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Comment by arexxbifs | Hacker News Reader

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.

Regarding the OP, nice work! Looks great.

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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?

> 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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Wrong. The US cities hit hardest by the housing crisis have some of the strongest rent control laws.

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.

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.

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.

In dk they haven't bought and own the land. They are part of an association that is renting the land.

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.

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.

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".

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.

I believe it. I'd rather not roll the dice on getting a neighbor that will do it right though.

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).

I am not sure I actually want a lot of details but I am too curious not to ask.

> with the right separation of pee/poop

How does one do this logistically? Does this mean a compost system where you have two distinct toilets/containers for each of those bodily functions?

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.

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.

Regulation exists to prevent doing things the bad way, not to prevent doing things altogether.

Everything will be banned once someone does it the bad way, because there aren't enough resources to determine each case on an individual basis.

Nothing in the previous comments contradicts that.

Only it's entire spirit and the context under which it was placed...

Regulations may only exist to avoid the "wrong way", they must not be there to impede a "right way". It is illegitimate to fight the "right way".

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).

I'm glad poo-handling is regulated.

> 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...).

> 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.

> 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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

> 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)

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).

What, like a mail forwarder like MyUS?

Would that be legal in the US? It sure wouldn't be in most of Europe because you don't live there. Which for some fucking reason is a must.

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.

and you could give each entity you interact with a different 64 character string.

USPS is actually working on this, though more slanted towards marketers: https://www.productionsolutions.com/up-next-from-usps-inform...

> 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.

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.

Why are PO boxes or mail forwarding services not allowed then?

Just send all mail to that, if notice of a fine doesn't reach you, proceed as if it was ignored. Seems reasonable to me.

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.

How are they employed in the high tax state, then?

OK, I can see it now with remote work being common (why live in a CoL state then?), but these laws are way older than that.

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.

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

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.

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.

Similar in Poland, for those in US this is somewhat akin to being seasonal in a camp ground.

> you'll surely lose your allotment

That seems a bit extreme

Why? The license to use the allotment doesn't include living permanently on it. It's not a land you own.

I was confused, the language "your allotment" implies property rights.

Maybe "you'll lose access to the allotment" would be more clear.

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)"

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