Neighbors Win Right to Vote on Smoke-Free Rows

Neighbors rallying for a smoke-free row of townhouses in Greenbelt, MD, have won the right to take their case to their housing membership at large.

Their , but their final petition stepped it up a level — giving any row in their cooperative housing community a chance to ban smoking.

Greenbelt Homes, Inc. (GHI) General Manager Eldon Ralph reported on Monday that the petition met the housing cooperatives’ requirements. Now it is in the cooperative members' court. They are slated to vote on the petition at their annual meeting on Thursday, May 17.

The petitioners not only met the deadline, they also turned it in with 53 signatures, 52 of which were accepted by GHI as those of cooperative members. Either way, it is well above the 10 required by GHI to place a matter on the annual meeting agenda.

Judy Bell and Linda Curtis collected the signatures. Both women live on the A-H row of the 13 Court of Ridge Road — the row that started the drive. Bell said she didn’t have any problems getting people on board; almost everyone she asked signed. 

She did run into some members who were scared at first, she said. They thought they would not have a choice, but she said she assured them that they would.

"It's all voluntary. Nobody has to do it if they don't want to. So if a row wants to be able to, why shouldn't they be able to do it?” she asked.

Close by, on 11 Ridge Road, GHI member David Schuman is also seeking a smoke-free environment in his townhouse. Schuman believes GHI broke its Mutual Ownership Contract (MOC) by failing to stop the nuisance of his neighbor's smoke — and he took GHI and his neighbors, George and Svetlana Popovic, to court over the matter.

Although on Nov. 3, 2011, the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland has accepted his appeal.

The 13 Court Ridge neighbors are coming at it from another angle. They are not saying that their MOCs should protect them from smoke, they are attempting to change MOCs on a voluntary basis, row by row.

Their petition states:

"We, the membership, direct the Board of Directors of Greenbelt Homes, Inc. to develop and implement a policy that would allow members of an entire row of units to revise their Mutual Ownership Contracts to indicate that smoking inside these units is not allowed."

Should the smoke-free petitioners succeed, change will not happen overnight, according to Ralph. The mechanics will have to be worked out. But Ralph said that GHI will carry out its obligation to do what the membership requests of it.