Michigan Voids HOA Bans on Clotheslines, Heat Pumps and Rain Barrels

Before April 2, 2025 Michigan had no right-to-dry law. The Condominium Act, MCL 559.101 et seq., says nothing about clotheslines, and Michigan has never enacted a general homeowners-association statute, so a subdivision covenant banning outdoor drying was simply enforceable as written. 2024 PA 68, the homeowners' energy policy act, changed that for a named list of devices.

MCL 559.305(1) does two things at once. Subdivision (a) voids a provision that prohibits, or requires the approval of a homeowners' association for, a member to replace, maintain, install, or operate an energy-saving improvement or modification. Subdivision (b) voids a provision that compels, or requires association approval for, the auxiliary changes needed to install one. That second clause is what covers the pad a ground source heat pump sits on, the trench for its loop field, the downspout diverter feeding a rain barrel, and the post a retractable line anchors to. Because approval requirements are void alongside outright bans, the act gives these devices a lighter path than solar: MCL 559.311 makes a member applying for a solar energy system file a written application and wait up to 30 days, while a clothesline or a rain barrel needs no association paperwork at all.

The list in MCL 559.303(c) reads "includes, but is not limited to," so an unlisted device that genuinely saves energy is arguable, though an association is likelier to concede on the eleven named items. Note that the list mixes exterior and interior work. Insulation, energy-efficient insulation materials, energy efficient appliances and energy-efficient windows are on it, which reaches architectural-control provisions that dictate window style or glazing in a site condominium or subdivision.

MCL 559.305(2) adds a rule aimed at city hall rather than the board. A local unit of government, defined at MCL 559.303(d) as a county, township, city, or village, may not require a member to obtain the association's approval before replacing, maintaining, installing or operating an energy-saving improvement or modification, or before making the auxiliary changes it needs. That kills the common practice of a building department refusing a permit until the applicant produces an HOA sign-off letter. Subsection (3) preserves the municipality's own substantive power: the act does not stop a local unit of government from imposing requirements that may limit or prohibit the device. A township setback rule or a noise ordinance that reaches an air source heat pump compressor still applies on its own terms.

The act's own boundary is MCL 559.313. It does not apply to the replacement, maintenance, installation or operation of an energy-saving improvement or modification in a common area or on a shared roof, and MCL 559.303(g) defines a shared roof as one serving more than one home or unit, including a contiguous roof over adjacent units. A drying line strung across a shared courtyard, a rain barrel on a common downspout, or a heat pump condenser bolted to a roof over two townhouses all fall outside the statute and back under the condominium documents. MCL 559.303(a) defines the common area broadly, listing hallways, stairways, elevators, lobbies, laundry and recreational rooms, playgrounds, community centers, garages, public green space, parks and fitness rooms.

One further limit is worth naming. The act reaches homeowners' association agreements, not leases. A Michigan tenant has no statutory right to hang a line, and the recorded restriction the act voids is the association's, not the landlord's.

The act creates no fine, no permit and no state enforcement office. MCL 559.315 gives the member a private civil action against the homeowners' association for damages, and the court may award reasonable attorney fees and the costs of bringing the action to a member who prevails. In practice the sequence is the reverse of most covenant disputes: because MCL 559.305(1) makes the offending provision invalid and unenforceable as contrary to public policy, a fine or assessment the board levies for erecting a clothesline or setting a rain barrel rests on a void provision, and the member's defense to a collection action is the statute itself. An association that records a lien on that basis is asserting a charge no valid covenant supports. Members should keep the dated written demand from the board, because it establishes when the association acted on the void provision and supports the fee award under MCL 559.315.