It seems insane to me that a group of people who live near you can tell you how you dry your washing. From a UK perspective, HOA's seem mad.
I'm surprised you didn't know that.
Banning laundry hanging is much less common in the UK so harder to find examples. But POAs are reasonably common and enforce all kinds of things for aesthetic reasons.
Stop buying HOA homes, and people will stop forming them. The market has spoken and a lot of Americans love them.
If I had to buy a standalone home, I would probably have to pay considerably more and live in a worse part of the neighborhood.
With selection bias like that it's not surprising what you get.