okasen

If your freshly born newborn doesn’t poop because she’s constipated, well they work surprisingly like toothpaste tubes if you hold their knees to their chest.

I’m sorry for the image. I’ve earned my “grit your teeth and do what you gotta” merit badge at just a week and a half postpartum, so I’m… happy?

I would love a general/weekly discussion post! Currently 8 months pregnant with my first, so I’ll take any chance to connect with other parents once she is here.

Content of my letter, identifiers redacted:

Objections to the Secondary Let licencing of [Next door property] To whom it may concern at [my] Council, My name is [Okasen], and I am writing to object to [Next door property] being permitted to operate as a Secondary/Short Term Let. As the owner and resident of [my property], I have great concerns about allowing this home to be used as a business, instead of as a home for a long-term resident.

Some of my discomfort stems from personal concerns; My partner and I are expecting our first child, and are worried about her growing up in immediate proximity to a revolving door of different residents (for reasons listed below). Community is important for raising children, and community safety moreso. I feel it is reasonable to want neighbours I can get to know over time. Quite frankly, if I had known that the home attached to my own [home] was going to become a neighbourhood-eroding business, I would not have purchased [home]!

Beyond personal concerns: The housing markets in the UK, particularly in tourist hotspots like [my city], are already struggling to keep up with the demand for homes for long-term residents who desire to live and work within [my city]. I strongly feel that we should not be pushing long-term residents out of the city in favour of private businesses.

My specific concerns and reasonings are as follows:

Anti-social behaviour and noise disturbances associated with Short Term Lets [Next door property] has been running as a Short Term Let for some time now, with visitors frequently coming and going. While some of these visitors are well-mannered, others tend towards more anti-social and noisy behaviours such as: Leaving dogs inside the property alone for hours at a time, which cause noise disturbances with non-stop barking and crying. Loud behaviour and activities, sometimes late into the night– understandable as many of these visitors are on holiday, but becomes a nuisance in a semi-detached home.

Degradation of Neighbourhood Spirit and Community

The pedestrian subway entrance to [my] Street is decorated with a photo collage celebrating the community that inhabits the street. A community is made and maintained by long-term inhabitants. When more and more homes are repurposed as short-term lets, we hinder the ability of long-term residents to move in and maintain the community spirit. A street like [my] Street, which proudly celebrates its community history, needs to have that community-based history and future protected.

In the time where this property has operated as a Short Term Let prior to being licenced, it has been incredibly difficult to communicate with the owner of the property about issues related to the building. As [next door property] is attached to [my property], it is imperative that we can communicate about problems relating to the shared building. Unfortunately, with a revolving door of residents coming and going, even notes left through the post box go unnoticed or are not responded to.

Oversaturation of short term lets operating on [my] Street: On just Booking.com, it is possible to see 7 properties up for short term letting, along with another 2 currently visible on airbnb. A street cannot dedicate 9 homes to short term lets if it wishes to remain a community. I feel these concerns that I have laid out clearly show how a short term let is not an appropriate use of [next door property]. My name and address can be found below for this objection:

[No they can’t, not anymore lol]

I also want to make it clear that I don't mind the current owner making the next door property a long term let. I rented for a long time and am only not-renting now due to resounding luck in career aptitude. And realistically, if the owner was to sell the property, it's most likely gonna be another landlord buying it because gestures at societal failures.

Reading your updates on this project is always the highlight of whatever day’s scrolling it falls on.

Though I have now unlocked a new fear of being abruptly asked if someone can come over for coffee.

Beautiful! And I bet it’ll be even more beautiful in bloom!

Do you harvest from this patch and eat them? I’ve never had prickly pear, but everyone I know who has raves about it. Therefor, I am jealous 😄

I would just like to both validate and challenge your view of the UK. I lived in Torquay (Devon, so the southwest) for a good long while, albeit during the height of lockdowns, and community felt nonexistant. There were some punk-type-folks attempting to get stuff started right when I moved away, but only just then iirc.

I moved to Inverness (Scottish Highlands) and it’s night and day. There’s a queer community doing hella shit, there’s a tool library popping off, lots of good local initiatives are being organised and taking off.

My kneejerk response is to say that Inverness beats the hell outta Torquay. But the thing is, about 4-5 years ago NONE OF THE STUFF I mentioned was going on. The queer meetup was organised by one dude who moved up from London and was gobsmacked that there wasn’t an active community. Now it’s consistently a huge, weekly event. There are even offshoots of quieter meetups that had to be created because the main one is So Successful. But all the local queers will tell you that before this started, they thought they were all alone up here.

And the tool library is only about a year old, but keeping on well.

So on one hand, yeah, I think the UK has a very… independent culture. But once someone identifies a need in a community and fills that need, people tend to show up and appreciate it.

Also, i reckon this is a good time to be an organiser. People are tired of being alone during a pandemic, people are tired of seeing what other communities do via the internet and want their communities to do the same.

Tl;dr be the change! There’s an appetite for it.

What an awesome thing. Reminds me of the Trans Couch Network on tumblr back in the day, I always wondered if there was something else to take its place.

(I have the same concerns as I did then of the potential for abuse, like someone else said, but I don’t have any actionable advice/etc yet. But queer housing is a major Thing to me so I might do some research/thinking on the subject of abuse mitigation, if that’s welcome)

I can see the concern, as a trans and nonbinary person, about the phrasing of the headline. Casual readers will totally think the actual guidance says “if you fuck up a person’s pronouns, you go to jail” or whatever.

But not the guidance itself. We need more protections against intentional, malicious misgendering as verbal harassment. Which is usually less “she said— oops, they said—“ and more stuff like “(female coworker) put has pronouns in her signature? I thought she was a REAL WOMAN”

(The second being a real example from a friends work place. Funny thing is, friend is stealth trans and the coworker being misgendered is cis, but i digress)

But yeah all that aside I think the real context is misgendering when someone needs the bathroom, e.g. “you’re in the wrong bathroom” type comments. Where we really need stronger protections.

I like option 2, I thought I would prefer Option 1 before I saw 2 but it’s executed really well in 2! Also, that illustration is gorgeous, and thank you for sharing the illustrator’s details. I want my next novel to be solarpunk, and I am definitely in the market for a new cover artist…

I need to add this and Murder in the Tool Library to my storygraph. And preorder/buy a copy of both tbh.

This looks like the kind of feeder a small bird would build for itself, and I mean that in the best way. I love it

As always, thank you for these updates! I really enjoy reading them and they inspire the fuck out of me.

Part of the issue could be in overlap of identities. I could have identified myself as transmasc on the poll, but I chose nonbinary instead. Both are true most days, anyways.