On the line

American Public Radio's Media's "Marketplace" yesterday featured a report on the unglamorous but eminently sensible technological apparatus known as the clothesline.

You can read a transcript of the report at this link -- "Clotheslines: Energy saver or eyesore?" -- but you really owe it to yourself to click on the "listen to this story" link to hear for yourself the voice of the appalling Ceil Bell, a board member of a Timonium, Md., "homeowners' association" that prohibits clotheslines.

"Clothes drying is just unsightly," Bell says. "You get people hanging towels over the railings, you get clotheslines in the backyard. We just don't like the look of it. It looks like a lower-class neighborhood."

Apparently Bell thinks people in "lower-class neighborhoods" are, as a rule, smarter and more sensible than the prodigal idiots the Timonium homeowners' association hopes to attract.

These homeowners' associations fascinate me. Marketplace's Joel Rose reports that there are about 300,000 of these in the U.S., about half of which prohibit clothes lines. How does this prohibition work, exactly? How is it enforced? And by what authority do these Mayberry Mussolinis claim the right to tell others that they're only allowed to dry their clothes through the operation of energy-intensive, fossil-fuel burning machines (adding chemicals to make them smell almost, but not quite, like they had really been dried the sensible way, out in the sun)?

The Wikipedia entry on homeowners' associations answers some of those questions, but not the larger question of why on earth anyone would voluntarily submit to live in such prefab neighborhoods where, it seems, all that is not expressly permitted is forbidden. One could argue that this intrusive corporate governance of private life is un-American. But then I suppose one could also argue that the voluntary surrender of personal freedom in the hopes of attaining higher "property values" is quintessentially American.

Rose's report balances the odious attitude of Ceil Bell with two sets of Good Guys. First there's Gary Sutterlin, the U.S. representative for Hills Hoist -- the simple but ingenius folding rotary clothesline that is, Rose says, ubiquitous in Australia. Sutterlin says the use of a clothesline "will save the average consumer 6 to 10 percent of your utility costs." That's reason enough to use a clothesline without even getting into all of the environmental benefits or the lovely additional perk of ticking off the Ceil Bells of your neighborhood.

Then there's Alex Lee, director of Project Laundry List, a nonprofit dedicated to "making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy." Their "Right to Dry Campaign" advocates the passage of Right to Dry legislation in states and municipalities to win Americans the right to, you know, access to the sun. (Wasn't denying that right the plot of a Philip K. Dick novel?)

And while you're clicking around that Laundry List site, be sure to check out their online store.

(Jeez, I've only been a homeowner for one week and already I'm resorting to laundry blogging.)

Comments

"Hills Hoist -- the simple but ingenius folding rotary clothesline that is, Rose says, ubiquitous in Australia."

And in the UK...

[J]

Aw man, I wanted to be first commenter.

Right on as regards laundry lines, Fred. It's got to be most energy-saving yet low-overhead use of solar power out there.

[MikhailBorg]

Bad news: the house we are looking at has a homeowners' association.

Good news: it comes with a clothesline already in place. (Of course, it's in a privacy-fenced back yard, so the homeowners' association wouldn't see it anyway.)

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

I've never understood the point of buying a house in a place where someone has such control over what you do with it. Why not just save yourself a scad of money and rent an apartment, where such restrictions at least make some sense?

[Bella]

The rotary lines can be a bit wonky, and I prefer my old-fashioned clothesline, but whatever it takes. The minute the weather is even vaguely decent enough to use the clothesline, I am out there, pegging stuff up. I don't think clotheslines are unsightly; I actually am rather charmed when I see all my neighbours have put out their washing. Sheets snapping in the breeze look lovely.

[Funky Shoes]

My HOA actually climbed onto my deck to make sure the slats in my sliding door, on the second level, where white. They were stained (wood colored) which I personally think looks better. I'm certain a clothesline is out of the question but I could bring my drying racks onto the deck; as long as my neighbors can't see them, I'm OK. One odd thing, I'm not supposed to grow vegetables where my neighbors can see them although one neighbor has a decorative herb garden out front and another is planning to grow vegetables out back.

[McJulie]

Vegetables? Vegetables are seen as unsightly?

Good grief.

Homeowners' associations seem to exist specifically to enforce the kind of uniformity and lack of personality that give the suburbs a bad name.

Of course, I live in the Pacific Northwest, where drying one's clothes outside is well-night impossible most of the year. So even though Bellingham is a pretty hippie town with a strong ecological consciousness, you don't see a lot of clotheslines.

You do, however, see a lot of "Freedom lawns."

(The so-called Freedom Lawn is a nickname for lawn that is mostly unwatered and has no chemicals applied, including chemicals that would keep out non-grass plants such as clover. I read the description and thought, "Oh, a Bellingham lawn!")

[sweetcraspy]

My family used to live in a neighborhood with no homeowners association. My parents saw this as a good thing when we were buying the house, because they knew about the sorts of rules those organizations create when they get too big for their britches. For the most part, it was fine. We kept a nice house out of pride of ownership, and our immediate neighbors did too. But there was one family who lived up the court who did not. They ran a roofing business out of their house, and constantly had dump trucks in their driveway and roofing supplies on their lawn. For a while they also parked dump trucks on the court, which we later found out was illegal. That caused big cracks in the road to appear over a couple years. They weren't reasonable people, and didn't respect the idea of keeping the neighborhood nice in response to polite requests from other neighbors, or the police when we found out about the illegal trucks.

Eventually, my parents changed their tune about homeowners associations. There was just nothing we could do about the small warehouse's worth of materials they kept in the front yard. We eventually moved for related reasons. (The family's kids were the local bullies, and as they grew up, they just made bigger trouble, culminating in setting fire to a curbside couch and melting someone's car bumper.) The house we moved to was part of an association, and the neighborhood showed it.

There have been a few ridiculous interactions. (They got mad at my dad for having mulch delivered to the driveway and not spreading it on the same day.) But overall, it has been a good thing.

I think that while there are plenty or horror stories about abuses of association power, the association itself is a good idea. I am in favor of strict limits on what the association has jurisdiction over and of pure democratic review/repeal of the rules that they propose. It's just like government, there are many benefits to having one, but you must limit its power. Obviously, a "no clothes lines" rule is going too far. In fact, I think that just about any temporary structure should be allowed. If were talking strictly about property values, only elements that are or become permanent can have any real effect.

[Paul Bagosy]

Just wanted to pimp Sutterlin's business, BreezeDryer, mainly because they talk about the fact that he has only sold about 500 of the things byt don't bother to mention his business by name (but really because I'm pretty proud of the job I did on that site). I had a crazy "squee" moment in the car when I heard NPR interviewing someone I actually know. Of course, that was quickly dashed by Ceil Bell explicitly stating that my back yard is "lower class" because I choose not to use my dryer in the summer when there's a perfectly good hot sun and breeze combination outside that actually makes my clothes smell better. My wife mentioned that this was the reason we stayed far away from places with a HOA.

-pb

[Dylan]

Hmm. Wonder how that would fly here. We're renting a house in an older subdivision, and to my knowledge, we don't actually have a homeowner's association... although that hasn't stopped some of our neighbors from posting anonymous notes about the neighborhood's vague and undefined "rules and regulations."

[Aaron]

An example of "community association" covenants gone totally insane:

http://dorseyssearch.columbiavillages.org/files/file/dorseyguide.htm

When you have to dust off your high-school trig in order to determine where in your backyard you may put a doghouse, things have gone far too far.

[Chuchundra]

Two things, Fred.

First of all, in a lot of communities around the country, it's very hard to find a house that's not part of a HOA. If you want to live there, you buy in a HOA development. That's that.

Local governments like HOAs because they take over some government functions (street maintenance, etc) thereby lightening their tax burden. I've certainly heard of zoning boards and such requiring a HOA if a builder wants approval for their new development.

Secondly, not enough people have read The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater.

My house is me and and I am it. My house is where I want to be and it looks like all my dreams.

[Cyllan]

We tried to find a house that didn't come with an associated HOA, but when weighing all of our options, the HOA was only one check in the minus column. The other factors (price, size, location, etc) were sufficiently positive that we were willing to suck up the HOA. Luckily for us, ours has mostly been ignorable. We get the occasional notice in the mail about mowing our lawn which serves nicely to drive up my blood-pressure, but they mostly leave us alone. We lost the actual covenants that we signed about 10 minutes after signing them, but there are any number of provisions in them that we and most everyone else in the neighborhood cheerfully ignore.

I suspect most people who wind up in HOA houses are like us. They don't want the HOA, but view it as just another factor to evaluate. Unfortunately this means that the homeowners association is run not by a general cross-section of the houses in the neighborhood, but by the 10% of people who are actually obsessive enough to care about the height of someone's lawn or where they put their garbage cans. When I move next, the presence/absence of an HOA will be given a great deal more weight than it was; I didn't really make it enough of a factor in my decision making process.

As for how it works, it's straight-forward enough. When you buy the house, you sign a booklet of "covenants" that gets tossed in with your mortgage papers. With that signature, you agree that the HOA has the right to issue fines (and possible put a lien on your house) if they determine that you've violated those covenants. So if you put up a laundry line in view of the street, they'll send you a letter asking you to take it down. Eventually, they'll issue a fine, and if you refuse to pay that, they'll put a lien on your house. Courts have generally sided with the HOA in their rights to do so (generally on the basis that one doesn't have to live in an HOA neighborhood and thus homeowners have submitted voluntarily to the HOA's authority) but some people have sued and been successful.

Having moved into an HOA neighborhood, I pretty much just suck it up. I knew what I was getting into and although I don't like it, bitching about it isn't really justifiable. I do my best to stymie anything nasty that the HOA wants to do (which mostly involves not attending meetings so that they can't achieve a quorum of homeowners) and go on with my life.

[Jon]

I have clotheslines at the back of my house on the patio, but they don't really get that much sunlight, as it's a covered patio. Without the direct sunlight, the high summertime humidity here in VA means that wet clothes would have to hang for quite some time before drying out.
Of course, I have to go outside to dry my clothes anyway, due to the odd construction of my house: the dryer is located in a small utility room attached to the back of the house. Eventually I plan to do some renovations that will allow me to have my washer and dryer located in the same room in the house, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon (my first priority is to give my hideously pink master bathroom a much-needed makeover). Also, when I do construct an actual laundry room I'll have to buy new, more environmentally-friendly appliances anyway, as I'm reasonably certain that my current washer and dryer are at least as old as I am.

[Robb]

Mayberry Mussolinis

Haw haw!

I know two couples - good friends, but of differing ethoi - who live in McMansions within these individuality-exclusion zones, and they've both complained about the restrictions of the HOAs. Everything from using a ruler to make sure lawns aren't too high to calling the local police to ticket what the HOA determines as malparkage, the job of HOA seems custom made for humorless, OCD rule pushers. I've never met any of the HOA staff at either of these places, but I imagine them all to be clones of Dolores Umbridge.

What I find annoying/frustrating about my friends is none of them ever seem to consider the fact that where they live isn't the best possible place to be. They have nice, big, new houses, and the where & how of having those houses is irrelevant. Ah well.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, where drying one's clothes outside is well-night impossible most of the year

Hi neighbor! Yeah, it's quite lamentable that the Snohomish River valley is far too often soaked, though this year has been warmer & drier than the past few. I'd love to be able to use clothes lines, but it ain't gonna happen.

[cjmr's husband]

We have no HOA, and it was a factor in choosing a house.

And you know what? The neighborhood looks decent. We have - what are they called - LAWS about lawn care. Laws that were passed by a democratically elected city government, and that can be modified and eliminated by that government.

Kind of like the bit about the dump trucks.

Yes, people CAN paint their houses different colors! And for the most part they aren't hideous!

And the city does road maintenance and picks up the trash and recycling, and we pay for it through something called TAXES that we can deduct from our state taxes!

[twig]

They weren't reasonable people, and didn't respect the idea of keeping the neighborhood nice in response to polite requests from other neighbors, or the police when we found out about the illegal trucks.

So wait, the police didn't intimidate these people, but somehow an HOA was going to?

I'm just not in favor of legislating for Worst Case Scenario. It leads to all sorts of ridiculous, inane and insulting zero tolerance crap.

[Amaryllis]

Secondly, not enough people have read The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater.

My house is me and and I am it. My house is where I want to be and it looks like all my dreams.

Oh my goodness! Haven't thought of that book in years, but it was one of my daughter's favorites and something of a fmily bible whe she was little. And it's just as well that we have no HOA, because we took those lines literally.

[sweetcraspy]

So wait, the police didn't intimidate these people, but somehow an HOA was going to?

The police stopped them from parking their trucks illegally, but having the stuff on the lawn was legal. (I think they had a special permit to run the business from their home and were allowed to have commercial dump trucks and materials on residential property.) An HOA (thanks for the acronym, btw) would have had the authority, by virtue of the covenant contract, to fine/punish them for their impact on everyone else's property values.

I'm just not in favor of legislating for Worst Case Scenario. It leads to all sorts of ridiculous, inane and insulting zero tolerance crap.

I disagree. The HOA should only have jurisdiction over the worst cases. Only the people whose actions are having big, demonstrable effects on the way the neighborhood looks should ever have to deal with the HOA. Everyone else, the people who like wood stained sliding door slats and clothes lines should have free reign.

[Daughter]

I recently moved to the Pacific Northwest from the east coast. In my previous home, I did a lot of indoor drying, but I've found that when it's raining here, it's hard to dry stuff even indoors - it takes days, and smells mildewy when it's finally dry.

Even in my previous home, however, I never dried things outdoors. Serious question here, for those of you with experience: when you try to line-dry things in the city, how do you keep them from getting soiled by pollution, or prevent pigeons from pooping on them? Those were always my fears.

[Tonio]

I would propose rebranding clothes lines as "green drying," or making the clothes lines look expensive. (Put Mercedes logos on them, maybe?) But I see no need to cater to people like Ceil Bell who have such twisted values in the first place.

Aside about property values - in my community, two adjoining high school districts have different average incomes and different percentages of minorities. The real-estate agents in the area often tout homes as being in the richer/less-minority school's district, in ways that do not flout the equal housing laws. One parent told a school board member that she opposed moving her upper-middle-income neighborhood into the poorer/more-minority school's district. Her basis? The move would lower her property values. She mentioned vandalism occurring on the school's property after hours. I wanted to tell the woman to shove her property values up her ass. But the school board member had a much better response - he asked what did her concerns have to do with the education the students were receiving.

[SueW]

Homeowners' associations seem to exist specifically to enforce the kind of uniformity and lack of personality that give the suburbs a bad name.

That is exactly what they are there for! Well, okay, they do have a few good points. When your house shares a roof and walls with other houses someone has to keep things in order. The place I used to live had the rule against outdoor clotheslines too. But I prefer to hang my clothes on a rack indoors anyway. Now I live in a neighborhood with no HOA, and I don't miss it. If there had been one, the previous owners wouldn't have let the house go to pot, and I wouldn't have gotten such a bargain. :-D

[Naked Bunny with a Whip]

I could never live in a neighborhood run by a HOA. If I wanted busybodies meddling in my life, I would have stayed in my parents' house. People with such a need to control others should get pets...assuming their HOA allows it of course!

[Jeff]

not the larger question of why on earth anyone would voluntarily submit to live in such prefab neighborhoods where, it seems, all that is not expressly permitted is forbidden. One could argue that this intrusive corporate governance of private life is un-American. But then I suppose one could also argue that the voluntary surrender of personal freedom in the hopes of attaining higher "property values" is quintessentially American.

In the Condo down in San diego, it's only stuff that's visible from another apartment that's monitored. And this makes sense to me -- you don't want an eyesore when you look out the window. Most of the rules are voted on, so if a majority of owners want clothes-lines, they can VOTE to change the rules. In exchange, there's a lot of common area that's provided by the HOA. That means less maintence by indidual home-owners.

======================

I've never understood the point of buying a house in a place where someone has such control over what you do with it. Why not just save yourself a scad of money and rent an apartment, where such restrictions at least make some sense?

Equity is the biggest reason. Another is that you're more free to decorate the interior of a condo than that of an apartment.

=======================

I do my best to stymie anything nasty that the HOA wants to do (which mostly involves not attending meetings so that they can't achieve a quorum of homeowners) and go on with my life.

"I don't like Bush, so I'm not going to vote at all." Your other option is to form a coalition of other owners who think like you and join the Board. (My wife was president for about 3 terms just because no one else wanted the job.) Why not act to change the rules you don't like?

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calling the local police to ticket what the HOA determines as malparkage

If everyone has a large parking area (implied with "McMansions"), then, yeah, that's a bit rich. But in ours, there's limited parking, so parking hogs are a problem.

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Have any of the complainers joined the Board of their HOA? Have they run for office? Most of the rules of an HOA are open for debate and change, and the bar to entry is a lot smaller than that of a town or city.

If you want a clothes-line, get on the Board and pass a rule. Now THAT's American.

[Jason]

"like they had really been dried the sensible way, out in the sun ... [Line drying] will save the average consumer 6 to 10 percent of your utility costs."

I've had this mental debate about the relative virtues of line drying before.

My electricity costs are about $70/month except for the 4 months that we run the air conditioner. So line drying would, at best, save me about $70/month. When compared to the time value of hauling clothes outside, pinning them up, unpinning them, bring them in vs. the 30 seconds it takes to move a load to the dryer, $7 a month seems like a veritable bargain for busy people.

As for the marginal environmental cost of using the extra electricity, I'd rather skimp in other areas, like swapping out lightbulbs for CFLs, setting my computer to sleep after 30 minutes, and my rule of thumb of using no more than 600 watts of lighting at a time. But that's just me, and YMMV.

Btw, with respect to HOAs, I have a feeling that every time Fred advocates to the rights of homeowners to do whatever the hell they want in their back yards, a libertarian angel gets his wings....

[YetAnotherKevin]

I live in Las Vegas, and what I really want is a clothes dryer that sucks air from the outside in the summer and vents air to the inside during the winter. Also, a heat exchanger in the garage to heat water coming into the water heater and slightly cool the garage during the summer. Also a basement.

[Froborr]

Chuchundra: Thank you for mentioning The Big Orange Spot! It was one of the first books I ever read, and one of the most influential (the other two members of my top three are another picture-book, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, and a book of essays, The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan). Not that I'll ever own a house (environmentally speaking, farmers are really the only people who have an excuse not to live in cities), but I've never forgotten that little lesson about the value of self-expression and the evil of censorship.

[Robb]

If everyone has a large parking area (implied with "McMansions")

That's the sad thing is that there isn't much parking at all - there's a two car garage & driveway (theoretically, one could park 4 cars there), and space for about 1 car infront of each house. But the houses in every single development I've seen up here (those built in the last decade or so) are packed together - there's about 20 feet of space at the most between houses on the sides. They're certainly McMansions, but they're built on postage stamps of land that have no value or use except as a place to put a 4000 sqft house.

And driving in these places? Horrific - they're all designed & measured out to be literally as small as legally possible. The roads will just barely allow for cars to be parked on either side of the road with two lanes of traffic in between, but that's at best.

If I saw someone using a clothesline in one of these places, I'd rejoice, for a person of sense has been found!

I have a feeling that every time Fred advocates to the rights of homeowners to do whatever the hell they want in their back yards, a libertarian angel gets his wings

What's funny/odd/paradoxically strange is one of the people I know who lives in an uber-strict HOA zone is the single biggest Ron Paul supporter I've ever met.

[Tonio]

In Maryland, "North Potomac" exemplifies the mindless pursuit of both property values and geographic cachet. In Howard County, one community adjoining ultra-wealthy Clarksville wanted the Post Office to expand one of the town's ZIP codes to include the community.

What's funny/odd/paradoxically strange is one of the people I know who lives in an uber-strict HOA zone is the single biggest Ron Paul supporter I've ever met.

That would be strange if the person was a staunch defender of the HOA. But I could understand the person's stance if he/she had fought several battles with the HOA.

[Fiona]

Froborr: ...The Big Orange Spot! ... I've never forgotten that little lesson about the value of self-expression and the evil of censorship.

I haven't read that one, but I'm guessing it is similar to Mr Pine's Purple House, which was a favorite of mine when I was a child and has a similar theme.

[Cat Meadors]

Isn't this the same question as "who goes to a school that bans dancing"? People who want to live with other like-minded people, of course. I won't live somewhere with an HOA, because I don't want to live with a bunch of petty authoritarians. If I were a petty authoritarian, I'd make sure I lived somewhere where other people couldn't get away with doing things like painting their doors pink or letting their grass get an extra 1/8" long.

I have a clothesline, but don't use it - my backyard is smack up against a parking lot, and when I try to line-dry, my clothes all smell like exhaust. :(

[Tonio]

People who want to live with other like-minded people, of course. I won't live somewhere with an HOA, because I don't want to live with a bunch of petty authoritarians.

It's not that simple. One can have a salutary experience with HOAs and then move into a neighborhood without knowing that its HOA is one of the petty authoritarian ones. Or one's HOA can be taken over by petty authoritarians who may be difficult to dislodge.

[Caravelle]

There was a cool Doonesbury strip on the subject a few years ago. (but then, what subject doesn't ?)

Not to detract from the fact that clothelines in the sun are the most efficient way to dry stuff, but it isn't a choice between that and a dryer. My parents have clothelines in the garage and the laundry room, and I bought a hanger thingy for my small apartment to dry clothes on.
As long as you can wait a day or two for your clothes to dry those solutions are perfectly satisfactory.

[Caravelle]

Vegetables? Vegetables are seen as unsightly?

That's so ridiculous, I'm pretty sure they're just enforcing conspicuous waste as a sign of wealth. Growing vegetables and having clothelines are sensible things to do, and only poor people (or middle class, or lower middle class if "200000 a year" counts as "middle class") who need the money do sensible things.

And you wouldn't want people to think you're living in a poor neighborhood, would you ?

[not_scottbot]

Clothesdrying on Sunday in this part of Germany is still something of not completely socially acceptable behavior - it is a Sunday, after all. All other times, people hand out their laundry in nice weather - many don't have a dryer anyways (we don't).

I have read, basically from theoildrum.com, that in California, there is no possibility for a HOA to ban a clothesline (that might also extend to or include photovoltaic and solar hot water systems). But then, something like 2/3 of American states explicitly grant the right of women to breastfeed babies without legal problems, which is about as understandable in Germany as California's law.

HOAs are a complext theme, actually, if I understood my Calculated Risk reading correctly - in some places, mainly in the West, HOAs seem to be government light - responsible for roads and other infrastructure beyond the reach of the local government (Arizona is particularly noted in this regard), while on the East Coast, HOAs tend to govern neighborhood behavior.

From very hazy (pre-Rehnquist Supreme Court) memories, a HOA cannot be forced on a subsequent buyer as a deed condition.

I'm sure that whatever effect that prohibition had is at best a dim memory (possibly only of mine).

[Tonio]

If I were a petty authoritarian, I'd make sure I lived somewhere where other people couldn't get away with doing things like painting their doors pink or letting their grass get an extra 1/8" long.

Petty authoritarians don't want to live with like-minded people. They want to live with people who do what the authoritarians say obey the rules. They seek to regulate the behavior of others while objecting to others regulating them. A community filled with petty authoritarians would reach shortly reach critical mass.

[Nona]

Tonio, you think so? I grew up in Potomac proper, and we thought of North Potomac as wannabes, although why anyone *would* want their neighborhood to be like those in Potomac is something that still mystifies me. Especially since the neighborhood we lived in was the country-club development (home to the golf tournament that swamped Potomac every year-- you probably know the one) with an insane HOA that ensured the place looked gorgeous and comepletely free of personality.

They made my parents keep planting trees until our swing set was no longer visible from the street, even after my parents pointed out that they couldn't actually *plant* trees tall enough to hide it-- they just had to wait a couple of years for the trees to, y'know, grow a few feet.

On the bright side, it mostly predated the current trend of giant houses with eensy lawns-- our house was larger than average, but not obscenely so (as later additions to the development were) and we had a huge back yard with lots of room to play.

[Tonio]

reach shortly reach critical mass

...and I'm waiting for the petty authoritarian grammarians to loudly correct this mistake.

[Caravelle]

Only the people whose actions are having big, demonstrable effects on the way the neighborhood looks should ever have to deal with the HOA. Everyone else, the people who like wood stained sliding door slats and clothes lines should have free reign.

The problem is defining "big, demonstrable effects". Once you get rid of the big outlier (roofing stuff all over the lawn) you'll have a smaller outlier, and then you get rid of that one and when do you stop ? In a perfectly manicured neighborhood clotheslines do have demonstrable effects on the way the neighborhood looks.
I just came back from my parent's house where for some reason they haven't mowed the lawn in some time, it's full of foot-high dandelions. I think it looks wonderful (and so did my mother, strangely, she must be getting soft) but I'm pretty sure in a neighborhood of perfectly mowed lawns someone would complain.

[Tonio]

I grew up in Potomac proper, and we thought of North Potomac as wannabes, although why anyone *would* want their neighborhood to be like those in Potomac is something that still mystifies me.

Because the rest of Maryland perceives Potomac as the home of the Washington elite. The North Potomacians seek to create the impression that they're neighbors with Daniel Snyder or Ted Koppel or Lynda Carter. It's the same general motive that led a young George Carlin and his peers in Morningside Heights to call their neighborhood "White Harlem."

[Caravelle]

Petty authoritarians don't want to live with like-minded people. They want to live with people who do what the authoritarians say obey the rules. They seek to regulate the behavior of others while objecting to others regulating them. A community filled with petty authoritarians would reach shortly reach critical mass.

It all depends if you're a "leader" authoritarian or a "follower" authoritarian.

[cjmr]

*achoo!*

I'd love to dry my clothes outside (which is perfectly legal in our neighborhood), if someone would invent something that would keep them from getting covered with pollen while I was doing so. The hideously expensive hot air in my dryer has been through at least two HEPA filters before it hits the clothes.

*wanders off to blow nose*

[cjmr]

Because the rest of Maryland perceives Potomac as the home of the Washington elite.

Nah. The majority of Maryland doesn't give a #O&#*. Only the people who are 'stretching' the neighborhood definitions actually do--and those who'd rather have a pretense of importance than an actual life.

[Stan]

Just a data point:

I recently stopped using my gas dryer and put up a clothesline. My gas bill went from about $80 per month to about $25. So it was a significant use of gas and money.

[Richard Hershberger]

The wife and I bought a house last fall (just in time for prices to fall...) in a development with an HoA. Of the various properties we seriously considered, all but one had an HoA. It was a factor, but other factors won out.

In practice it hasn't been a big deal. While we hear the horror stories, those are the worst cases. Our HoA is benign, and I suspect that this is more common than not.

Why have an HoA? When this subdivision was developed thirty years ago there were restrictions on how many units the developer could put in. Nowadays he would probably divide the property into roughly equal lots and put in the biggest buildings possible. But this being the 1970s, the developer divided most of the property into modest lots and put in townhouses and duplexes. The land that was left over is common property, and we need the HoA to manage it. It doesn't take much management, but you need a legal entity to do this. There also are some common parking areas which the HoA maintains: an actually useful activity.

Beyond that, it works to enforce stuff like restrictions on how many unrelated people live in a unit. Why should I care? If a unit is rented out to a bunch of college students, each with a car and a keg, that actively affects the rest of the neighborhood. There certainly is danger of resenting the HoA preventing me from doing what I want, while wanting the HoA to prevent others from doing what they want. But some of this stuff is reasonable. If I buy a house on the legal understanding that these are single family residences, and the owners of the other houses bought theirs with the same understanding, it is not beyond the bounds of a civil society to enforce this.

When we were house hunting, part of my research was to walk the neighborhood. Were there reasonable additions (decks, sun rooms, garden sheds)? Yes, indicating that the HoA doesn't prevent these. Similarly I saw children's play equipment, vegetable gardens, and yes, clothes lines. I suspect that ten minutes spent walking any neighborhood would give a pretty good indication of the nature of the HoA.

[Tonio]

The majority of Maryland doesn't give a #O&#*.

I was simply explaining the reputation of Potomac itself. You're certainly right about the neighborhood definitions - the people I know consider "North Potomac" to be a colossal joke, laughing at the residents and their pretense of importance.

[hapax]

Hmmm. We have an HOA with very strict rules, which everyone pretty much ignores. There's a "no clothesline" clause, but that's not why I don't have one. It's simply that the only place to put one would but the line precisely at neck level for the kids who keep riding their bikes through our lawn to cut through down the hill. I personally think that's a plus, but my husband won't let me put it up, the spoilsport. I'll have to see if those rotary lines are available locally.

I sort of appreciate the fact that at least one neighbor ignores the "no campaign signs" rule, since I don't always have a chance to check out the local school board candidates, but if they have a sign on the Collins' lawn, I'll vote against them.

I think we're about six months in arrears in our HOA dues -- we've both served on the board, and we know that the money goes mostly to stuff like landscaping the common grounds, supplying replacement mailboxes and street lamps, and the like. I suppose they *could* put a lien on our house, but I doubt they will.

But we really didn't have a choice, one way or another. All the neighborhoods around here have HOAs, some stricter than others, and it changes with the change of Boards. Apartment living simply isn't an option. This is a university town, and all the apartment buildings are not someplace I would want to raise my kids. Or try to get to sleep on a Saturday night.

[hapax]

Growing vegetables ... sensible things to do,

Depends where you live. If you have lousy soil, 100+ F heat, and not a drop of rain for almost four months a year, individual vegetable plots (and flower gardens, and all lawns except drought-resistant varietals) are insanely wasteful of time and water.

[Tonio]

Hapax, while the Bellagio is often accused of water profligacy, I've read that the real problem is too many Vegas residents trying to sustain lawns and other outdoor greenery in the desert climate. Would you describe this as another example of twisted values, prizing image and shadow over substance and reality?

[Lauren]

Another Washingtonian who can't dry her clothes outside 10 months out of the year, and lives in a condo anyway. I think our association has a rule that you can't leave clothes drying on the balcony for longer than 24 hours. I grew up in a house in a HOA, where the only really annoying rule was concerning what kind of roof you could have (for the longest time, only cedar shake was allowed, but they eventually expanded it to include a few select brands of "pretty" composites). The other major rule I remember was that you weren't supposed to let your dog run free, and my mom would complain endlessly about the neighbor's dauchshund that would dash out in front of cars and poop on the sidewalks, but the HOA never did anything about it.

Like any form of government, a HOA is not a bad thing, in and of itself, but only if it is run poorly. If you don't like it, you should GO to your meetings, run for the board, and try to change things. I think a HOA is much preferable to a bunch of HOA fans trying to run their CITY like a HOA. Right now, a lot of homeowners in Seattle are trying to manipulate city zoning laws to "preserve the character of the neighborhood." If they had HOAs, they could mind their own business and stay out of city politics.