Mining for gold: Analyzing local housing data to inform a smoke-free housing policy campaign

The San Mateo County (California) Tobacco Prevention Program gathered data from the 3600+ local apartment housing complexes to conduct analysis of several factors to inform smoke-free housing campaign strategy. Analysis revealed useful data regarding residence of property owners, information about landlords who own multiple buildings in the County, and apartment building size trends in various cities.

Property owner residence analysis showed that 30% of landlords live in the same city as their property with another 45% of landlords living in another city than their property, but still in San Mateo County. A media campaign to engage landlords was conducted based on the knowledge that local media will reach the majority of targets.

Multiple property ownership analysis yielded a list of property owners to serve as campaign targets- a landlord who owns many hundreds of rental units could immediately impact overall local housing stock by implementing a smoke-free policy. Additionally, landlords who own property in a city where a smoke-free housing law already exists (such as Belmont) will be interviewed to determine whether the law impacted voluntary policies they enacted at their other properties in cities without mandatory smoke-free housing rules.

Building size data revealed that each city has a housing stock style- some cities have very few buildings, each with many units, and others have very many smaller buildings with only 4-10 units in each. These buildings warrant different approaches. Larger buildings that adopt smoke-free policies ultimately protect many residents, while smaller buildings require many individual advocacy meetings.