| We will not rent to
you if you smoke - period. This is not to say all of our tenants don't
smoke - some do, and these tenants were already on the property when we made
the decision to cease renting to smokers. However we will not take
new, smoking tenants at our properties.
Some people (smokers) find it strange or rude
that we have made the decision not to rent to smokers. It is a
decision that is purely grounded in the landlord's most obvious motivator -
the bottom line. Smokers add cost in that they:
- make apartments smell like smoke,
rendering the apartment more difficult to rent
- make carpet smell like smoke which has to
be replaced
- stain walls with smoke which then have to
be sealed and repainted
- smoke in public stairwells which wafts
into neighboring apartments and creates complaints to management which
diverts our office staff from other tasks
- litter on the property where they discard
cigarette butts, thereby adding to the cost of groundskeeping
Some smokers ask if they can lease an apartment
if they smoke outside. Again, I get complaints from non-smoking
neighbors (see 4 above) about the odor from smokers on breezeways and balconies so the
answer is no. Furthermore, experience has taught me that this is
rarely the case - smokers, regardless of their promises, will smoke in their
apartment (see 1-3 above). Each lease that we sign reads "This apartment
is to be maintained as a non-smoking apartment" and we mean it.
If we discover that you have been smoking in the apartment you lease, at
best, your lease will not be renewed, but, more likely, you will be evicted
for this lease violation. |