that looks super cozy though (until you have insects, spiders and bugs in there with you)
FRIENDS!
Bitey, bitey frens 👁️🫦👁️
Probably terrible for your lungs too with all the dirt and dust
Only $2500 in mortgage? There’s plenty of room for everyone.
What? Automated food supply?
BUY! BUY! BUY!
That’s why you get snakes. They keep the bugs away
With egg prices the way they are, we won’t even be able to afford second breakfast. 😮💨
Still need to buy the land your hovel is on though
Not if I’m squatting on public land
I’m sure they’ll plan some forest fires to get rid of the undesirables from time to time.
Go to the UK and squat for five years in one place -> stonks
In the UK this option is still illegal as you need permission from the council to live on your own land. I guess it’s sorta similar to zones in the US? You can only stay on your land for 28 days of the year otherwise. You could probably manage a while before you get found but they can demolish anything you build there and seize the property.
Or buy 13 separate plots of land and move your hovel every other fortnight.
- Buy one piece of land
- Split land into 13 different parcels
- Profit
I have wondered about that kind of thing. But 13 plots of land is going to cost you a huge amount, at that point you can buy a house.
In the US, we do having the concept of “residential” zoning. Though I’m thinking that applies more to the structures being built there. I’m thinking building this kind of thing and living in it might not actually be illegal? Depending on what you are doing with your waste (like piss and shit) they might get you for some kind of health code violation. But barring that I think you might be able to get away with this. (But who would want to?) Maybe someone who knows better than me can weigh in.
Local ordinances and HOA CC&Rs can make it illegal to live on your own land unless you meet certain requirements, like having a specific type of permanent building (eg. no manufactured homes).
Oh for sure HOAs and CC&Rs. But assuming those aren’t in place, I’m still thinking this might be ok. And I suppose that’s a civil matter anyway, no cop would enforce that. And even if there was something on the books, I don’t think a cop would enforce that unless you were doing something else to piss them off or someone else. Like cooking meth for example.
Local ordinances can also make things like camping on private property illegal. That would be at the city level, but really an HOA is just another form of local government so I’d argue that counts too.
Isn’t the HOA civil though? Like they could assess a bunch of fine and send them to you, but they couldn’t enforce some kind of removal from your land as some kind of criminal offense the police would enforce?
I’m not a lawyer, but I know they can put enough leins on a property to take possession of it. I’m pretty sure police will also forcefully remove someone who’s violating civil trespassing laws, but again, not a lawyer.
Building it here should be fine because of how small it is, would almost certainly be seen as a temporary structure and classed as similar to a garden shed. The problem is you cannot legally live in something like that.
Health code isn’t likely to be an issue in the UK as I don’t think we have anything overly strict that would matter. Environmental health exists but that is more of a concern if you are leaving a pile of waste that is attracting rats to the extent its causing a problem to other people. Been to events that use a shit pit before. Some you shit straight into the pit and others collect it into a septic tank and dump that into a pit later while marking a fence post near the pit to avoid digging in the same location next year. Does make me wonder how long it takes to rot down, 100-200 peoples shit from a whole weekend dumped into a pit and buried.
Then again maybe it isn’t allowed and we were just doing it anyway.
I still kind of think in most places in the US, this might not be illegal. (Someone else brought up HOAs, but that’s kind of a different story.) But now I’m curious and hoping someone who knows better can weigh in.
Definitely illegal in the parts of Wisconsin I’m from. Zoning codes generally include a list of permitted uses for each zone, a list of conditional uses that need approval from the local zoning board or officer, and everything else is not allowed. If this structure were classified as a permanent structure, it would not meet building codes anywhere. If not a permanent structure, staying in it would be considered camping, which is not a permitted or conditional use in the zones of the county where I live. (Or maybe it is somehow; I just glanced over the ordinance.) I do have a bit of land in a county that does allow camping in certain zones, but for a maximum of 10 nights per year.
It seems to me that there’s this pervasive sense that the landscape and lifestyles (cars, single-family houses, lawns, etc.) in the United States are what they are because that’s what its citizens want for themselves. The reality is that just about anything else is illegal. Remember, the United States is the country that invented loitering (a.k.a. existing in public without a specific objective) as an offense in order to force (mostly Black) people into working degrading jobs. This is actually the kind of dwelling that Cornish miners built when they came to Wisconsin to mine galena. They got the nickname of “badgers” for it, and that’s why we’re the Badger State (and not due to the animal). So it’s not like this is a new idea that nobody has thought of before, we just can’t do it anymore.
In the USA this is illegal too but it is mostly a health thing, eg you can’t live somewhere with no place to shit because you’ll end up shitting in the river. Not that “health and safety” isn’t constantly abused to brutalize the indigent, but it does also kind of make sense to not let people live long term where they can’t shit, knowing what we know now about outhouses and groundwater.
That said, local governments in rural areas can barely keep fire departments and schools open. Nobody is checking on your vacant land unless someone complains, and they’d have to drive past fifty other shanties to get to yours.
Isn’t contaminating groundwater only an issue of you are pooping near a river, stream or well though? At a reasonable distance it takes so long for anything to move through that it’s not an issue and will just rot down instead.
Basically, it’s complicated. It depends on your soil/rock type, the water table, and the amount of poop. You want outhouses to be at least six feet deep for parasite lifecycle reasons, but at that depth you could be shitting directly into the water table and if the water is moving through cracks in the rock it could go quite far. Pooping in the top few inches of organic soil is much better for groundwater, but worse for surface water and then also hookworm can spread. And with enough people any primitive system totally breaks down.
Also, there are a lot of uneducated people. The people who owned my parent’s property before them built their outhouse directly over the stream because “water make shit go away”, I guess. In countries without sanitation people shit directly into the river or ocean for the same reason.
After a bunch of water quality data came out in the late 2000s, states and counties tightened up requirements but now to build anything you need to spend at least 10-15k USD on an “advanced” septic system which is completely out of reach for many people. It also requires electricity which could be another 10k. So you either subsidize it or people shit in the creek again.
@[email protected] mentioned composting. Laws are way behind on this. I looked into this before building septic and essentially no states around allowed it for permanent dwellings. I think Alaska and West Texas were the only regions where they still didn’t care. If you truly couldn’t afford it your best bet would be to do composting for your own health and just be illegal because you probably won’t get caught. But that means no mailbox, no address, hiding your camper, essentially boondocking on your own land out of sight. One angry neighbor and its over.
The Humanure Handbook by Joe Jenkins is a useful guide for a low-tech, sanitary, low-odor composting toilet option that is safe if correctly maintained.
What about a caravan?
And then keep paying rent to the govt in the form of property taxes every year. Owning land isn’t really a thing anymore.
Taxes have been a thing since Gilgamesh.
Yes, but taxes on land you live on has not always been a thing.
According to Wikipedia, the earliest property tax records are from 6,000 BCE.
Not necessarily. Just have to be far enough away from everything that people don’t care.
That sounds idyllic
Natural area, large garden, nah I’ll never be able to afford that!
Afford? You mean steal?
They cannot take back that which I can defend.
Sorry, someone already “owns” that land. Your home is prison now.
You forgot property tax.
Get outta mah swamp!
In the morning, I’m making waffles!
Would you still love me if I was a mole?
It’s like Minecraft in real life
People will eventually evolve into Hobbits due to less need for bigger places to live which are unaffordable.
Looks like a real life hobbit hole.
Would suck if it starts raining. Looks nice though, I like the aesthetics, even though I don’t believe in the execution.
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