So You Think You Can Just Add a Clothesline to Your House? Dream on

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



So You Think You Can Just Add a Clothesline to Your House? Dream on

By Stan Cox, Prairie Writers Circle. Posted August 13, 2008.

20% of Americans are subject to homeowners associations, which have sweeping powers to dictate almost anything you want to do to your own home.



Susana Tregobov dries clothes on a line behind her Maryland townhouse, saving energy and money. But now her homeowners association has ordered her to bring in the laundry. The crackdown came after a neighbor complained that the clothesline "makes our community look like Dundalk," a low-income part of Baltimore.

Tregobov and her husband plan to fight for their right to a clothesline, but the odds are against them. Although their state recently passed a law protecting homeowners' rights to erect solar panels for generating electricity, it is still legal in Maryland for communities to ban solar clothes-drying.

Twenty percent of Americans now live in homes subject to rules set by homeowner associations, or HOAs. These private imitation governments have sweeping powers to dictate almost any aspect of a member's property, from the size of the residence down to changes in trim color and the placement of a basketball hoop.

In the view of HOAs, people hand over control of such things when they buy their home, so they have no legitimate gripe. But a growing number of state and local governments are deciding that when HOAs ban eco-friendly practices, they violate the property rights of their members and damage everyone's right to a habitable planet. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/94846/so_you_think_you_can_just_add_a_clothesline_to_your_house_dream_on/

[YOY]

1. That's why I made sure there was no HOA in my community

I keep my property up. It doesn't look like an eyesore. If someone wants to beautify it they can tell me their idea and give me their money.

Otherwise they can kiss my ass.

COA/HOAs are crocks of shit and the money they glean is seldom accounted for.

[hobbit709]

2. One of many reasons I would never live where a HOA exists.

[fasttense]

3. We have a HOA.

Not all of them are horrible.

Ours merely set standards to exclude cars without tires and dumps.

We live in a very rural area and many people think they can trash anything they own. So instead of taking their trash to the local dump and recycling center, they dump it down their back yard hill. Or they buy up old beaters and line up six or seven rusty cars for their neighbors to appreciate.

The sad part is that the countryside is very beautiful and trashing it, even if you own it, ruins it for everyone.

[notadmblnd]

4. These people have their standards you know,

Everything must be just so, lest some hoity toity drive through and be shocked to see that one home has grass an inch taller than the house next door, or if gawd forbid the trim color isn't up to standards. But a clothesline has just got to be the worst, they simply can't have others thinking that anyone living in their neighborhood couldn't afford to run an electric or gas dryer. Sorry ma'am, take that clothesline down the street where the rest of the white trash live. :sarcasm:

[JoDog]

5. Landlords do it too

Our lease expressly forbids clotheslines.

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. Fifteen years and no one has complained yet.

I dare them to. And they know it.

[knitter4democracy]

7. We have an HOA from back in the 60s--but only one guy enforces it.

Charlie's a great neighbor and really doesn't care about most stuff. I'm pretty sure I can have a clothesline or dry my clothes on racks on the back deck (my backyard neighbor does).

It's these newer developments with newer HOA rules that are the problem. It's one of the reasons we bought this house in the older neighborhood.

[hedgehog]

8. Someone needs to do a major study of the class system in the US.

Most people would deny that a class system exists, but IMO segregation by class is as pervasive if not more so than segregation by race was.