Like many public housing residents, we were surprised to learn that smoking will be prohibited in all public housing apartments in Richmond beginning Aug. 1.

The smoking ban was put in place nationally by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and will affect more than 1.2 million households, including 4,000 families living in Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority properties in the city.

Residents in public housing communities no longer will be able to smoke within their units, including on patios or balconies, in stairwells or other common areas, in management offices or within 25 feet of housing and office buildings.

In instituting the ban, HUD officials have noted the high health-related and other costs of smoking, as well as the negative impact secondhand smoke has on children, including causing or aggravating asthma and other diseases such as cancer. 

Federal housing officials also have said that while the government will not help to pay for enforcement, local housing authorities stand to save money under a smoke-free policy through fewer losses from fires and lower costs for cleaning and painting smoke-damaged units.

While we strongly agree that a smoke-free environment is optimal for individuals’ health, what troubles us most is that violators of the new smoking ban may be subject to eviction from their homes — a truly Draconian punishment for an addiction that studies show is extremely difficult to break.

Changing the policy on such short notice raises misgivings about whether this is a pretense to push people from their homes as part of the city’s continuing efforts to shut down public housing communities and make way for mixed-use, higher-income developments like the one planned for Creighton Court. 

 Orlando Artze, the RRHA’s interim chief executive officer, told the Free Press earlier this month that the RRHA has been trying to prepare residents for this policy change. We would like to know, however, just what efforts RRHA officials have undertaken, other than to notify residents just a few months before the smoking ban is to take place.

Published reports show that housing authorities have known such a ban has been in the works since 2009 — nearly a decade. And many agencies have used that valuable time to provide smoking cessation programs for residents.

Anyone who has been a smoker or lived around a smoker knows the challenges of ending the stranglehold of a tobacco addiction. Despite all the public service messages and graphic advertisements showing people emaciated by cancer and COPD, their voice boxes removed or their breathing raspy after a tracheotomy, people continue to smoke.

Now HUD and the RRHA are turning up the heat by threatening to boot people out of their homes and apartments if they violate the new smoking ban.

Our question is what is the RRHA doing — what is the Richmond Health Department doing — to help public housing residents quit smoking now that they risk losing their homes? What targeted non-smoking efforts with proven results can be offered to help Richmonders in the 12 weeks or so leading up to the Aug. 1 ban?

We understand the Virginia Department of Health offers Quit Now Virginia, that reportedly has helped more than 40,000 people quit smoking. It uses telephone coaching sessions to help people stop smoking, including a 24-hour, toll-free helpline for support — (800) QUIT-NOW.

 Given the high stakes now facing public housing residents, we believe that more targeted programs should be made available to the more than 10,000 people living in RRHA housing. Resource centers within the city’s public housing communities already may have their hands full providing services ranging from employment assistance to youth programs. But collaborations with other local, state, federal and private programs and resources battling smoking addiction should be added.

Today, we view opioid addiction as a public health issue. The state offers to anyone free Narcan, the life-saving drug that reverses opioid overdose. What’s the difference between opioid addicts, who state statistics show are largely Caucasian, and the tobacco users in Richmond public housing who are largely African-American and poor? We believe the city has a moral obligation now to offer free nicotine patches, gum or tablets such as Chantix to help RRHA residents quit smoking. 

While HUD officials say they don’t want the new policy to end in wholesale evictions, we will see whether Richmond officials step up to the plate to help residents avoid such a disaster.