CONCORD — Following in the footsteps of other Contra Costa County cities, the Concord City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday night that bans smoking inside apartment complexes and other multi-unit homes.

The ordinance prohibits smoking in buildings that contain two or more units or have shared walls, including apartments, condominiums and townhouses, residential care facilities, transitional housing and assisted living centers, as well as RVs or mobile homes in mobile home parks.

The ban also applies to patios and balconies, but allows property owners to create designated smoking areas for tenants.

Exempted from the ban are houses and accessory dwelling units, whether attached or not. Mobile homes that aren’t located inside mobile home parks won’t be affected either.

For new units being built, the ban will take effect in 30 days, but for existing units it won’t kick in until Jan. 1, 2021. Landlords must notify tenants about the ban by July 1, 2020.

In addition to smoking tobacco in those dwellings, the ordinance prohibits smoking marijuana and vaping it and tobacco. Already, the state bans smoking at restaurants, hospitals, bars and within 25 feet of playgrounds. Hotels and motels are required to be 80 percent smoke-free, and people cannot smoke within 20 feet of the entrances or windows of public buildings.

State laws also prohibit marijuana from being used in public places such as city parks, streets and sidewalks, within 1,000 feet of a school or other youth center and inside cars or any place where smoking tobacco is also banned. Public housing also has to be smoke-free under federal law.

In Contra Costa County, the cities of Clayton, Danville, El Cerrito, Lafayette, Pinole, Richmond and Walnut Creek have adopted smoking bans similar to Concord’s, as has the county for its unincorporated areas.

City employees cannot cite violators unless they catch them in the act, Planning Manager Mindy Gentry said. The ordinance allows any person to file a civil court action against the offending smoker.

That initially rankled some landlords, who said it would expose them to lawsuits if some tenants violate the ordinance. But City Attorney Susanne Brown pointed to language in the code that exempts landlords from being sued as long as they have notified tenants about the ban.

About 15 people urged the council to adopt the ordinance, with many sharing stories of growing up in Concord apartment buildings or mobile home parks tainted by tobacco smoke.

One longtime Concord resident and Diablo Valley College student said she felt her well-being and that of her neighbors at Trees Mobile Home Park off Monument Boulevard is compromised and she finds herself “shutting windows to keep drifting secondhand smoke from entering my bedroom.”

Debra Ballinger, executive director of local nonprofit Monument Impact, praised the smoking ban but urged council members to also consider prohibiting flavored tobacco product sales, which other jurisdictions have done and local advocates previously urged Concord to do.

Flavored tobacco, specifically e-cigarettes and other vaping products, are marketed to teens, Ballinger said. “We’re a little behind the times here.”

Still, many speakers said they’re glad a smoking ban finally was enacted in Concord.

“There is no safe level of secondhand smoke,” said Dan Peddycord, director of public health for Contra Costa County and a Concord resident. “I hope to be able to stand before you in not too many years and proclaim every city in (the county’s) jurisdiction will have declared a smoking ban.”