HOAs and their war on clotheslines

[marmar]

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.


Elizabeth Morris and her family bought their house in Seattle's High Point neighborhood for a reason. "High Point is the city of Seattle's premier 'green community,' having been touted internationally as such, as well as (for) mixing Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) rental properties and private home ownership," she explained. It's a compact, walkable, mixed-income, energy-efficient, green-built neighborhood peppered with bicycle commuters and rain barrels. So Morris was shocked to find that at High Point, clotheslines are banned.

"Homeowners have even been warned that it is illegal," Morris said. "Not only are owners not allowed to save energy by hanging out laundry, but those who rent from SHA (read: low income) aren't allowed to save on their energy bills, either."

Like over 60 million other Americans and Canadians, Morris lives in a neighborhood governed by a homeowners association (HOA). These quasi-private governments, along with some apartment blocks and condominiums, are largely free to set rules as they see fit. Penalties for violations range from fines to forced expulsion. Imagine being banished by your neighbors for drying your clothes!

Clothesline bans are wrongheaded, because line drying's advantages are numerous. For one, anyone who hang dries will tell you that it makes clothes last much longer -- all that lint in your dryer filter has to come from somewhere. Benefits go beyond that, however: according to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, households in the Northwest states use 4.3 percent of their annual electricity consumption to dry laundry. To put that into perspective, even our refrigerators only gobble up 3.5 percent. As The New York Times highlighted in an article last year, the typical U.S. household could prevent 1,500 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year simply by turning off its dryer and hanging out the wash. Oh, and clotheslines never burn down your house; in the U.S. alone, dryers cause more than 12,000 residential fires annually (PDF). ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.grist.org/climate-energy/2011-07-29-hung-out-to-dry-why-clothesline-bans-wrongheaded

[Warpy]

1. This is just beyond stupid.

My own solution for not offending the neighbors with clotheslines was to attach it to the side of the house with a cleat and bowline knot. Between loads of washing, the line was neatly rolled up and out of sight. On laundry day, they just had to suck it up.

Nobody complained.

[snappyturtle]

2. Amazing, isn't it? In the eighties I hung laundry indoors in the basement.

I only used the dryer (no heat cycle) to soften towels and jeans....worked great. Now I find myself living with my daughter in her condo. The HOA rules here have taught me that when I get back on my feet I will not be buying a condo and then get the priviledge of paying high HOA monthly fees.

[MineralMan]

3. That's because they're "Green" in the Brand NewChevy Volt sense,

not really in the Public Transit sense.

[KT2000]

4. Idiotic!

As a laundry nut I can see no logic to this at all. Dryers are the most expensive electrical device in the home. So we have to build nuclear reactors so HOA's can have their silly rules? What a waste.

[xmas74]

5. I prefer my clothesline.

The clothes smell better, it's cheaper to use, and I can wash and hang my clothes in the morning before leaving for work, come home that night and take them down without them being all wrinkled up.

People ask why I've stayed in a small town. This is one of the reasons. In most areas of my town no one would bat an eye if there was a clothesline.