a clear case of our government protecting the public health interests versus the private rights of those who want to exercise their right to smoke.
Now to be clear. I own a two-family house and enjoy smoking a good imported cigar every now and then. However, out of consideration for my tenants on the second floor, I always take it outside to the porch or sun deck. My tenant does the same when he smokes.
In all civilized societies the public interest should always trump private rights. Everyone has the right to harm themselves but NOBODY has the right to harm others.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
bob-gardner says
is not whether you should take your cigar outside, but whether there should be a rule and punishment for you if you don’t.
What I’m proposing is that people who accept taxpayer funded subsidies in the form of the Home Mortgage deduction be subjected to the same rules as people who accept taxpayer subsidized public housing.
I know it makes homeowners uncomfortable to be reminded that they are taking government subsidies–but they (I should say we) are.
Public Housing tenants have their status as recipients of government subsidies shoved in their face at every opportunity. They are constantly reminded that we homeowners are better than they are and that their opinions don’t matter.
I think that this new rule is, contrary to what HUD claims, a top-down rule imposed on tenants to remind them who is on top.
If it were really about public health, it would apply to subsidized homeowners too. Like you say NOBODY has the right to harm others.
SomervilleTom says
I smoke cigars, most often in our enclosed front porch. When I smoke on the downstairs front porch (not enclosed), the smoke blows into the tenant’s unit and they complain. I like happy tenants, so I don’t smoke there.
For at least some of us who live in owner-occupied two-families, the home mortgage deduction isn’t applicable. According to my tax guys (who are pretty good), the home office deduction for the portion of our unit that we use to manage the property is larger than the schedule-A deduction for our share. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember looking at the numbers and agreeing with the tax guys. Am I being subsidized by the government because of my perfectly legitimate business deductions?
My point is that tax matters are generally not easy and not susceptible to bromides. I do think that we treat homeowners differently from public housing tenants. Maybe we shouldn’t, but we do. I don’t allow my tenants to smoke inside or the front or back downstairs porches. I also don’t allow them to use a grill on either downstairs porch. Frankly, I’m far more concerned about them burning the house down than I am about their health (careless disposal of smoking material is the most frequent cause of residential fires in Somerville).
I think that we will never erase the differences between tenants and owners in our society. I’m not sure I even think it would be good public policy if we could. Owners have the right to set rules for what tenants can do in property the tenants lease.
I agree with you that the home mortgage deduction is a subsidy. So is the dependent exemption. I agree with you that this policy highlights the difference between home owners and tenants (although I don’t think it’s quite as draconian as you suggest).
In my view, that difference falls in the category of realities that, in my view, we choose to accept because the alternatives are worse.
fredrichlariccia says
this rule is not about our government asserting that private homeowners are ‘better’ than public housing tenants. Its’ purpose is to protect and preserve the public health of those tenants.
As a low tax conservative, if you can’t support it on altruistic grounds of humanistic compassion, think of how much money taxpayers will save in lower health care costs by preventing smoke related diseases like lung cancer, strokes and heart attacks. Most of these folks are on Medicaid / Mass Health or Medicare.
As wise old Ben Franklin said : ” An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” đŸ™‚
Fred Rich LaRiccia
SomervilleTom says
The reality is, as merrimackguy observed in another thread, a purely monetary view of smoking regulations leads to the conclusion that we should encourage smoking.
That’s because smokers are far more likely to die younger, after a shorter period of acute care. They thus avoid the enormous expense of long-term care for men and women who die of natural causes at age 80 or 90.
The reason why smoking-prevention advocates do NOT cite health care costs is that the facts argue against them.
fredrichlariccia says
and with respect, yes, I DO want to go there, Tom. đŸ™‚
Sophistry is defined as a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning. A false argument.
Do you really want to argue that our government should remove smoking regulations in order to SAVE money by avoiding age related medical costs — because smokers will die younger ?
That sounds like Scrooge arguing against charity for the poor. ” Are there no prisons ? Are there no workhouses ? HUMBUG! ”
Fred Rich LaRiccia
SomervilleTom says
Of course I’m not arguing that our government should remove smoking regulations.
There are many very good reasons for those regulations. I’m just saying that reducing lifetime health costs for the smoker is not among them.
fredrichlariccia says
that smoking regulations DO reduce lifetime health costs precisely because it discourages the young from smoking in the first place. That’s why we tax tobacco, prohibit advertising and restrict smoking in public places.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
SomervilleTom says
I don’t have time to chase the citations right now, but I have done so in the past.
In fact, that premise — that lifetime health costs are reduced by discouraging young people from smoking — was counter-intuitively found to be not true. What happens is that young people who smoke do incur higher health care costs while they are alive, but they also die at a much younger age and therefore do not incur the astronomical costs of care for the aging.
Successful prevention programs therefore shift a certain number of young people from “smoker” to “non-smoker”. When they do, they reduce the lifetime costs of the smoker pool, and increase the lifetime costs of the non-smoker pool. Because the lifetime costs of someone who lives to old age are much higher than someone who dies at middle age, the net result is that successful prevention programs cost society more.
We are a society that actually DOES value life — even though longer lifetimes are more expensive. Because I, too, value life, I agree with this tradeoff.
jconway says
I don’t think we should seriously debate the merits of what he is proposing, simply that, for for too long the party of individual liberty and the party of community compassion have both gone out of there way to push petty nanny state regulations that police the morality and overburden the choices of people on public assistance. People on welfare, even single mothers, are ‘required’ to work. Even though we have no full employment guarantee anymore, even though we don’t have a living wage, and even though evidence shows it hurts family cohesion and can lead to higher crime rates.
Palin bemoans Mike Bloomberg for limiting soda cup size as an assault on freedom while her buddy Scott Walker is telling food stamp recipients what they can and cannot buy. Liberals agreed to regulations preventing them from buying alcohol or tobacco, which limits their personal freedom and continues the stigmitization that they are less moral than the rest of us. I frequently drink and occasionally smoke, why am I morally superior to someone with an EBT card like my sister or disabled nephew? The answer is I’m not.
Go after Big Tobacco and make them pay for this change, get them to stop selling near schools in poor communities, and force bigger companies to go smoke free following the example of CVS. I’m all for that, maybe set up a smoking room with good ventilation as an alternative. But our public housing is critically underfunded and structurally unsound, and getting gradually privatized. This regulation as designed is just another burden for our most vulnerable and maligned populations to bare.
Christopher says
…with saying food stamps are for food. Food is a life necessity; tobacco not so much. When the public money is being offered there are always likely to be strings attached on how it will be used, whether in the context of welfare, arts grants, educational programming, etc.
jconway says
It would make far more sense just to pass a minimal income and let individuals decide how they want to feed their families and what recreation they should enjoy. Tobacco is deadly, so perhaps it doesn’t have to be subsidized, I am saying it is really reprehensible to use vital economic lifelines to dictate the moral behavior of people that are down on their luck.
Housing first is a much better way to address homelessness than the strings attached models that shelters use, similarly, minimal income guarantees seem like a more efficient and dignified alternative. It makes more sense to end poverty by ending poverty, rather than by scapegoating the poor. Which this policy appears to be doing in it’s current design, forcing an already overstretched, underfunded and poorly maintained system to get in the business of babysitting smokers.
SomervilleTom says
Point taken about food stamps.
So replace food stamps with a guaranteed minimum annual income, paid in cash that recipients can spend as they see fit.