The federal government is taking far-reaching steps to curb smoking by forcing public housing to be entirely smoke-free.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a proposed rule Thursday to require more than 3,100 public housing agencies across the country to make their properties smoke-free.
“This proposed rule will help improve the health of more than 760,000 children and help public housing agencies save $153 million every year in healthcare, repairs and preventable fires,” HUD Secretary Julian Castro said.
The agency has been pushing its public housing agencies to be smoke-free in their buildings and common areas. About 228,000 out of 1.2 million public housing units are smoke free.
The rule would help to improve the health of 58 million people who are exposed to secondhand smoke, the agency said.
However, some residents of New York housing projects complained that the rules are breaching their privacy by governing what they do in their own homes, according to a report in the New York Times.
The agency is holding a 60-day comment period on the rule.
