In 2018, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development required public housing authorities to implement a smoke-free housing (SFH) policy that included individual apartments. We analyzed the policy implementation process in the New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA). From June–November 2019, we conducted 9 focus groups with 64 NYCHA residents (smokers and nonsmokers), 8 key informant interviews with NYCHA staff and resident association leaders, and repeated surveys with a cohort of 130 nonsmoking households pre- and 12-month post policy. One year post policy implementation, participants reported widespread smoking violations and multi-level factors impeding policy implementation. These included the shared belief among residents and staff that the policy overreached by “telling people what to do in their own apartments”. This hindered compliance and enforcement efforts. Inconsistent enforcement of illegal marijuana use, staff smoking violations, and a lack of accountability for other pressing housing issues created the perception that smokers were being unfairly targeted, as did the lack of smoking cessation resources. Resident support for the policy remained unchanged but satisfaction with enforcement declined (60.1% vs. 48.8%, p = 0.047). We identified multilevel contextual factors that are influencing SFH policy implementation. Findings can inform the design of strategies to optimize policy implementation.

Five Pilipina American (PA) social work MotherScholars, from a doctoral student to an interim dean, used kuwentuhan (Pilipinx methodology) to amplify their survivance and thrivance despite attempted exclusion, reduction, and distortion as Pilipinos by coloniality/modernity. Grounded in decolonial feminism (the view that oppressions such as sexism and racism co-constitute coloniality and that unsettling oppressions disrupts hegemony) and Pinayism (an integrated framework revaluing the labor, intellect, and nurturance of mothering through a cultural lens), the authors work coalitionally across their PA diversity to re-center ginhawa (aliveness or sense of ease and wellness). Together, they embarked on an iterative self-study process of data generation and analysis that included presenting, recording, and transcribing two panel presentations at a premier social work conference, writing reflections and hay(na)ku poems about their experiences and processes, reading and rereading the data, and meeting and discussing the data, their process, and past and current events pertinent to the content. The stories highlight how the authors are living and enlivening decoloniality, and that, in so doing, they continue a lineage of those who have resisted coloniality/modernity and promoted thrivance. Collectively, these kuwentos (stories), reflections, hay(na)ku, and their weaving together, are memory, resistance, counter-storytelling, and healing.