Strata conflict: Apartment dwellers push for right to outdoor clothes drying

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Apartment buildings that restrict residents from drying their washing outdoors are facing a push to relax the rules as sustainability and cost-of-living concerns make dryers less desirable.

More than 2.5 million Australians live in apartments, the 2021 census estimates, and both NSW and Victoria are pushing for more high-rise homes to solve the housing crisis.

Karen Stiles, executive director of the Owners Corporation Network of Australia.Credit: Oscar Colman

Karen Stiles, executive director of the Owners Corporation Network of Australia, said conflict over laundry was becoming more common in both states because new developments were not designed for people’s needs. While older apartment blocks typically had communal clotheslines, this had “gone out the window with the new builds”.

“It’s outrageous ... people are being forced to use dryers,” Stiles said. “We’ve got to get off the fossil fuels and start focusing on cutting down emissions however we can, let alone the cost of living and the cost of clothes dryers.”

Stiles said no one wanted to see “sheets draped over balcony railings”, but residents with a balcony should be able to set up a temporary clothes rack or mount a retractable or folding clothesline on the wall.

A clothesline is the cheapest and lowest-emissions method for drying laundry. The next best option is a heat pump dryer, which uses technology that draws in heat from the outside air. It uses about a third of the energy of a conventional vented dryer, but also costs a lot more upfront.

Vaidehi Shah, 38, lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her husband and their three-year-old son in Summer Hill in Sydney’s inner west.

Vaidehi Shah from Summer Hill has to keep her drying rack indoors because bylaws ban her from using the balcony.Credit: Steven Siewert

Shah said they bought their home in 2018 as “naive” first home buyers and the bylaw banning them from drying clothes outside came as a “rude shock”. When they tested the rule, they were threatened with a $1000 fine.

With an active toddler at home, the volume of laundry is a lot even before they start toilet training.

“The laundry rack never leaves our living room,” Shah said.

“If we have guests coming over, we take it down for those couple of hours, but then put it right back up when they leave. I will never again buy in a building where there is a laundry ban on balconies – it’s just not tenable.”

A clothes-drying rack is a near-permanent fixture in Vaidehi Shah’s living room due to strict rules.Credit: Steven Siewert

Shah said the couple had a combined washer-dryer, but they only used the dryer in emergencies because of the carbon emissions and the cost. She is leading a push to overturn the bylaw at the annual general meeting on Wednesday and allow residents to dry clothing on the balcony below the height of the railing but still visible through metal balustrades or glass.

A similar bylaw was defeated in 2022, with some owners saying it would “look like a shanty town” or “slum”, comments Shah found racist.

She has leafleted 135 households to argue the existing bylaw imposed an economic burden and health risks from increased indoor humidity, exacerbated climate change, and there was no evidence it affected property prices.

At one point, Shah consulted a free legal service to see if she could challenge the bylaw as “harsh, oppressive and unjust”, but was advised that she was unlikely to succeed.

Many American apartment blocks have a laundry room with a coin-operated washer and dryer, while some will force residents to use a nearby laundromat. Even if you own a freestanding home and yard, you may be controlled by a home owners’ associations, which often ban outdoor clotheslines.

In Scandinavian countries, apartment buildings often come with a communal drying room where clothes can be hung. Heat and dehumidifiers do the work efficiently and without wear and tear on clothes. Sometimes the rooms can be booked by residents to ensure fair access.

However, NSW strata lawyer Amanda Farmer said: “In my view, a bylaw that bans washing on balconies completely could be successfully challenged as being too harsh – especially if the building does not otherwise provide lines in a communal area.”

Farmer acted for a client in a luxury riverside apartment in Drummoyne where a bylaw stated that occupants could not hang washing if it could be seen outside the building. She won the case in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal by arguing that her client’s laundry could be seen only by neighbours in the building, not outsiders.

The NSW government updated the model strata bylaws in 2016 to encourage owners’ corporations to allow washing, including clothing, towels and bedding, to be hung for a reasonable period on any part of the lot other than the balcony railing. The previous model bylaw said the washing could not be visible from outside the building.

In Victoria, the model rules do not mention laundry but owners or occupants must have written approval from the owners’ corporation before changing the external appearance of their lot.

Melbourne-based strata lawyer Tim Graham, president of the Australian College of Strata Lawyers, said mounting a clothesline on the wall would probably count as changing the external appearance, while a collapsible clothes rack would not.

Since 2021, the Victorian model rules also stated an owners’ corporation cannot unreasonably prohibit the installation of “sustainability items” outside, including on aesthetic grounds. Graham said this was yet to be tested, but you could argue a clothesline was a sustainability item.

There is no obligation to adopt model bylaws or rules, and both lawyers said most buildings had older wording or bespoke rules.

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