Illegal Clothesline Spotted

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There's a local Italian restaurant that has the far side of the dining room wall (before the kitchen) decorated to look like a typical Italian street. Yep, there's laundry hanging from windows (real cloth, too) on that wall.

I wonder how many clothes-line haters dine happily at that eatery and then go home and get out the binoculars so they can turn in any of their neighbors who dares to air their clean laundry.
 
Sorry to have to say this, and I know it's cynical, but this culture is sick 'from the oceans to the prairies to the mountains white with snow'. Everybody wants to control everybody else. Which tells me the nazis won WW2, and that's why I'm cynical.

I mean really. A rule when you can have your garage door open? Who can park in your driveway? A friend's HOA required prior approval to add or remove landscaping. Thus he could be cited if he got weeds and cited for removing them. IOW, there is ALWAYS something they can cite you for if they don't like you.

The water nazis won't let you rinse laundry. The power nazis don't want you using electricity. The aesthetic nazis don't want you drying outdoors, or even painting an "unapproved color" indoors. Then there are the fence nazis, the pet nazis, the music nazis, the food nazis, the car nazis, the child nazis--what they can do outdoors and when, or even how many you can have--the lawn nazis, what kinds of grass are allowed, how tall and what shade of green it must be.

Really hate to say this, and wouldn't have even thought it until the last 15-20 years, but what passes for America today makes me puke.
 
I know I've posted this a gazillion times before but, we have the 20ft version of this clothesline.  I love it because I can move it anywhere in the yard to catch the best breeze if desired.  Otherwise, it usually resides just outside our west breezeway door facing the street for anyone to see what's out on the line.

http://www.freudenthalmfg.com/clothes_line/
 
yeah...you would have to get approval for painting the inside of your home.....it was all about curb appeal....what could be seen from the outside.....

even the backside of drapes was an issue......or the color of blinds.....mini blinds were critical, vertical blinds were more to their liking, cloth was preferred to vinyl...

glad to be out of there....I loved the multi-levels of the townhouse....other than that.....get me the hell out of here!......lol....never again!.....

hell, I lived with a landscaper....and even with his talents....you could not over improve the look of your individual section.....you had to stay low key with the rest of the Jones'.....yet it's all about beautification!.......

and yet I was not renting, We owned the freakin' place....or at least thought we did....have no idea what that mortgage/home ownership thing was all about
 
As "green" as the govt. and everyone in this country is getting, I don't see what the big deal is about clotheslines!! Hell do you know how much energy is being saved by drying clothes outside, and how many clothes dryers are not pre-maturely going to landfills because of overuse!! Hell these people complaining about clothelines being ana eyesore, have never been to the Bronx!!!, or maybe they have! LOL
Mike
 
Yogitunes

Garage door open? Visitor parking? I wanna move there and paint a house like a Mexican restaurant (fluorescent pink, green, and yellow) just to piss off the association. They can fine me, but collecting is another story.
 
we had a case about 25 years ago here in South Jersey.......the judge ordered this landlord to paint a vacant house.....didn't care how he did, just get it done....

or face a fine and jail time!

so he painted the entire house FLAT BLACK...including porch, deck, garage and fence..they didn't say what color, just get a fresh coat of paint on it......would have made a great Halloween scene.....

I think the next time a judge gives an order, he better be more specific....

with lawyer in tow, this landlord won the case!

I have to run over there someday....I wonder if its still there, and still black....

I don't know....there are certain rules that should apply, and some that are completely nuts.....growing up we lived in an area where all the homes looked alike, we called them half-double, today their semi-detached....just like decades ago there were areas called "The Projects"...today we call them "RowHomes"...an Apartment is now referred to as a Condo....just a fancy name to increase the price....we all hung laundry out to dry, clean laundry strung across lines with pins, and then you had a few who threw them over the fence....some rules are put into place to keep the area from being run down.....

who really is to say wether it's good or bad....just a matter of keeping it equal for everyone....and that's where you can hit a fine line.....

I do like these portable style clothesline setups.....theres a cemented sleeve in the ground, which the so called upside down umbrella clotheslines slide into for use, and then removed when not in use.....this sleeve would also house a flag pole, basketball hoop, umbrella and table for dining....multi purpose use, I could go with that!
 
Good and bad

Here goes.  My primary employment is Management for a HOA comprised of 377 Townhomes.  Homes Associations can be great or otherwise.  Most are governed by two factors: 1) It's Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions and/or Bylaws; 2) A Board of Directors, whose charge is to interpret and apply the Covenants/Bylaws.  I've seen many HOAs that are petty and over bearing while others are well run and serve their members interests, which should be the case.  Some rules are good and make sense - others as we've observed in this thread speak more to those individuals who desire to control and manipulate others.  Before any prospective buyer makes a purchase, he/she is well advised to first determine if there is a HOA and if so, familiarize yourself with the Covenants/Bylaws, followed by a visit with the Management and/or Board along with other current Homeowners before making a decision.   Doing your homework prior to purchasing pays off.  
 
Some run-ins I've had.

Bear in mind that I'm a historic preservationist who tends to favor design-review for historic neighborhoods, to a point...

I lived with my grandmother for a summer. One Saturday I was cleaning out her garage. It hadn't been done in years and was long overdue. I had the garage door open all morning to allow for light and ventilation. I was also moving lots of stuff around as I swept, organized, and vacuumed. A rep from the HOA came up the driveway and informed me that I had to put everything away at once and close the door. I politely explained that I was cleaning my elderly grandmother's garage (it should have been obvious) and that I would put it all away once the job was done. He left and I thought all was well. He came back again about 15 minutes later and asked me how much longer I would be working. I said "until it's done" and asked him to leave. About 15 minutes later he came back and told me to finish immediately or he was going to have a garbage truck called to remove the offending "stuff" (garage contents partially in the garage and partially in the driveway at that point). I grabbed a large garden shovel and chased him out of the yard and told him he was not welcome on the property under any circumstances. I finished cleaning the garage and never heard from him again for the rest of the summer. That was a bit extreme.

On another occasion, I was visiting a friend and had driven my Volvo (back in the early 2000s when I was still in college). The car was a little over 15 years old at the time and while it didn't look showroom new by any means, it still presented well enough. The neighborhood had no reserved parking spaces or guest passes, so I parked on the street in front of their house along with a few other friends. A little while later we went outside and found a note from the HOA on my car, but not on anyone else's. As it turned out, that HOA had a policy of not allowing cars over 10 or 15 years of age (I don't recall the exact age) to be parked in an area visible from a shared right-of-way. In other words, if someone wanted to own a car over 15 years old or had a friend who had one, the only place it could be parked was in their garage! That one really bothered me because I took (still take) pride in keeping my Volvo well maintained. As it stands today, it needs a paint job to be presentable, but at the time the paint was in good condition and it was clean. I wouldn't want to live in a place that dictated what kind of car I had to drive.

Rant over,
Dave
 
Sounds like many of the HOA's want to "bully" the residents rather than make an orderly housing area. VolovoGuy's is an excellent example of HOA ABUSE to a householder.Not clotheslines-but ANTENNAS-a freind of mine lives in an area that has a choosy HOA-he was going to put up his "ham" antenna no matter what.He and I installed it btween three trees-the wire between the trees was hardly visible.The neighbors didn't mind.The HOA there finally gave in when my freind put up some 400W metal halide floodlights I sold him from my light collection.The neighbor actually liked the lights,too.In that neighborhood just about every other house had one of those large trampolines or portable basketball nets.Any of those things are UGLIER than the antenna.And sat TV dishes had to be hidden in that neighborhood.Both of us informed the HOA folks there that the HOA CANNOT restrict sat dishes under FCC laws!Glad I don't have to deal with HOA folks!HOA's were great for areas that had poor rep builders-like Levitt-the HOA could help settle problems with the householders and the builder.
 
no clotheslines allowed here...

...although if they aren't visible to the monthly HOA gestapo neighborhood walk-through/inspection storm troupers then you'd be safe. I've used a line to dry big stuff like comforters. A heavy king-size one will dry in less than an hour when it's 115 and the humidity is like "0".

Of course in my case the no-clothesline rule is a blessing for my neighbors and probably helps keep property values from declining

twintubdexter++2-21-2013-00-45-44.jpg
 
We had a local Vet, as in Veterinarian, got P'd because the city zoned a new development with lots of restrictions next to his home. He retaliated by painting every slat of his siding a different color. It didn't take long for the HOH of the new development to agree to a High privacy fence separating the two properties.
 
In our househunting HOAs are second on the dealbreaker list. They're ok for small stuff (shared site utilities, wells etc) but anything beyond that, imo if you're going to buy your own home, don't voluntarily live under somebody else's rules.

Dave, my only regret is that I wasn't with you during your HOA rep encounter. What a dream opportunity. :)
 
Our HOA here is next to useless. If you go to any of their meetings all you'd find is the board arguing amongst themselves all trying to be vipers eeking out every bit of power from each other. Just plain old garden variety power trippers and control freaks. If you ask about a rule or if you want to do something they don't like the only answer you'll get from them is "No, because I said so."

I found that if we just carry on without bothering them we'll be ok. It's the people who try to follow their rules that have the problems. We stay under their radar.
 
My neighborhood doesn't have a HOA but because it was designated historic it is bound by the rules of the historic commission. The commission has a picture of every structure in the neighborhood. It doesn't matter what color you paint your house and many people choose from the limited colors that were available in the 16 to 17 hundreds. I don’t like those drab colors so I choose white around the windows with cobalt dark blue shutters.

We can do whatever we want to do inside of our house unless the inside has been declared historically significant. There are a few houses like this and there is one office building nearby that wanted to sell a very large picture and this was denied.

You can have a clothesline in the back and no one cares but I have never seen one because you generally cannot see the back of anyone's home.

The restrictions come in other ways. If you are doing maintenance to your house and you want to replace anything then you must use the same materials that were originally used when your house was built. This means that if your house was built with wooden windows you had better replace with wooden windows. Many houses have copper gutters and rain spouts...these must be replaced with copper. There is a house down the street that had a shake roof. The replacement roof for this house had to be shake- I’m glad this wasn't my house. If your house was built with aluminum windows you replace with aluminum windows. All of our homes have brick exteriors and some with marble trim so that is the replacement material for exterior walls. Because all of our houses were constructed before vinyl was used in construction there can be no vinyl anything on the outside. If your house was built before there were storm windows you cannot install outside storm windows, but you can install them inside.

There can be no garage door opening to the front of the house. If you want to add a garage, the door must open to the side away from the street or the garage entrance can be in the back of your house.

If you are going to do anything that will cause drilling into the outside of your house - like to install a porch light, install a satellite dish or if you are going to modify the outside structure in anyway you have to submit plans to the zoning board and the historic commission for approval.

There is also the rule that you must maintain a certain amount of open space from the end of your house in the rear to the end of your property so if you want to add an addition to your house you must maintain this distance.

There are other rules that I can’t remember but the historic commission does send out an updated homeowners manual so that everyone knows what they can and cannot do and the real estate agents usually inform prospective buyers that there will be restrictions.
 
Good and Bad

I live in a condo community and our Board of Directors is reasonable with the rules, but if you let people get away with too much, the place will start to look junky. We only have 160 units and most people comply with the rules- They know them before they buy property. The HOA tends to everything outside so thats not an issue- but what you might find unusual is we can only use clear Christmas lights outside- no colors- It does actually look very pretty with all the clear lights, but I don't think a few colored ones would look bad. The bottom line is there aren't any rules here that bother me enough to move-- in fact, i like most all of them-- keeps the place looking great.
 
I'm one that could never ever survive in a planned community or anywhere with a HOA.

Being from a very rural area I'm used to doing whatever we want, If I want to change anything we can, we have a huge clothesline behind the house that's visible from the road, I have a huge garden, and we each own 2 cars at home and we have lots of company and the front yard turns into a parking lot, I'm used to being able to burn my paper garbage and do whatever I want whenever and however I want
 

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