Laundry Inequality

(WSJ photo)

When we stretched our finances to buy our first house--it had three bedrooms--over 40 years ago, we had to sit on bare floors in the living room and two of the bedrooms.

Despite the lack of furniture our first major purchase was a Kenmore washing machine and dryer from Sears. The time wasted driving a half-mile to the nearest laundromat and waiting in line for a machine on the weekends (each of us was working more than 40 hours a week and driving at least a half-hour each way) was at least half a day.

Compared to the nearby coin-operated machines in college or the apartment complex, the time-sink was intolerable.

Never had we derived such pleasure from new equipment--and we're talking about a time when we got our first color television and our first microwave oven (both gifts). It's not much of an exaggeration to say that having one's own washer and dryer is a big step to achieving the American dream.

We were reminded of that distant past when we read about a new problem, a coin shortage, that has afflicted the appliance-deprived: [bold added]

Now I need quarters only for San Francisco parking
meters,which currently charge $2.50/hr. minimum
(and I'd rather not give the new meters a credit card).

The scarcity of spare change—brought on as people leaned on digital transactions and fewer coins circulated—has pushed the quarter-dependent to extremes. Many have spent hours trekking across their cities in search of coins they used to easily procure from local bank branches. One couple hauled four loads of laundry across several states where they could use a relative’s machines. And in some buildings, the yearning for clean sweatpants has resulted in neighbors forging closer bonds.

The flow of change first slowed in the spring of 2020. Restaurants and retailers posted signs encouraging digital and credit card payments and even asked people to exchange spare coins. The problem eased toward the end of 2020 but made a comeback in March as businesses were preparing for an influx of cash transactions after vaccination rates ramped up. Around that time, coin requests from banks began to outpace deposits, according to the Federal Reserve, which provides cash to banks through its regional banks.

Now there isn’t enough coin to go around, and the central bank is limiting orders on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Banks and other financial institutions deposited about 15% fewer coins at their local Fed banks through mid-July compared with the same stretch last year, the central bank said. Coin deposits were 45% below 2019 over the same period.

Some bank branches are saving coveted coin rolls for their customers, according to apartment dwellers who have asked for quarter rolls at banks where they don’t have accounts. Other banks are telling would-be washers that they have no change to spare....

Digital options, such as reloadable payment cards or smartphone apps are gaining ground, but quarters have long been the default payment option, said Matt Miller, president of Coin-O-Matic, which outfits laundry machines with a variety of payment systems.

Demand for machines equipped with digital payment capabilities has roughly doubled since the start of the pandemic, Mr. Miller said. The most popular digital payment method is an app that users load money for laundry and connects to laundry machines via Bluetooth. Washers and dryers that accept credit or debit cards are less common because they require real-time Internet connections, which can be difficult to guarantee in the basements where many laundry rooms are located.

Wealth inequality manifests itself in housing, transportation, health care, and diet, but take it from one who's been there, the washer-dryer gap is more important than everyone thinks.