Same in a couple of other West European countries I know. Where I lived, middle class apartment blocks explicitly advertised the fact that there is a large room (cellar or attic) to hang clothes (and I am talking about the 1990s and 2000s here, not about 1960).
What kind of clothes are these that break? The only thing I can think of developing holes are my (very expensive) icebreaker merino wool t-shirts, and even those took YEARS to develop any holes.
My average cotton/poly/whatever t-shirts, sweatshirts, jeans, last.. I don't know. A decade?
In our household, only socks and underpants and pyjamas and stuff like that go in the dryer, the rest dries outside (or, in a room with the window open when it's cold).
(very western: we're a Dutch and Danish couple)