Regarding questions in the comments: Assuming allotments in .dk works roughly as in .se, they are designed not to be actual homes.
You're not allowed to use them as your listed place of residence; authorities require you to have a "real" residence as well. This can of course be circumvented by claiming you live with a friend and listing yourself at their address, but it's illegal and measures will be taken accordingly if you're found out - you'll surely lose your allotment, if nothing else.
Allotments are concentrated to specific areas, typically on municipal or county land rented by a co-op consisting of the inhabitants. Nowadays, most co-ops have installed municipal utilities (water, electricity) but not plumbing for human waste, which means most of them still have outhouses. Outhouse waste management is of course also heavily regulated. Often these utilities, at least water, are turned off during winter.
The permanence of allotments is fleeting; many of them are continually moved or chopped off in order to make room for actual residential buildings. They are however very popular among apartment dwellers who move out to their cosy little allotment houses at the first sign of spring.
I am curious why the government would need to punish people because they are living as they wish, in land they bought and own.
I mean, it is 100% fair to say a region will never get some types of utilities, or postal service, as it is part of city/environmental planing. They can also prohibit regions to have septic tanks, etc, for the same reasons. Thats fair, I guess?
But why would they go as far as punish people that are using compost toilets, being environmentally friendly and largely self sufficient in small lots?
If you are using a compost toilet right next to your neighbor, you are being a bad neighbor.
Have you ever smelled a compost toilet? (It stinks up an entire area) I certainly don't want to be smelling your composting poo while I'm sitting on my back porch eating dinner (or worse, while sitting in my dining room eating dinner with the windows open).
If you want to do that, move out to the country(rural areas) where you have space.
Your freedoms end where they infringe on others freedoms. Because some people don't understand that (or don't care), governments step in and say "You can't do that".
> If you are using a compost toilet right next to your neighbor, you are being a bad neighbor.
I guess you're not familiar with modern composting toilets.
They have become very popular replacement heads (toilets) in small boats, for instance. Where the toilet and composting container is often within inches of your sleeping area due to very limited space. Smell is a non-issue even in such tight quarters.
A land-based neighbor dozens of feet (or more) away stands no chance of smelling anything.
My old next door neighbor had a compost toilet and I didn't notice any smell, even inside of it. I also stayed at an AirBnb with one that didn't smell. I'm sure they can smell awful but it certainly depends.
I imagine it's similar to a yard waste compost pile. If it's not done right the smell can get pretty bad, but a proper one should have little to no problem with smell.
Anecdotes are not why the regulation would exist. The majority of people can do things the right way, but it's always the outliers and bad (lazy?) actors for which the regulation needs to exist for.
> Have you ever smelled a compost toilet? (It stinks up an entire area)
That's false. Composting toilets can easily be odor free.
Also, to round out your treatise on freedoms you really need to mention that serious problems can be posed by poorly maintained or designed septic systems, holding tanks, and municipal sewage treatment facilities (beyond offensive odors). To boot, our habit of using clean drinking water to transport urine and feces is simply ... wasteful.
I have - if it's done properly, with the right separation of pee/poop and ventilation and the drying out of solid matter, it hardly smells. Faintly of manure, basically.
presumably the same rules that you trust for neighbors to work on their own plumbing/landscaping and preventing runoff into your yard, for example, would apply here.
I think the issue is that with slightly bigger lots and/or city services meant to alleviate these problems (sewage lines), much of what might be problems is smoothed over. Often there are laws about setbacks from property edges for dwellings, which may or may not apply to a structure which is not meant to be a dwelling. By skirting the rules or using a loophole, people may in some instances find why those rules were put in place in urban areas (i.e. where people live closely together).
The ones I've seen have a slanted pedal-powered conveyor belt inside the bowl. Liquids run down to the front, and then you pump the pedal a few times to crank the solids to the back.
Think of it from the other side (with levity): "I am using a composting toilet, which is using less energy/infrastructure overall than say what happens to everyone elses poop (it gets flushed and then composted). I feel good about this poop situation. More importantly, I am following the local codes for composting safely and I'm generating safe compost, which I can then use on certain things in the garden, which is better than purchasing compost or fertilizer."
Help me understand why you think you have a Freedom to Smell Nice Things? If you were to file a nuisance complaint for "bad smell next door" (the action one can take in my locality), would you base it on this so-called freedom? If this person is following codes/guidelines for composting, wouldn't you be the Karen in the situation? Does this difference in lifestyle - your viewing the neighbor composting as a "bad neighbor" - come down to differing values?
IMO, this Freedom to Smell Nice Things does not exist. Cities smell, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Suburbs too - my suburb offers no compost service, and everyone's garbage composts in city-provided bins...it stinks. You suggested going rural, but that seems a romantic notion - the winds are your neighbors and the smell can often be worse than the city depending on where you are located.
> Help me understand why you think you have a Freedom to Smell Nice Things
"... certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" - US Constitution (enormously grateful for the sacrifices made to keep those freedoms)
You are right that it comes down to different values. I choose to live where these things are enforced, and you can choose, if you wish, to live where they are not.
I do like the sound of [parts] your first paragraph, where people are responsible about how they spread their poo on their garden right next to my garden... however, consider that same situation with an irresponsible (or ignorant) peerson spreading their poo on their garden right next to your garden. Considering how rain and water flow works,
you have a not-unlikely possibility of ingesting their poo (and enjoying whatever diseases follow).
> certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
That is quite a stretch. As an American I'm rolling my eyes :)
I guess I'm still not understanding how a composting neighbor is a bad neighbor? I'm not arguing against enforcing correct composting, I'm simply trying to understand why your comment makes it seem like any type of composting makes someone a bad neighbor? If your argument is that participating in a regulated activity (composting here) and not following guidelines (dumping ill-prepared compost on the ground), well that seems obvious - there are lots of regulated activities we participate in daily!
In trying to understand the "bad neighbor" comment, I sought out my local government's guidance. Where I live - highly dense county with a major city - the local government has a recommendation on their website to "Consider installing a composting toilet that converts human waste to nutrient-rich fertilizer for non-food plants and uses little to no potable water for flushing." which to me implies being a good neighbor (https://kingcounty.gov/depts/dnrp/solid-waste/programs/green...).
> I am curious why the government would need to punish people because they are living as they wish, in land they bought and own.
Think of this as more like an area permanently deeded for a certain kind of activity, with the existing belief (encoded into law) being that permanent living there is in conflict with that activity.
I think it's fine to argue that this belief is wrong, and that living permanently in the structure that is permitted to be on the allotment is just fine. I might even agree with you.
But in general, it also seems fine to me that communities can mark out certain places as being for only a specific set of activities, and exclude others from taking place there.
But in general, it also seems fine to me that communities can mark out certain places as being for only a specific set of activities, and exclude others from taking place there.
It does seem fine, at first, but the end result is the housing crisis, because people, having been given this power, will work very hard to ensure that expensive single-family homes with multiple parking spots and generous setbacks are the only living arrangement that's legal. (Let's not forget that people also marked out racial boundaries, when they were allowed to do that, too. When you let homeowners set housing-use policy, you get...bad results.)
I can assure you that the allotment areas in Sweden are in no significant way contributing to the housing crisis. That has many other reasons, of which these relatively small areas is definitely not a major one (if one at all).
Sure, some would be prime real estate but I’d rather have a few of these co-ops mixed into the cities than just private housing projects everywhere.
It doesn't need to directly be homeowners. In the UK it would generally be a planning committee which is a branch of local government. And I believe it consists of a mix of elected officials and professional experts. I definitely think planning is an area that could do with a lot of reform but done right it can be an extremely powerful for good.
I don't think that the issue is who makes the decisions (and it's rarely directly homeowners anywhere in the USA). The question is what interests are represented or accounted for by the decision making process. In well-off middle class neighborhoods of most US cities and suburbs, zoning processes cater almost exclusively to the interests of those who already live there, rather than those who don't but might want to. I don't think the UK process is significantly different in that respect.
Yes, absolutely. I very much do not agree with the way that zoning has been used in the US (at least) for racist and classist purposes, typically in the way you describe above.
That said, I think that a concept similar to zoning is probably a good one to have on hand, particularly for uses like greenspace of various sorts. It's use does need to carefully controlled/moderated.
Very few of the US cities worst hit by the housing crisis are exclusively single-family. They're actually some of the densest places in the US.
Seems like the blame for the housing crisis lies a lot more with landlords who'd rather kick out a tenant paying X for a new tenant able to pay out X*y - if you have more people moving in than moving out, and existing landlords can simply choose to serve the new, wealthier ones, you're going to have a problem. If you couldn't take advantage of the migration simply by choosing to rent to the higher-income and kick out your existing tenants, maybe the politically-connected multiple-property-owners would figure out a way to get more construction going. We used to have both rent control and more densification than we have today.
Two objections, one factual and one more philosophical. First, it's actually not true that most major U.S. cities are bereft of single-family homes. It's the dominant form of zoning. See here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...
But, second, any objection that places the blame on "greedy landlords" is a total nonstarter. Everybody is responding to their incentives. Landlords aren't greedier than anybody else. If widget makers could set higher prices, they would. They don't because they can't, not because they're "less greedy."
The US cities hit by the housing crisis—with the notable exception of New York—are disproportionately dominated by single-family homes, enforced through explicit zoning laws. Being "some of the densest places in the US" does not mean much when the entire country outside NYC is so sparsely populated!
SF is the second-densest "large" city in the US. I haven't found specific numbers, but looking at zoning maps at least 50% of the residential space is zoned for single-family homes only, with the majority of the remainder explicitly zoned for low-density residences. A big chunk of the city is basically a suburb! The rest of the Bay Area, of course, is more like 90% single-family housing. This year Berkeley passed a resolution removing single-family zoning throughout the entire city so perhaps the tides are shifting, but even if zoning laws and politics change, it'll take decades for this to meaningfully affect the housing supply.
Well, that is what they paid for. They chose a place to live based on the neighborhood, and they want it to stay that way. There are plenty of places people for people to live and build.
There are, in fact, not plenty of places for people to live and build where there are actually jobs available. And in the places where there are jobs available, homeowners have systematically blocked building enough new housing. Hence the housing shortage we find ourselves in now: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
There's land out on the periphery that hasn't yet been used for housing, but look: we urgently need to get our emissions under control because the course we're on will be catastrophic for the planet. Urban sprawl is massively inefficient.
Buying a house cannot entitle you to the neighborhood around you never changing if we are to have any hope of dealing with this mess. Change is part of life.
Sure, I think YIMBYs are mistaken when they wax hyperbolic about evil NIMBYs and their nefarious motives. It's actually pretty simple. People don't want their neighborhoods to change. It's an earnest objection.
But I don't care what they want.
It's not up to them. It's illegitimate to tell a property owner that they can't build a duplex on their own property. It's an illegal taking. It's not up to a vote. My neighbor's opinion is irrelevant.
> There are plenty of places people for people to live and build.
Indeed, there are plenty of places to live and build and the burden is on those who don't want anyone to build near them to move to some place new if they don't like what their neighbors are doing. You have the burden exactly backwards. If you don't like what people are choosing to do on their own private property, then you can move. You shouldn't be allowed to tell everyone else to stop building.
The issue I take with laws are that laws are usually slower to change, and even changing areas from one designated type to another.
As you can see, the land and real state market changes. Things used to be accessible, today many people flee to barely legal situations just because it is too expensive otherwise. What used to be desirable in one area might change over time, and punishing the first ones to try seem too harsh to me.
Not really "bought and own"... These places are not for permanent habitation - it's like say, building a house on an agricultural land - simply not permitted. Except here, temporary housing is permitted, with limitations.
Reason is that they are located in areas where actual residential construction is likely in foreseeable future. So on one hand, it would be a waste to keep the land completely unused, but on the other, building anything permanent there would be a waste too because it will need to be razed quite soon.
Ok. Feels weird to me to renovate a place they don't own at all, so I expected the person to own it. It is fair to follow more rules if you rent someone elses or city land.
On the other hand, if you still keep the tiny home low cost, easy for decommissioning and/or demolishing, why would government go as far as punish someone who is doing no harm whatsoever?
I take no offense or issue with city planing and even community planing. What I do believe is going too far, is to punish preemptively even when no actual harm was done. The rule say "no living" but the meaning is "be temporary and easy to dispose". So living there while respecting the community goal should not be punishable, instead, just recognize the goals were kept in spirit.
At allotment is a parcel of land rented or loaned to people by the city for the purposes of gardening.
These exist in the States as well (though not nearly at the level and cultural significance as in the UK) as "community gardens," and exist in many other countries as well. I don't think any of the cities that provide these parcels for gardening would allow people to simply build a house and live there instead.
> I am curious why the government would need to punish people because they are living as they wish, in land they bought and own.
Easy. Governments need to be sure that there is enough soils and fields and pasture around to produce food or at some point we run into problems. Also, governments like its citizens happy (bear with me) so for instance they prevent open air industrial poultry breeding next to houses, make maps with sections dedicated to farming/pastures/residential occupations, etc. You also cannot build anything you want on the land you bought and own: a 600 meters tall jenga building next to a highway or a your own giant windmill for example.
Living in a tribe grants benefits but it also cut on some of our liberties.
>>I am curious why the government would need to punish people because they are living as they wish, in land they bought and own.
You don't own the land of an allotment. You rent it from the local council, usually for many years, but you don't own it. Sometimes there's an option to "buy" it so there is no rent but you still don't own the actual land, no title is ever assigned to it or to you. You just get permanent right to use it.
You really can only "own" things you have full control. So, ok, if it is rented, I do se why it would have tighter rules. I don't have an issue with that. Still strange to "rent permanently" and still need to follow tight rules that harm no one.
land is zoned for particular uses for a reason (lack of utilities, traffic management, etc.) and it's the government's job to enforce these expectations for the neighbors and community.
imagine buying a rural land to get away from the city bustle and a developer builds high density apartment next to your place. or buying an apartment in the city only for someone to demolish blocks around you and turn it into farmland so you are not as conveniently close to shops and facilities.
If the actual goal is to keep it "rural" or "greener" etc, living small, as long as they don't demand anything extra, as long as the outside is kept as it was meant to be, why go as far as punish the person?
Sometimes rules are written too narrow and need adjustment. Following it blindly is not necessarily serving society optimally. If the actual goal is to have places people can garden, and have a large span of green land in that region, the single student living there is still following the objetive in spirit. In my opinion punishing would be going to far and serving no or little purpose for the community.
I am curious why the government would need to punish people because they are living as they wish, in land they bought and own.
Try to build a duplex in your neighborhood and you'll really find out how far people will go to punish you for living as you wish on land you bought and own.
It's legal in Denmark to live here in the summer months. I can set it as my legal address if I want to. Someone is already doing that where I live but I have not gotten around to it.
In .no you can have a "no permanent residence" status which is sometimes used by people who live in boats. This is often not optimal though as on paper it looks like you are homeless. An alternative which also is widely used by students is to be registered at your parents address even though you no longer live there. My understanding is that this is perfectly legal.
I find the idea that everyone needs an address is outdated and harmful at least to some groups. For various reasons, I've spent lots of time with "no fixed address" but I'm still forced to declare a permanent home address for my driver's license, healthcare, credit cards, etc. Worse, if you move between provinces regularly, many services differ depending what province you're "living in". You end up having to lie and rely on someone who does have a stable address, which should not be requirements of going about your business.
You've sort of identified the problem. Services/taxes/laws/etc. differ from one province/state to the other. So it actually matters where you're a resident (and where you're physically employed--if you are at a fixed office). I guess the alternative would be to have some sort of country-level no fixed residence/federal district status but I can't imagine a lot of demand for it (at least among those who have to political capital to push for such a thing) and I can imagine a lot of abuse if the terms were favorable. (ADDED: And people would just continue to fake things if they were't.)
Another way of looking at it is that tying taxes and other services to the notion of "residency" is outdated. Where I am, we pay income tax based on our province of residence, so if you work out of province (and many do in border areas) you still pay income tax where you claim your residence is. Maybe this should be simplified so that some other factor defines tax jurisdiction... likewise with drivers licensing, why can't I "buy in" to the licensing system of some jurisdiction. Same with healthcare if it's covered.
I certainly imagine there are lots of flaws in my ideas, but it would be nice to see steps away from the assumption that each of us has a long term residence we can get mail at. Just like you used to need to provide a "home telephone", it's becoming less valid of an assumption.
Like you say though, its probably not high enough on many peoples agendas, and is threatening enough to tax revenues (it would mean competition if nothing else) that it's unlikely to happen
Actually paying income taxes where you live kinda makes sense, since those taxes are used mostly for local services and such. Alternative is to merge provinces and just have one national level system.
And different state populations have different overall philosophies about how much and how they tax, the types and levels of services they provide, etc. In the US, eliminating state taxation authority is effectively taking a lot or power away from states and giving it to the federal government which... isn't happening. Certainly not short of constitutional amendment(s).
> I find the idea that everyone needs an address is outdated and harmful at least to some groups.
The #1 thing the USPS could have done to retain customers would be to have an actual sane forwarding service. I just had a company I worked at 10 years ago call me for an updated address because I had mail that kept going there after being returned from an address I had 5 years ago...
I wish I could just tell the USPS my current address, and instead just list an address for leters that would forward to my actual address.
(yes this exists as a forwarding service, but we could skip all that)
Taking this even further, I wish I could just give out some randomish 64 character string for an address, and that the USPS could translate that string into a physical address for delivery. Then, when I move, I just notify the post office, and they update my entry in the look-up table. If I'm going to be without a physical address, no problem, they can make the look-up table point to a PO box or something.
There is no good reason that I should need to give someone literal directions to my physical house, just so they can send a letter to me. Only the post office (and other delivery companies) need to know the physical address to send their trucks to.
> USPS is now piloting a new technology platform: Informed Address (IA).
> This innovative concept enables mail to be sent and delivered without a consumer’s physical address. Instead, Informed Address allows recipients to use identifiers including an email address, social media handles, or a custom name for mail processing and delivery functions.
> As privacy remains a top concern, Informed Address will replace the delivery point with a unique code where the usual IMB (Intelligent Mail Barcode) is substituted with an “Informed Address IMB”, which contains the physical address information. This allows customers the enhanced privacy and identity protection, as marketers will no longer need to obtain or hold a physical address for their mail communications.
> During the testing period, the USPS will assess consumer engagement, gauge mailer interest, and determine technical feasibility. This new technology provides the opportunity for marketers to provide additional services, including vanity address development and enhanced consumer targeting for B2B and B2C marketing.
After dealing with changing dozens of addresses and forgetting to change countless more after moving every few years, I have always dreamed of a DNS like service for mail. Give me a serial number, then I don't need to keep my address on file with anyone except for the post office (and maybe FedEx and UPS).
> I find the idea that everyone needs an address is outdated and harmful at least to some groups
Yeah, it is in fact very harmful to homeless, refugees, and even common immigrants ("expats"), among other groups. In some countries, you need a registered or confirmed address for things like opening a bank account, getting a prepaid phone, or even getting a job. Not having those things also prevents you from getting a home, so it's a vicious circle.
I had a bizarre issue with that, where I wanted to get married, and to get the marriage license I needed a permanent address that was mine, not my parents.
But to rent a place, several of them required me to have a family income that was only enough if I had my wife with me, but since we weren't married officially yet, it didn't count.
Yep. Another crazy example: in Germany you often need a registered address to open a bank account, which is often a requirement for renting an apartment in the first place. The government had to intervene and make a law in the end, although most banks still drag their feet.
Part of it is that things like driver's licenses and residency generally are not actually at the federal level. They're at the level of the states. And lots of real money is involved with respect to state taxes.
There could presumably be a "no fixed address" category at the federal level but don't hold your breath as this is an outlier among people who earn enough to pay taxes and would absolutely be abused if it existed.
I actually agree there is an edge case of people who are nomadic for at least a period who genuinely don't have a fixed address and have to "fake it." I'm also not sure it's a large enough category to institute the significant changes needed to deal with it.
In part, because basically anyone [ADDED: who didn't physically work in a high tax state] who didn't actually own property who lived in a high tax state would establish an "address of convenience" in a no income tax state.
This was in the context of someone who was nomadic. Otherwise, of course, you need to live near where you work. And if you work in a high tax state, you need to pay those taxes anyway even if you live across the state border in a state without taxes (as is often the case with NH and MA).
Lots of things factor into where people live. I live in a fairly high CoL location and could move pretty much anywhere in the US I wanted to. But I have a house and like where I am for various reasons so moving is unlikely.
Denmark appears to be slowly allowing it as well, in june this year it became legal to live in a autocamper without an address. But you do need to then have a contact listed, whom the Department for motor vehicles can contact in your place. This contact needs a permanent address, so it doesn't entirely remove the address requirement.
I think in Sweden it's illegal to not have a listed address. If you're homeless you'll get your local city hall's address as your listed address, IIRC.
The key word is IMO "allotment". While it can mean "parcelled and given out" (and that's the origin of it), the dominant meaning in English is "piece of land you can rent (for growing vegetables)"
Nice little house!
I did exactly the same, with the same costs, and lived there happily for several years during my studies at University. It was a great time and a good place for a single young man with a dog.
I used a wood burning bath stove with a 100 liter copper tank to store heat for the night. It worked great. The 100 liter of water kept heat for many hours and the tank surface radiated it slowly into the room. This was much more convenient than a simple wood stove. I had only to add wood one time per day in autumn and two times per day in winter.
This appears to be in Denmark where these allotments are called 'kolonihaver'.
Traditionally 'kolonihaver' were intended for recreational use and vegetable gardens for workers living in apartments in the larger cities. You were not allowed to live there full time and you should always have an ordinary home beside it.
Unfortunately the rules are not followed, and for a very large part they get used as a small property with a tiny house for the whole year. Not really for recreational use or growing vegetables - mostly for living cheap in expensive cities. I say unfortunately, as living in them are clearly an tax evasive action.
No property tax is payed, while their values rises like most ordinary properties. The Danish property tax is intended to tax the value gained by increasing property values. So when you live in one of these kolonihaver this way you are doing tax fraud. Even though it's mostly never investigated and punished.
It easily gets glorified as a smart and cheap way of living, when you present it like this in a blog post shared on a global forum(HN). But unless you voluntarily pay tax on the monetary gain you'll have the day you sell it again, I despise your lack of contribution to, and participation in, our Danish society.
Hang on - there is a - for want of a better term - Capital Gains Tax on property price rises? Wow. Is it working?
The UK had a simialr tax in the late 40s - it enabled the building of the "new" towns like Milton Keynes and Harlow (where I was born). Simply put, if everyone knew the government was going to build a ton of new roads and schools on that field, then you would be crazy to sell the field for anything less then a fortune. But if everyone knew the government was going to simply tax the fortune straight back at 100% then you sold the field for a fair value, and the government spent the money not on buying the field but on roads etc. Since that was repealed in 50s no similar large scale house building has been affordable.
The UK still has capital gains tax on sales realising property appreciation. The main exception is on a vendor's principal residence, so most home owners never pay it.
The impact of such a tax would be to hold back the huge climb in residential / urban property prices and so funnel it into something more socially useful
Having the tax miss 99% of the sales that drive that growth kind of misses the point :-(
A British PM imposing capital gains tax on residential property sales would be as popular as a US President setting gasoline taxes at European levels. The economic logic may be sound, but politics is the art of the possible...
There is not capital gains tax on housing (in denmark), even if some politicians would like that. In Sweden its reverse, low property taxes but profit on selling is the house is taxed as income. In Denmark the profit is tax free.
You are paying property taxes for houses every year, these taxes are in theory based on the value of the house even if they have been lagging the real value of the house.
I think the post refers to the point that you don't pay property taxes.
This is the concept of a Land Value Tax (LVT), except that unlike a property tax, LVT wouldn't tax your own improvements to property (like building a house), only 100% of fortune gained from land appreciation.
> It easily gets glorified as a smart and cheap way of living
Probably because it is? Have you tried buying a real house in any western country recently? Unless you’re already a milionaire it’s damn near impossible to find anything at a reasonable price.
The taxes are not the problem. The initial cost is.
You can in Denmark borrow 95% of the house/apartment price at very low interest rates. I have a fixed rate 30 year mortgage at 1% interest rate for 80% of my house value, the rest if a loan is needed would be a bit higher.
If you are willing to gamble with a variable rate loan you can get negative rates at the moment.
Houses near metro areas are expensive but outside that they still seem reasonably priced.
I have not, but I have friends who did here in Germany. If you are okay living in the middle of nowhere (that includes no, or laughable public transport), you can get one for 500k€. If you also have relevant skills (and friends/family with those as well), you can buy one that needs renovation for half of that.
My experience is in Northern Germany, I heard of even lower prices in the east.
I see plenty of decent looking houses in towns and city outskirts, far from the middle of nowhere, for less than 300K in NRW. What are you buying, a mansion? Or do you want it within 30 minutes walking/cycling distance of the city center? I mean, come on.
A) Yes, if you don't have a problem with not paying taxes.
B) Yes.
C) I disagree. General rule here in Denmark is that house price, you can afford a mortgage for, is 3x your household income before tax.
>I despise your lack of contribution to, and participation in, our Danish society.
This is quite a strong statement. The author is a student and does not live in this full time. Therefore he seems to be following the laws and, I would argue, is contributing to society.
You are right. The prices has been rising quickly and closing the gap. My point being that these price hikes should have been taxed or been taxed like all other properties. But due to the lack of property tax, they end up being the cheap alternative.
It's weird to have this tone of hating on someone for not having two homes. If he can live without occupying a giant property, good on him. Why should only rich people get allotments?
Any tax he owes can be deducted from his carbon/pollution under-footprint.
I’m not sure allotment is the right word, at least in England allotments are much more intended for hobbyist gardening, they’re small, often you’re not even allowed a shed, staying there would be unlikely practically or legally. Isn’t this closer to the Summer Cabin concept in Scandinavia?
In the UK the rules on sheds and structures are controlled by the local council. Often they set a maximum size, but I suspect they aren't measured unless you piss off someone enough to complain.
There was a movement in the late 1890s-1930s where building societies would buy strips of land to allow the working man to take out a loan to buy and build on a plot of land, with enough space to grow and keep livestock. I wish I knew what they were called. Basically they were allotments with houses.
In the netherlands Tuinhuisen are a thing, and they put a lot of effort into making them look nice and be livable.
My wife has an allotment (we are in the UK), and the rule - which I think is part of the Ts and Cs of rental rather than a anything statutory - is that you are not allowed to stay overnight. Furthermore, there is no electricity or gas, so making a permanent home there would be difficult anyway. That said, people do have pretty snazzy sheds that they've elaborated into little houses, with propane-powered generators etc
allotments are much more intended for hobbyist gardening
That is the intention in Scandinavia as well, and how most people use them. Although it has generally always been acceptable to have a bed and spend the night there. However some people have upgraded their 'shed' to (ab)use them as more permanent living spaces, even if it is generally frowned upon.
I think allotment is the right word. They are intended for hobbyists gardeners, or at their inception during WW1, for families in the city to be able to grow mostly potatoes. The size of sheds allowed varies a lot. Originally they were just meant to store garden tools (and potatoes). Many allow nothing more than 6 square meters.
There is a water source at the end of the garden. I have not hooked it up to the house yet, so I just use a big jug with a tap on my kitchen table. The sync drain feeds into another big jug which I have to empty.
For the toilet I use this https://www.greenkarma.dk/vare/kekkila-50-l-muldtoilet/
It's a compost toilet. I have to empty it as well.
I hired an electrician to hook me up to the grid.
Thanks for the toilet link... That looks really interesting. What do you think of it? Other than that website,I cannot find anything about that toilet anywhere. I'm confused about where the waste goes and how it can have no smell... Is it only for peeing?
I don't know about this specific one, but composting toilets are starting to become more popular for liveaboard boats. Marine heads are IMO the worst part of boating.
If you have electricity, there are also electric incinerator toilets. For a summerhouse that can be a environmentally friendly and hygienic solution. They can handle urine but I prefer to pee outside.
Not inside but outside yes if there is no wind/certain air pressure. The toilet has intake air and an exhaust chimney that you put through the roof or a wall. So generally the exhaust should go up like smoke from a chimney but it can also come down at time. It doesn't smell like poo/pee but it does smell something.
At least the model we have at our summer cottage, you can go multiple times while it's still burning since the incinerator and the part where you are doing your business are two separate areas. To "flush" you just press the button that opens the hatch and drops down in to the incinerator.
You have to empty it maybe once month and there is only handful of ash. It's definitely easier to maintain than composting toilet where usually you need to throw in some dry mulch/compost material so doesn't get smelly. Eventually you still have to empty the compost and hope it has mostly turned in to soil. It also smaller than composting toilet so you can fit in inside a small cottage.
I’m quite certain this is not the correct translation.
“Chata” typically means a house in the nature, outside a town or village.
The word we seek is probably something with “záhradka” … within the borders of a town, that can be rented for long periods, intended for growing vegetables.
Hmm I've been to chaty like you described - in the countryside or a village out in south moravia, south bohemia and vysočina. But I've also been to garden plots near to a city with a little building that has a kitchen and room to chill/sleep in (these little guys: https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=16.6371848&y=49.2350039&z=20&m... - maybe hard to see, street view didn't go here :) ) which were also described as a "chata" to me. There are definitely little bare sheds in some of these plots, but in the context we were discussing I feel like "chata" fits well and is analogous to "dacha" from the comment I replied to. Though I've heard of some grander "dacha", better equipped with more amenities that might be referred to as "chalupa" here.
A "garage". One that often you hope the authorities ignore :)
Fortunately, people aren't snitching like in some other countries.
Unless you piss off someone in the police or government or someone needs that land for something and official inquiries are made, you're unlikely to get in trouble.
Pretty huge shed for an allotment! More like a small unfinihshed (at the start of the article) studio-bungalow that happens to be surrounded by allotments...
Did it already have electricity hook up? Water makes sense for an allotment, but you can legally just pipe it in unmetered to your new house? And what about waste water & sewage?
In a comment here they mentioned that they use a composting toilet, a jug for gray water, and drinking water in a jug with a spout. They have to manually empty the gray water and composting toilet.
> The first thing I started on was the electrical wiring. To actually supply the house with power I had to dig a 0.5 meter deep trench from the start of the garden to the house. I did it by hand with a shovel.
Yes but I was specifically asking about the hook-up, whether there was already a connection to the grid ready to be wired in to the shed/house and appliances. (And actually, same confusion about metering applies as for the water.)
Interesting project, I'm just hungry for more detail!
He says: ' The house is what in English apparently is called an allotment.'
In the UK, allotments are about 250 square metres, and can only have a small shed on them that does not having running water or electricity. They are specifically considered 'temporary' structures, and you are not allowed to live in them.
The 'house' he shows, is massive compared to a 2.5m x 2m shed you typically see on British allotments.
That said, kudos on converting it into a liveable home. If only this option was more available to zero-income or homeless people....
very much down to the local council, but the vast majority would say "Noooooope" if you asked permission to put one up.
Having said that though, several of the "old boys" on my mum's allotment had fucking huge sheds to keep pigs and chickens in. They were the full width of the allotment and a good few meters long.
With insulation they are warm/cheap to heat. Lots of space to put solar on the roof. Really strong and well made, and easy to put together. The hardest part is making the base, everything else is pretty simple.
The assembly can be done in ~three days with two people.
on your own its about double that time. The hardest part is putting the windows in, as they are really heavy ~50-80kgs. The process is really simple, its pretty much lego.
I used rockwool 100mm bats, that are held in place with osb boards. The Tuin wiki have tips on Attaching things to the walls in a way that allows shrinking and growing.
The only thing I think I would have done differently is putting the roof insulation on the outside, under the EDPM layer, rather than on the inside in the rafters.
I've had it for a good 4ish year, I have replaced the double glazing for coated panels. They are about 3x more insulating
The blog post is about allotment so not a fair comparison. However, its supply and demand, extremely high demand and influx of people who want to live in Toronto.
There are places outside of Toronto, Canada which are affordable and have better price to comfort ratio. London Ontario, Gatineau Quebec, Regina Sask, Calgary Alberta are quite affordable and have all the modern life style options available.
That's true of essentially everywhere. The Bay Area is something of an outlier--partly because of geography--but there are a number of large expensive metros that you can still get to pretty affordable housing by driving an hour or two. (Or even taking a commuter rail in some cases.) To say nothing of the many metros that aren't especially expensive.
London is better than Toronto, but I'm not sure I'd call it affordable anymore. Real estate prices for a basic detached home have more than doubled in the last 5 years.
But if you have a not-terrible job, you'd be able to get that much in a loan to repay over a few years. At that point, as long as it's below rent level, you're winning.
God that trenching. The first time I dug a trench for electrical wiring I did it by hand and I swore never again. Just finished an outdoor office shed this month and I used a giant machine to dig the trench. Still took all day and left me sore in every member.
If you're in to "young people building their own home" then check out Erik Grankvist building a small cabin in the middle of the forest using only primitive tools.
Have followed his work from the start, really inspiring and he really does live off-grid by using solar panels, a battery and then do the editing/posting from his laptop.
Very cool! Nice solution to the high house prices. You get a residence for a years rent for a lot of people.
I guess it would have running water, but what about sewage. Does it have a toilet? Did you use a septic tank. Or are you directly fertilising your patch.
We’ve done it throughout many parts of our house for sound insulation. Apparently it works best when you use two slightly different pieces of thickness. Not sure if that’s why it was done in this case though. It doesn’t seem like the best choice for thermal insulation.
Two layers of 9mm used to be quite common in UK if you are aiming for a robust, heavy, quality feeling wall. One layer of 12mm feels cheap, not that hard to put a hole in it while moving furniture etc. One layer of 15mm board is common now though.
I was wondering if perhaps drywall isn't the right word or perhaps it's a different material?
In the US we have drywall and something similar called blue board that as far as I can tell is only used in the North East. They seem similar at first but they're very different.
Blue board is designed to accept a skim coat of plaster well. Which makes it easier to get nice looking flat walls without having to texture like is common with drywall.
My understanding is that blue board is also much stronger than drywall and has better sound deadening properties.
Most of the texture in drywall comes from the paint and is intentional to hide imperfections. Joint compound is used at the seams to hide and smooth out imperfections, it's of a different texture than the drywall itself and a truly flat paint job would reveal all the seams. Blue board avoids this by coating the entire surface and joints in a skim coat of plaster.
Very interesting! Where did you learn all the skills you needed to get all of this work done? I'm curious if YouTube and Google was able to give you all the guidance you needed.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1631868799 I live in the US so some code stuff may be different but have found this book to be super helpful while working on my own house.
We recently gutted our bathroom down to the studs/subfloor and redid it ourselves. No prior experience. YouTube and Google made it all possible. We did hire a plumber for the shower plumbing, anything that's going to be encased inside a wall it's good to get a professional in on. But everything else we did ourselves and it turned out great.
I’m also renovating a house, and before I started the closest thing I had done to that was assembling IKEA furniture. I have a few family members who know a ton about that stuff, and that’s been 90% of it for me. YouTube etc is helpful, but a lot of that knowledge is specific to your geographic region (especially when it comes to what sort of insulation/roofing/etc you want, especially if you’re renovating existing things that were done a certain way for a certain reason) so you really need local experts. I certainly wouldn’t have undertaken such a project if I didn’t have those family members I knew I could rely on.
I'm redoing the bathroom/shower purely from youtube videos. It has taken a long time, but I'm glad as I continued to learn things as I went along.
I've learned how to: replace toilets, set backerboard and tile, copper plumbing/soldering (was fun once, but from now I'll use PEX), drywall, level&plumb a wall & floor, deal with a subfloor, make a shower mud pan (concrete/sand mix), slope everything and how water & waterproofing works (gravity vs capillary action), and probably a few other things. And all those things come with various clever tricks, code requirements, learning new tools...
Wow, looks super nice. I think for a lot of people, specially in 3rd world countries, living in a place like that would be a complete upgrade (I'd do it!).
Out of curiosity: what's the real reason that it is illegal to live there? What are the gov trying to avoid?
I am just guessing here, but I can imagine that (at least in germany) the public utility companies (or someone like that) would be required by law to supply you with water, electricity, landline and internet, access to a street, etc. Basically: if you are allowed to live in a house, you have rights that the authorities supply your basic need.
I think its reasonable that therefore, the gov can decide what zone is usable for living and which is not.
As I understand from other comments there is no "real" bathroom in this house. There might be certain rules of which "features" a space has to offer to be considered a valid place to live in.
I think both sides here are understandable. There is the gov, which has to make some regulations in order to be able to fulfill its duties and to enforce some lower bound for whats considered a place to live in. On the other side, there is a lot of people who cannot or dont want to afford this lower bound and would be happy to be able to live in something that offers less.
Allotments and similar systems are often meant to provide space for people to grow food or just do hobbyist gardening. If you were allowed to build and live on them legally the people meant to use them would be competing with home land prices. It's basically zoning or declaring a park.
I do think it would be interesting to see how a neighborhood of these tiny homes fared on the market. With showers, and bathrooms -- of course. I question the viability once you get a partner, man... anything smaller than 2,500 square feet... I think that's about 250 square meters... starts to feel small for me with another person living there. BUT... I've grown accustomed to a home office, home gym, guest room...
Anyway, it's a cool spot! I'd need a shower, room for at least a queen size bed... king if it's 2 people. I wonder where my need for space came from... if it's something people are born with. Growing up my parents had a bigger house than I have now, so maybe that's it. Ha, I couldn't swing this, but impressive you've found a way to avoid mortgage payments. Good on ya!
I bet 95% of the houses in the UK are smaller than 250 square meters. A big house might be 150 or so. Most families probably have around 100 square metres. Somehow we survive!
I get it... we have big houses in the US. And I don't honestly know how to live otherwise. I'm sure if we had smaller homes I'd be used to smaller homes... but yeah anyway, not really interesting for anyone but just has me thinking about what we'd have to do to get everyone back into smaller places. My house now is a pretty typical tract home in Texas... not saying this is 100% typical, but growing up I had probably 3-4 acres of a yard, now my neighbor's house is 10 feet away from my own. Just feels claustrophobic arleady. I don't know how practical it would be to have small suburban homes, vs. just apartments, but part of me really loves this idea.
The thing is that, once you assume a standalone single family house, the savings associated with going "tiny" vs., say, 1000 to 1500 sq. ft. modest just aren't that much and the compromises are significant. In general, there are certain must haves. A bathroom, some measure of kitchen, a place to park a car (and, yes, in most places where we're talking standalone houses 1-2 cars need to go somewhere), a bed, at least a desk, etc.
It's incredibly popular. A friend of mine is living there in a 50 square meter house with his partner and kid. These houses do have electricity and running water.
Since it's not used during winters, did you consider making it off-grid with solar power and batteries? I guess cooking would be a problem then though.
Is there much of a van dwelling community in Denmark? You could live in a van when you're not in the shed, if you wanted to be especially frugal. Or do a couple more years of off-seasons with parents to save money towards something else.
This winter had a full month below -10C/14F with temperatures down to -15C/4F to -20C/-4F - it was unusually cold though. I would not want to live in a van here.
Also, cars are stupidly expensive in Denmark - a nice van will cost you (a lot!) more than OPs allotment.
Many people just live there quietly through the winter even though it's illegal. At least that's the situation in Århus where I live :)
It would seem a fair idea to go deeper in an area where people might dig too. An allotment would be one of these areas, though turning the soil to 50cm would seem excessive.
I really could live with this but then I have a wife with borderline hoarding tendencies and 2 teens , it amazing how much crap they all collect and "need".
In the states, we don't have anything like this, but should.
It seems like in the states government goes out of it's way to discourage cheap housing.
Gov. Neusome did a great job on ADU's, but you need a house to put the unit in, or around. What happened is wealth people realized they could remodel their home while putting in a small apartment.
When begging for a variance for their bigger home, and guaranteed ADU thanks to Neusome, they promise to rent the ADU out to low income tenants.
They get their variance, build a ADU, and turn the ADU into another room for themselfs.
The wealthy are foxey.
(I'm looking at you San Anselmo. I see you are now granting Variances, but they appear to be given out to favorite homeowners? I hope this is not what it appears. For years, my little town gladly took in a $1000 fee for a variance, but never ok'ed one.)
adu=accessory dwelling unit
variance=a piece of paper indicating you are breaking some zoning rule.
wealthy people=foxey
In New England it is common to have a 2nd lake or country "home" called a "camp". Camps can be anywhere from a tar paper shack without electricity or running water and only an outhouse to a full on hunting lodge with satellite internet. They are often more of the former and are utilized in the warmer months and hunting season as they tend not to have insulation.
Aside from owning an unimproved lot in the woods for this, in Maine it is common to have these camps on land leased from logging companies and those leases can be transferrable. It's also common for these camps (and corresponding leases) to be passed through generations.
There is even a hospitality industry around renting basic no-frills shacks. These are called sporting camps and are abundant in the most remote northern parts of Maine.
Having a camp is common across all economic demographics in Maine.
Many such places have been upgraded over the years as, especially waterfront, property prices have increased. But, yes, it's fairly common to have "camps" on islands and on the waterfront. As I understand it Maine is also fairly unusual in that you don't need a legal right of way to access a waterfront property.
There are even still some fairly massive summer "cottages" in New England that are 2-3 season.
I wish the US had something similar. Not so much for tiny-house living, but common community gardens. My town (Reston, VA) has a few and they're popular. But, depending on where your house is located, they could be a few miles away. I'm on the waitlist for the closest garden and it's about 1.5 miles and an easy bike ride. No sheds or buildings allowed, but the community provides water and compost. I tried veggies in my front and rear yards this season, but they just don't get enough light (tall house and a few mature trees). Herbs do well, but tomatoes and peppers need more sun - the fruit eventually, but quite late in the season.
Can you not create a new community garden? Your city/park district should have a process in place for doing so (who's land is it on?).
Back when I lived in Chicago, they made it easy to create one. You were subjected to non-adversarial bureaucracy to make sure you were serious enough about creating something that would last for years and would actually be used by the community, but I had never heard of any denials and worked on two different ones in parks near my place.
Friends have tried to get them allowed on community property within their neighborhoods with zero success. The HOA bureaucracy doesn't allow it (not explicitly banned, but the HOAs appear incapable of doing anything new).
As for parks, none with available space would be any closer than the one where I'm currently waitlisted. And I doubt any would allow any shed-like structures. Either way, I meant in a more general sense - I wish community gardens were more of "a thing" in the US, especially in cities.
Allotments in England are different, more like an open field broken up into 50ft x 50ft squares specifically for hobbyist gardeners, and often you’re not allowed to have any buildings on them at all.
So what happened to the main house? Empty when the shed is in use?
If nothing else it looks like a pretty slick way to avoid all building codes. Just run extension cords everywhere, water through garden hoses, dump the toilet bucket into the garden, no need for fire-rated anything. sweet.
At least in Austria you can get a sewer junction for allotments, but expect to pay upwards of €10k for that in many cases. Water and electricity is usually available because that’s required for gardening work.
I think I can but that is totally off the point. I reread the article to make sure I didn't miss something but yeah, its just someone painting wood blue, insulate and putting down click type laminate to a small shed while taking pictures. While it's nice work and good sweat it's nothing out of ordinary. The post is shallow and don't talk anything about why's and how's just motivating to those who want to do the same thing. But come on, there is nothing intellectual here - just someone did what others dream and they like it.
I stand by what I said, I'm absolutely baffled this hit the first page. As another person replied I should've just flagged it and move along and I'll do that now. But this is so, so out of the ordinary I couldn't do just that.
Again I'm not attacking the work or the blog post, nice job. I'm attacking the decision of the community :)
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
... and...
> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
This is very interesting, and is aligned with the digital nomad/alternative living/frugal living interest a lot of HNers have. I’m definitely interested but more as a spectator. I toyed in my 20s with the idea of living in a caravan to say fuck you to rent and house prices but never had the guts to do it!
Is it? Genuine question, in my apartment the fridge is also right next to the stove and there is nothing that can be done to move it (it was that way when I rented it).
I’m not sure if it’s a hazard or not, per se, but it will definitely impact the performance of the fridge and reduce its usable lifespan. I’ve had this same situation in multiple homes I rented over the years. Sometimes it is unavoidable, but you would do well to move the fridge to a different location and put another cabinet next to the stove for safety. I had neighbors growing up who had a son get doused in boiling water as a result of an exposed stove side—even if you don’t have kids, it’s just a good precaution.
Edit: by the by, Google “kitchen triangle design” for an effective strategy for laying out a kitchen. Move the fridge to the adjacent wall (right side in the photo) and put another cabinet piece in its place and you are good to go.
Assuming the fridge is made of metal, isn't is safer than a cabinet? Efficiency may be noticably worse, especially if poorly insulated, but I don't understand the safety aspect.
You're not allowed to use them as your listed place of residence; authorities require you to have a "real" residence as well. This can of course be circumvented by claiming you live with a friend and listing yourself at their address, but it's illegal and measures will be taken accordingly if you're found out - you'll surely lose your allotment, if nothing else.
Allotments are concentrated to specific areas, typically on municipal or county land rented by a co-op consisting of the inhabitants. Nowadays, most co-ops have installed municipal utilities (water, electricity) but not plumbing for human waste, which means most of them still have outhouses. Outhouse waste management is of course also heavily regulated. Often these utilities, at least water, are turned off during winter.
The permanence of allotments is fleeting; many of them are continually moved or chopped off in order to make room for actual residential buildings. They are however very popular among apartment dwellers who move out to their cosy little allotment houses at the first sign of spring.
Regarding the OP, nice work! Looks great.