Hawaii Right to Dry: HOA Clothesline Bans Are Void (HRS §196-8.5)

Hawaii adopted the clothesline protection in 2009 (L 2009, c 192) and put it in the energy chapter, HRS chapter 196, rather than in the condominium or planned-community acts. That placement is the point: line drying sits in the same statutory family as Hawaii's solar-device rule at HRS section 196-7 and its electric vehicle charging rule at HRS section 196-7.5, all three written to strip associations of the power to forbid a household energy-saving measure by covenant.

The entities bound are described in subsection (c) as a "private entity," meaning any association of homeowners, community association, condominium association, cooperative, or any other nongovernmental entity with covenants, bylaws and administrative provisions with which the homeowner's compliance is required. A Hawaii AOAO, a Mililani or Kapolei planned-community association and a housing cooperative are all covered by the same words.

The property reached is narrower than the list of bound entities suggests. Subsection (a) protects installation on a single-family residential dwelling or townhouse that the person owns. It does not extend to a condominium apartment in a multi-family building, which is the opposite of the electric vehicle statute at HRS section 196-7.5, where the protection runs to parking stalls of multi-family dwellings and townhouses. An owner of a high-rise unit in Honolulu who wants to string a line across a lanai is not protected by section 196-8.5 on its face; an owner of a townhouse or a detached house in the same association is.

Subsection (c) defines "clothesline" as a rope, cord, wire, or similar device on which laundry is hung to dry. That is a short definition and it is written around the line itself, not around the structure holding it, so a homeowner planning an elaborate permanent installation should expect the association's placement rules to do real work under subsection (b).

Subsection (b) is where a Hawaii board retains authority. A private entity may adopt rules that reasonably restrict the placement and use of clotheslines for the purpose of drying clothes on the premises, provided those restrictions do not prohibit the use of clotheslines altogether. Unlike the solar statute, section 196-8.5 sets no numeric test: HRS section 196-7(b) forbids conditions that render a solar device more than twenty-five per cent less efficient or that raise installation, maintenance and removal costs by more than fifteen per cent, and section 196-8.5 contains no equivalent yardstick. The clothesline standard is simply reasonableness plus the ban on a total prohibition. Section 196-8.5 also imposes none of the paperwork the solar and charging statutes require: there is no thirty-day registration with the association, no licensed-contractor requirement, and no certificate of insurance naming the association as an additional insured.

The fee bar in subsection (b) is absolute in its terms. No private entity shall assess or charge any homeowner any fees for the placement of any clothesline, so an architectural-review fee, a permit-style charge or a per-installation deposit aimed at line drying has no statutory footing in Hawaii.

5 creates no fine, no penalty and no agency enforcement route of its own. The remedy the legislature chose is nullification: subsection (a) makes any provision in a lease, instrument or contract contrary to the intent of the section void and unenforceable, so a declaration clause or house rule banning clotheslines is legally inert and a homeowner can raise that in answer to a violation notice or a fine assessed under the association's own enforcement machinery. Two association actions are outside the statute on their face.

First, any rule that operates as a total prohibition exceeds subsection (b), which authorizes only reasonable restrictions on placement and use. Second, any charge tied to placing a clothesline conflicts with the express bar on assessing or charging a homeowner any fee for the placement of any clothesline. What the statute leaves intact is a reasonable placement rule, so a Hawaii association can still say which side of a townhouse the line may run on, or require a retractable line rather than a permanent one, as long as line drying remains genuinely available on the premises.