No smoking in condo (Page 2)

Wow, that is a tough one.  It's much easier if it's a smoke free environment from day one, tenant one, but that not being the case, even a vehement anti smoker such as myself can see where a person's rights might feel trampled on.  The thing about a condo, or townhouse, or attached home, or whatever high falutin name you want to call it - is that some genius person somewhere along the line figured out that they could get people to buy, instead of rent, apartments.  And as in any apartment living situation, you pretty much have to go into it with the knowlege that you will probably forego, at some point, the ability to control your own living environment more so than a person living in an actual house because of your incredibly close proximity.  When a person lives 10 inches from you, and they decide they are going to do what they want to do, because they bought their apartment, just like you bought yours, they'll talk too loud, play their music too loud, have SEX too loud, cook stinky food, have a barking dog, or a crying baby, or smoke....it will happen.  So who's right and who's wrong?   That's a tough one.   Personally, I want as much space between me and my neighbors as I can afford, and twenty acres is just BARELY enough.

What is UP with all this anti smoking stuff all of a sudden, anyway?  It seems like it has just exploded!

Ok - I reread and will edit

As a former condo HOA Nazi (just call me Mrs.kravitz of the 'Hood) I think that it is fair not to rule that they cannot smoke, but that it is their responsibility to contain and filter the smoke in some way so that it does not affect others.  Just as if you have a pet, you are responsible to for making sure it is not a nuisance to others.   This puts the engineering of the smoke containment on the smokers.   A non-smoking community is great - but how do they get that way?   Either newly built or through alot of arguement.   I would never buy a condo that said no pets, but what if the tide turned against pets?   Good think I set myself up as Queen (a voted in queen) and was generally liked.

We had pretty few rules.  There were a number of either very young owners or renters just out of college who did things like leave their recycling on the fire escape or after they clean the cat's litter box, put the bag outside their door in the hallway until they are headed down to the dumpster.  Most were pretty easy to bring into the fold - they just never really thought about it like hey - people can't pass my beer bottles if there is a fire, or hey - the neighbor can smell this when they come home and pass to go to their house..... 

I had a stick up my butt about 2 things that were contentious:

1.people leaving in window air conditioners all winter. for 2 reasons - a.   ugly in our 1910 building, and b.  they were the same people who complained about being cold, not realizing that their a/c's were like an open window..... and we all had heat from the same source

2.  People cutting into common plumbing for non-sanctioned clothes washers and dish washers and then complaining that the plumbing system (from 1910) was not up to their needs.