Bloomington ban endangers porch couch tradition

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) -- Up and down Lincoln and Washington streets, southwest of the Indiana University campus, couches on porches are part of college life.

Below an armrest may lie an empty glass bottle on its side, having rolled away from other remnants of the weekend's cheap drink. Within an arm's length of a sunken cushion, on a table or a ledge, cigarette butts may spill from the rim of a ceramic bowl.

In winter, the couches are left mostly unused, but tenants hope they will survive the rain and the snow to serve them in the spring, providing a quick and cushy place to crash between classes or a gathering place for friends during late-night activities.

Where college-aged men and women see porch couches as comfy, city officials see damp and squishy. The heads of neighborhood associations cringe at yellow stuffing bursting from seats and armrests. These couches are rat houses, critics say. Filthy. The only culture this furniture represents is measured in mildew.

So, as of Dec. 28, upholstered furniture on porches was banned by Bloomington's city government. The change came during a recent update of the municipal code for rental properties; porch couches were a noncontroversial item for the city council compared with requirements being imposed on landlords to install hard-wired, interconnected smoke detectors in all of their units.

The student renters of Bloomington, who aren't necessarily tuned in to city politics, are puzzled by why anyone would legislate their furniture choices.

"They have more value on the porch than they do in the dump," Heidi Peck, a junior at IU, told The Herald-Times (http://bit.ly/Y0FDEp ). The front of her rental home on Washington Street has two couches, one on either side of the door.

Owning a porch couch, to Peck, is a form of recycling, taking a piece of furniture that wouldn't be kept in a family home and giving it another year of life. Or multiple years, if another couch vulture grabs it from the street after they graduate and deems it worthy of a sit.

It is an understated part of the culture to these students -- not sacred, but a worthwhile addition to their college experience.

"It will be a sad day," said Devon McShane, a former IU student who took a moment to imagine Bloomington without porch couches. "Ever since I moved in, it was the first thing: let's find some couches."

Porch couches once held a place of esteem in America's South. Before the advent of air conditioning, porch-sitting was a way to cool off from sizzling temperatures inside. The couch was one of many pieces of furniture that migrated outside, finding a footing next to the three-person swing.

But the last couple of decades have brought attempts to curtail upholstered furniture on porches and lawns, resulting in outcries from more nostalgic southerners. In 1998, a battle to ban porch couches in Wilson, N.C., was chronicled by the New York Times and billed as the "ultimate yuppiefication of the South" by Dan Carter, a professor of Southern history at Emory University in Atlanta.

The porch couch -- which might have moved to Indiana by way of nearby southern influences -- has found a habitat around college campuses across the country. But many communities with universities have decided to banish them from the landscape in recent years. They including Lincoln, Neb., in 2008; Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2009; Ann Arbor, Mich., in 2010; Ames, Iowa, in 2011; and Durham, N.C., in 2012. Decision-makers have cited health hazards and fire safety in imposing these ordinances.

Lisa Abbott, director of Bloomington's department of Housing and Neighborhood Development, said a debate over porch couches here is not "anyone versus anyone." Bloomington is just copying other communities in a way that makes sense for most regulators.

"Over the number of years I have been here, other communities have decided to not allow them, so I thought it would be good here," Abbott said. "It's been a thing where people say, "So-and-so community is doing this, can't we do that?

"You can hardly blame them. You have upholstered furniture on the porch, getting wet. Creatures will find warm and soft havens in the cushions. It can be an unpleasant sight."

Porch couches, at the same time, are not something HAND inspectors will explicitly target for fines, at least not in the near future. If they see trash to be cleaned on a tenant's property, Abbott said, her staff might tack on a conversation about the couch on the porch. But there are no plans to crack down on the porch couch aside from routine rental housing inspection cycles.

Peck and her housemates don't plan on relinquishing their porch couches any time soon.

"We probably won't do anything unless it's enforced. And if it's enforced, we'll probably throw a cover over (the couch) and call it good and assume that nobody is going to come up and look under the couch cover and then write us a ticket," she said.

"They barely enforce other strange ordinances. I can't imagine them being hard-pressed on this