LA HABRA : City Will Consider Ban on Clotheslines

City Council members tonight will consider adopting an ordinance that would prohibit clotheslines on front and side yards visible from the street.

Hundreds of residents oppose the ordinance and call it unfair to poor people.

“Some of us don’t have back yards and we have to hang our clothes in the front,” said Maria Lopez, a longtime Lois Street resident. “Telling us that we can’t do that is just plain wrong. For as long as I can remember, people have dried their clothes on clotheslines in La Habra neighborhoods.”

She said clotheslines don’t look bad or ugly.

“Many of us don’t have the money to dry our clothes at Laundromats or buy dryers,” Lopez said. “The city shouldn’t even be considering (prohibiting clotheslines). Most of the people who have clotheslines are Mexican and this is just pure racism.”

City officials said the proposed ordinance is meant to keep residential and commercial areas clean and safe and have denied the move is racist.

When the council was expected to approve a slightly different version of the ordinance last month, Mayor David M. Cheverton said it was an attempt to curb blight in the city.

“I don’t see this as discriminatory against anybody,” he said.

Craig Bird, a Grace Avenue resident, said the ordinance “is going to be interpreted by a lot of people as being discriminatory toward Latinos and poor people, and I don’t understand why it has to be adopted. It’s only going to cause strife in the community.”

Should the law be adopted, Bird, who has a clothesline on the side yard of his home, would be in violation.

“I have no back yard,” he said. “Where am I supposed to dry my clothes?”

If the law is adopted, clothes could not be dried on fences, trees or shrubs. Hanging clothes on temporary clotheslines in yards not visible from the street would be permitted.

The proposed clothesline prohibition is part of a larger anti-blight ordinance.

Some supporters of the anti-blight ordinance don’t agree with the section that would outlaw clotheslines.

Dorothy Rush, a City Council candidate, said she will ask the council to let people have clotheslines in their yards even if they are visible from the street.

No public hearing is scheduled but the council is expected to vote on the ordinance at its meeting at 7 p.m.