Mayor de Blasio is ramping up the city’s war against smoking — at home, The Post has learned.
The administration is planning to select and pay four health-advocacy groups $9,000 apiece to pressure landlords and developers to prohibit smoking in their apartment complexes so neighboring tenants don’t inhale secondhand smoke.
That means smokers would be barred from lighting up in one of their last sanctuaries: their own living quarters. Smoking is already banned in public places, including bars and restaurants, workplaces, sports venues and parks.
City health officials emphasized the initiative is voluntary — at least for now.
“Everyone benefits from smoke-free housing. Residents enjoy breathing cleaner, healthier air in their homes . . . while owners see reductions in property damage and turnover costs,” a Health Department spokesman said.
Dozens of buildings containing hundreds of apartments have already kicked the habit, the Health Department and advocates claim.
The de Blasio administration is actually accelerating an initiative started at the tail end of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s tenure. But de Blasio intends to go further.
He said in his recently released long-term sustainability blueprint — “One New York: The Plan for a Strong and Just City” — that the city “will work to pass legislation requiring multi-unit housing to have a smoking policy and to disclose it to residents and prospective residents.”