breathe easy

Calabasas, the much-loved City of Shining Air, is back in the news. Perhaps in response to Belmont's no-smoking-and-we-really-mean-it measure, the city has banned smoking in most apartments.

Last week the Calabasas City Council unanimously approved an ordinance that requires landlords to reserve 80 percent of their units for nonsmokers as of January 1, 2012. The law (PDF), which was supported by the L.A. chapter of the California Apartment Association (clearly a bad sign), not only allows smokers to rent up to one-fifth of apartments; it grandfathers current tenants who smoke.... The ordinance's one saving grace is that it "prohibits smoking on all multi-unit apartment residence balconies, porches and patios." Now there's the Calabasas I love to hate.

Even though the summertime toking of my downstairs neighbor bugs the crap out of me, I'm not going to throw down the wrath of the State upon him over some bogus health concern--and I'm entirely uninterested in making him homeless.