Group Wants Smoking Ban In Every Bayside Apartment

BAYSIDE, QUEENS -- A group of Bayside locals has formed a rather lofty New Year's resolution: Get all of the neighborhood's apartment-dwellers to quit smoking - at least indoors.

Around 16 locals recently formed the Bayside Smoke-Free Housing Alliance hoping to combat indoor smoking by pushing Bayside and Bay Terrace apartments to adopt smoke-free policies for their buildings.

The group, armed with doctors and asthma/allergy specialists, plans to contact property owners and co-op leaders of each apartment and inform them of the risks indoor smoking poses to residents and the harm it could be doing to their properties, said Phil Konigsberg, who launched the alliance in October.

The group's target area runs from Union Turnpike to Alley Pond Park all the way down to Bay Terrace where he currently lives.

"Our goal is to get every one if we can," he told Patch.

Konigsberg, who lives in a high rise co-op, said he tried to get the building to go smoke-free for years while serving on its board of directors but had little support from fellow leaders. Inspired by the success of a similar smoke-free policy in Glen Oaks' North Shore Towers, he decided to take his initiative community-wide after being voted off the board in June.

Now, with his alliance growing steadily, Konigsberg is convinced it's not a question of if community apartments will go smoke-free, but when.

"We know it's going to take time," he said. "It's a pretty fundamental idea, but it's just so difficult for people to change because people are so engrained in the idea that smoking is normal."

But not everyone is as eager to adopt the new idea.

A post about the new alliance to a Bayside Facebook group sparked a heated debate on the topic that garnered hundreds of comments. Many were angry at the thought of complexes forbidding them to smoke in an apartment they pay for.

"I don't smoke but you are really creating a negative atmosphere with this, you can't tell people what to do," one commenter noted.

Another added, "When they pay my expenses and my rent...that's when I'll give in."

But others, like Konigsberg, pointed out that a smoker infringes unfairly on their neighbors when lighting up in their apartment.

"You can do what you want in your apartment, but what you do should stay in your apartment," Konigsberg said."

Smoking doesn't do that, he argued. Because air in apartment complexes circulates, a neighbor lighting up across or down the hall means he's forced to inhale those toxins and suffer their potential health risks, Konigsberg claimed.

"If it didn't effect other people, we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation right now," he said.

But that conversation has drawn more members to seek out the alliance and even prompted co-ops to seek their help, Konigsberg said.