Racine groups to promote smoke-free housing

Two community organizations are teaming up to push for smoke-free multi-unit housing complexes across Racine County. On Tuesday, Focus on Community and the Racine County Youth Coalition (RCYC), two organizations that fight against substance abuse, announced their plan to use a $160,000 Transform Wisconsin Impact Grant to campaign for smoke-free housing options, primarily in the Racine metropolitan area and Burlington. The bulk of the funding will be spent on educational and promotional materials, as well as personnel to complete additional research, according to Francie McGuire Winkler, Focus executive director.

The groups have no specific plans to build or convert housing to smoke-free residences, but plan to encourage others to make the switch. Going smoke-free is a “win-win situation” for both property owners and tenants, McGuire Winkler said. Owners will save on cleaning, renovation and insurance costs, and residents’ health will be improved, she said. “It’s not just jobs and taxes that draw people to a community — it’s quality of life,” Mayor John Dickert said at a press conference about the project. Growing up in a “smoking family,” Dickert attributes his and his siblings’ asthma to their childhood environment.

He said he wants to protect today’s children from smoky living quarters, which can be unavoidable in multi-unit housing complexes, even if parents are non-smokers. Kara Wallace, 16, a junior at Case High School, cleans out apartments when tenants leave and spends more time in smokers’ residences. When Wallace went in to clean out the apartment of a woman who had lived there for 11 years, chain smoking, she spent three hours cleaning one window with a razor. “I could not imagine what her lungs looked like if that’s what her apartment looked like,” she said. Good health starts at home, said Dona Winisky of the American Lung Association in Wisconsin.

It is a misconception that health begins in the doctor’s office, she said. It starts “where we live and work and where our kids play and learn.” Focus and RCYC will begin by assessing the needs of the county. From there, they aim to educate property managers about the benefits of going smoke-free. In the second year of the grant, the organizations will focus on informing youth about the dangers of other tobacco products, products that are often packaged to look like candy, according to Joyce Erickson, coordinator of the Kenosha, Racine, Walworth Tri-County Tobacco Free Coalition.

Thirty of Wisconsin’s 72 counties received a total of $6.6 million dollars from Transform Wisconsin, which received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention several months ago, according to Diedra Nass, who does outreach for Transform Wisconsin. Statewide, grants were awarded based on plans to address issues with smoke-free housing, fruit and vegetable consumption in schools and low levels of physical activity in an effort to improve the overall health of Wisconsin communities.