British Columbia prides itself on a commitment to renewable energy. Yet many British Columbians are forbidden from stringing up the simplest of solar devices: the clothesline.
These laundry-drying bans are written into the bylaws of strata corporations, which govern most of British Columbia’s condominiums, apartments, duplexes, and townhomes. Condos are a big and fast-growing housing choice in the province. In just 20 years, the percentage of Vancouverites dwelling in them has nearly doubled from under 25 percent to more than 40 percent. A similar trend is evident across the province where, in 2008, investments in condos and apartments outpaced investments in detached homes for the first time. Moreover, from 2002 to 2008, investments in townhomes and duplexes more than doubled. British Columbia may have more than 1 million residents who are subject to strata bylaws.
Multiply that by clothes dryers’ prodigious appetite for electricity and you’ll see that the potential benefits of unbanning clotheslines mount quickly. Of all common household appliances, electric clothes dryers are second only to refrigerators in energy consumption. They account for more than 9 percent of BC’s residential electricity consumption, according to provincial utility BC Hydro sources here and here. Unbanning clotheslines would allow British Columbians to leave their dryers idle more of the time. Some 54 percent of British Columbians already report line drying their clothes at least some of the time.
If just half of condo and apartment dwellers in the province trimmed even a quarter of their dryer energy use by grabbing their clothespins more of the time, it would amount to energy savings of nearly 60 million kilowatt hours every year. That’s two thirds of residential electricity use in the city of Langley. What’s more, allowing condos to banish solar drying contradicts a fistful of provincial policies. It’s at odds, for example, with the province’s goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, achieve electricity self-sufficiency, become a net clean-energy exporter, increase the percentage of its electricity generated from clean and renewable sources, and increase the share of electric vehicles on the road. The BC Energy Plan aims to decrease average household electricity consumption by 1,000 kilowatts per year by 2020: households that completely switch to hang drying will be more than 90 percent of the way toward this goal.
In Barcelona, clothes drying from balconies is an artform. Photo by xavi talleda, Flickr.
Given all the benefits of solar drying, why do condos ban clotheslines in the first place? Campbell Strata Management’s president Sanjay Maharaj, who works with scores of stratas, says, “to ensure aesthetics and make sure that the common areas and look of the building is kept neat and clean at all times.”
Well, there’s no arguing with tastes, but clotheslines can be beautiful. They can also be flags of freedom from dirty energy and expensive power bills. And whatever your personal sensibility, a rack of clothes drying on a condo balcony isn’t ugly like its alternatives: a strip mine; a coal train; a forest stricken with pine beetles; a town deluged, burned, or leveled by the worsened floods, fires, and storms that carbon-induced climate change is sending our way.
Of BC’s million or so strata residents, experts suspect a big majority live under prohibitions on line-drying of clothes outdoors, at least if the clothes are visible from outside the building. Sightline’s map shows nearly 30 specific examples of clothesline bans that I’ve found in British Columbia (drag the map to BC, if it’s not framed in your browser), but that number barely scratches the surface. Roughly 30,000 BC strata corporations are registered; most of them use stock bylaws written for their developers by a few dozen law firms and strata management companies. (British Columbia has no homeowner associations, unlike the Northwest states and other Canadian provinces, so its clothesline bans are almost exclusively in its strata corporations. In this way, it is already ahead of the Northwest states on the path to the right to dry. South of the 49th parallel, homeowner groups, condo associations, and local governments may all ban solar drying.)
I requested copies of the bylaw templates used by ten firms and received responses from half of them. All five firms either sent bylaws that include clothesline restrictions or indicated that they have included clothesline bans in the bylaws they draft. Three examples illustrate.
Clark Wilson LLP is one of Vancouver’s 10 largest law firms. The firm’s Strata Property Group has acted for more than 1,500 strata corporations. Its bylaw template, which according to partner Pat Williams is rejected by “very few” of the stratas it serves, includes a de facto clothesline ban:
A resident must ensure that no air conditioning units, laundry, flags, clothing, bedding or other articles are hung or displayed from windows, balconies or other parts of the building so that they are visible from outside of the building.
Victoria’s Gibraltar Management has offered customized strata management services since 2005. It offers several bylaw templates, and according to founder Marv Walker, they all restrict clotheslines.
Campbell Strata Management, which serves nearly 100 Vancouver strata corporations, is another representative example. A manager for the company said that she was “not aware of any stratas that we manage that allow clotheslines or clothes umbrellas.”
The company’s president, Sanjay Maharaj, offered his assessment:
At the end of the day, it is up to the Strata Corporation to see what they want in their by-laws and the owners have a say on this through a 3/4 vote.
Mr. Maharaj is right, in legal terms. In practical terms, though, he’s overstating how much “say” owners have. The difficulty of achieving a quorum (one third of owners), let alone the necessary 75 percent super majority of those present, is practically as hard as scoring a double hat trick; it’s not literally impossible, it’s just not something you see very often.
Once strata bylaws are written, then, it almost takes an act of parliament to change them. And that’s more or less what British Columbia ought to do next: an act of the provincial parliament, the legislative assembly, to recognize the right to dry and make null-and-void strata bylaws that abridge it. Ontario and Nova Scotia have already found the political will to become right-to-dry provinces. Surely British Columbia can do the same.
Jon Howland is a Seattle-based teacher, debate coach, and Sightline volunteer. Alan Durning edited this post.
Read more on clotheslines:
paul
Why not move the clotheslines indoors – in a bathroom or in-unit laundry room if your condo has one? I put one over my washer/dryer and during the winter, it took about 8 hours to dry a heavy cotton sweatshirt and everything else took less time.
Most homes/condos are between 65 and 72 degrees. Indoor clotheslines will take longer to dry than outside but they work. Open some windows and you’ll speed up the process.
Jon
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the comment. It’s good advise.
I live in a condo where clotheslines on the balcony are not allowed and so I set up a clothes rack in the bathroom. It’s a workable option, just not as good as outdoor hang drying — in addition to faster drying time you also get the disinfecting action of the sun working for you. My grandma swears clothes smell fresher when dried outside, and I think she’s right.
Clothesline bans, in condos and elsewhere, strike me as a perfect example of society getting its priorities backward.
Cheers,
Jon
Ryan
Interesting article, but maybe just a little off base. Many of the referenced strata’s are for buildings that don’t even have balconies (a seemingly dying aspect of high-rise design), and those that do will allow a folding ‘drying rack’.
Jon
Hi Ryan,
Good point about buildings without balconies.
At the end of the day there are a lot of buildings that do have balconies. Most seem to ban any setup where the clothes are visible from neighboring units or from the street.
A couple months ago I spent a several hours just Google searching for stratas that have their bylaws online… more than half the bylaws I found included some restriction…
-Jon
Michael
Good article. I agree with your point, but not your solution. First, however, your explanation of the difficulty of changing strata bylaws is incorrect. While the Strata Property Act sets 1/3 of owners present or by proxy as a quorum, almost all bylaws allow the number present or by proxy to constitute a quorum 1/2 hour after the start time of the meeting. Three-quarter votes are common practice– otherwise a strata would not be able to adopt a budget for the coming year. I’ve been the president of a large strata for three years, and each year our owners have changed or removed existing bylaws or added new ones, often unanimously. It’s not uncommon for only 10-20% of owners to be present or proxied for an Annual General Meeting. In a 50 unit strata with 20% voting, seven votes could alter virtually any bylaw.
And if to get 100% attendance, just propose to ban pets and non-family rentals.
You are correct that it would be very difficult to change the prohibition on balcony clotheslines. Those prohibitions are not created at the whim of strata attorneys or management companies, but because virtually all strata owners demand them. General conformity of a building is the cultural aesthetic, so owners probably correctly believe that having their building festooned with clothing will lower property values. Any politician will also note that she would likely lose office at the election following imposition of a provincial requirement for balcony clotheslines. She’d be viewed widely as mucking with how people live their private lives in their homes.
If you really wanted to take provincial action to a long-term good, it would be preferable to lower the amount of inexpensive, base rate electricity for each household, raise Tier 2 rates, and educate the public that savings come from reducing use of energy-sucking dryers. Unlike the legislated solution, that wouldn’t discriminate against condo owners while giving single family home dwellers a free pass.
But a better, if slower way is to change the culture. That starts with interior drying, as Jon suggests. By talking it up with your neighbours, you get some of them to try it too. Gradually, word spreads. When you have enough people doing it, you call the press.
And in rainy Vancouver, interior drying is actually faster for about half the year.
Jillian
Most strata’s actually start with the provincial standard strata bylaws. http://www.fic.gov.bc.ca/pdf/responsibilities_strata/stdbylaws.pdf
and there is Condominium Home Owners Association you could talk to http://www.choa.bc.ca/
There can be issues if people attach clotheslines to the structure of the building and impact the building envelope.
That said, I used a rack, set back from the edge of my deck on a higher floor where it wasn’t visible and never had any complaints. In the hot Okanagan facing west my stuff dried in no time!
rob_
We live in Langara Gardens, one of the largest rental complexes in Vancouver (16 Acres of aprarments and townhomes including 4 high rises). Their rental agreement states that “Laundry is not permitted to be dried in the suites, balconies and patios.”
So NO indoor drying and NO folding drying racks!
Vicki Pearson
Have you a sample of a bylaw that allows for hanging laundry on a rack on the patio? I would like to put one forward at our next AGM. I am suggesting that we allow hanging from clothing racks no higher than 180cm (allows for sheets) and that they must be set back a minimum of 100cm from railing as to lessen the street level visibility.
Something showing good legal wording would help for me to be able to put this to a vote.
Thanks
Serena Larkin
Good morning, Vicki. Thank you for reading, but this is no longer an issue we research or write on. That said, your language above sounds sufficient to support a healthy discussion and passage of a new measure for your community, and some residents may even wish for fewer restrictions if their patios aren’t large enough to accommodate the above suggestions. Good luck!