With pavement cafes the next no-go areas for smokers, according to reports earlier this month, where do smokers go when they are driven off the streets? One contributor to the Flat Chat website has the answer … somewhere close to you.
“It seems to me that the problem will only get worse,” writes Woman. “The only place a smoker has a right to smoke is in his or her private home.”
The problem is, as our reader points out, when the smoke creeps on to someone else’s property, they have to put up with it or jump through legal hoops to have it stopped.
She has smokers in apartment below her and their fumes get into her flat through gaps in the joinery. At a strata meeting, the Owners Corporation refused to have the gaps sealed and said it was the price our correspondent had to pay for ‘living with people’.
“So we are stuck, either move or put up with it,” she says.
Well, no. You can take this to Fair Trading and the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (which costs only $70) to either get the gaps fixed or, failing that, have the smokers stop smoking.
If this is a building defect, then the Owners Corporation is legally obliged to fix it. If not, or if closing the gaps doesn’t work, then the smokers may have to stop smoking.
In a landmark CTTT ruling in November 2006, it was decreed that even though there were issues with the construction of building with similar complaints, if there was no smoke there would be no problem so the smokers had to stop smoking or move out.
So you don’t have to live with the smoke, it’s the smokers who have to cope with living in an unsuitable building. And if they don’t like it, they can move.