> Millions of Americans live under covenants that prevent them from doing their laundry outside, lest their neighbors see.

It has nothing to do with the neighbors seeing the laundry and it has everything to do with keeping a certain kind of people (historically, poor) from living in these areas.

They haven't established how many people actually want it. If 60 million Americans live in communities with such rules, presumably at least a substantial number of them, if not an actual majority, want visible hanging laundry to be prohibited. They don't seem to have even asked how many of those people actually want to hang laundry versus wanting to keep it prohibited, they just picked that to have a big number to put in glorified press releases.

And there's no evidence at all that it's an issue worth addressing on a national scale. Presumably in some places a majority want it prohibited and in others a majority want it permitted, why not let them all do as they please?

Unless of course somebody somewhere draws a fat paycheck for representing "Project Laundry List" (exactly who is really funding that anyways?) and needs to justify their position by getting glorified press releases published as news articles.

This is still a poor article. If that's really the point, then they should have focused on many other points related to covenants and not confused that point by including people who were not under covenants. They could also tell us what their solution is (make associations illegal?). Or are the just complaining without any solution or even a salient argument.

Does it maybe applying to about half of a fifth of the population really make it nationally relevant? Let's not forget the people among them who like this reg for some reason.

Also, this says nothing about residents usually having some say about the regs in an HOA. Don't like something? No need to move somewhere else. Run for a spot on the board.