Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 09, 2024

Don’t say anything. Call your lawyer.

Vermont BANNED banning clotheslines!

Apparently, they lower property values.

What a wonderfully insane, sick society you live in, has that particular law changed since this comic first came out?

Most new developments in Vegas too.

Glad we don’t live in an HOA community. We’ve been hanging out our clothes for years except when it raining or threatening rain.

When we were in Dublin (Ireland), the property manager called in one day to inform us that some of the other tenants in the apartment building had complained that we where putting out our laundry on the balcony to dry (the few days a year where it wasn’t raining, that is). I let him in, took him to our balcony, and showed him the view: on other tenant’s balconies there were skis (in Dublin!), surfboards, rubbish bins and sacks, lockers, etc etc… I never saw him again.

Understandable. How can a tourist see the tower on (S)Nob’s Hill in San Francisco when blocked by flapping laundry?

We bought a house in a ten year old subdivision. It was created with an HOA to which everyone belonged and it never was a problem. We talked to each other and chipped in with labor or funds to fix things like roads and common areas. The brilliant thing about our HOA was that its articles of incorporation called for it to automatically expire after twenty years, unless a majority of the property owners wanted to renew it. When that time came, every one of us said, “Nah.” Nearly fifty years later, we still don’t need it.

Save the planet, outlaw the HOA! I would join that movement.

For all of California’s faults, this one isn’t unique to them.

Some of the older residents in my apartment complex think drying laundry outside indicates poverty, that’s why they don’t want it

Some states out west have made HOA rules about mandatory lawns and watering them illegal. No water, but hey, you must waste it on GRASS!! Xerioscaping or fake lawns are being substitutes.

Dam busters? (Sorry; it’s free-association Tuesday.)

Hard to believe this was a real thing at one time, our city council had to pass a law allowing the use of clotheslines, it was a weird time…lol

a perfect indictment of california, it is environmental and free BUT it doesn’t look pretty sop it is banned

I love the feel of sundried towels. Problem is cycling shorts and shirts should never go in the dryer, in the winter I hang them in the washroom which is the same room as the furnace so the heat from the furnace dries them

HOA’s are the devil’s tool.

HOAs what evil creature dreamt this up?

In contrast, Florida is a “right to dry” state. HOAs hate it, but the use of clotheslines is baked into the state statutes (FL Statute 163.04)

We use our solar clothes dryer every wash day. We don’t live in California.

California finally got smart in 2015 and passed Assembly Bill No. 1448 allowing clotheslines state wide. Take that HOAs.

With the ban on gas dryers coming, we will have no choice

So California…home of eco-warriors….bans something that is so eco-friendly. I know they must have passed a law by now to prevent HOAs from doing this. They legislate everything else.

Oh? You mean the local Gestapo.

I foresee a riff on Alice’s Restaurant coming up. . . . " Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten, Colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back, Of each one, sat down." Alice’s Restaurant – Arlo Guthrie

And California has so much sun! In Italy, where public aesthetics are important culturally, you see drying clothes on lines all over. I found it colourfully charming. Obviously it is not thought of as looking ‘ghetto’ or ‘trashy’ there.

I need to make a list of perfectly good reasons to avoid California. On the other hand that would be a fairly lengthy list and I know I’m ignoring a lot of the good things.

Sun kills the bacteria that causes mold. Hanging the clothes increases their longevity. Plus, in Arizona I get my vitamin D and exercise. Can afford a dryer and have an outlet specific for it, but I’m happy to not live in an area that is HOA. Also, homes are painted whatever color you want.

Dude. That’s not how you hang socks on a clothesline.

Only for fools who bought into an hoa neighborhood.

Good one!

HOAs are petty dictatorships that need badly to be overthrown and declared illegal. (signed: an apartment dweller)

35,0000 HOAs in 2001 is probably 971,000 HOAs today, and that’s about 1,000,000 HOAs too many.

Reminds me of when I worked for a guest lodging with cabins in the woods near a lake. The older couple who ran it told us “Don’t dry towels on the shrubs—it will look like a gypsy camp.” They probably were brought up to believe that if you left your laundry outside, the gypsies would steal it.