While gun control and abortion laws rose to the top of state legislature’s agendas in late May, the city council of Alliance, Ohio, was remedying the problem of improperly placed upholstered items.
Indoor furniture may no longer be placed in outdoor places in Alliance, according to the city’s amended property maintenance code.
Alliance isn’t a trailblazer on this score. St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 2021 banned the outdoor deployment of “furniture designed for interior use.” This raises a hundred little questions. What if an extra guest shows up at a front-porch gathering? Can you not drag out an upholstered armchair for the evening?
What about setting out a free loveseat for a loving home? Or offering up a La-Z-Boy for sale? St. Cloud carved out an exception for selling furniture. This, of course, created a potential loophole. What if I set my ratty couch on the front porch with a “FOR SALE, $3,000” sign? (I’d definitely take the three grand.) That’s why St. Cloud had to limit outdoor sellers of indoor furniture to four days of outdoor selling every six months. But even that doesn’t answer every question.
“Can I sit on my couch in the front yard during a house party if I put a For Sale sign on it,” asked a local radio station, “(assuming the party lasts for no more than four days)?”
The St. Cloud law specifically targets front-of-house stationing of “upholstered furniture not manufactured for outdoor use.” Nobody in St. Cloud or Alliance will be calling the manufacturers of a coffee table found on a veranda.
It’s really about carport couches and front-porch recliners. It’s about a small city in Ohio not wanting to look too trashy. The chairman of Alliance City Council’s Planning, Zoning and Housing Committee admitted as much. “We’re not trying to nitpick every single item,” Phillip Mastroianni said. “It’s to try and clean up these properties that are excessively breaking the rules.”
So this isn’t about interior (or exterior) designers policing the feng shui of the neighborhood. Also, the ban does not appear to be protectionist regulation advanced by the patio furniture industry — though if you had somehow bought stock in Canton-area wicker dealers, you might be rolling in the dough right now.
These laws are all about college students or the declasse putting couches on their front porches — a move so gauche that the laws banning them don’t even deign to name the offense in so many words.
