A tiny victory for a mean neighbour
Join me in imagining the type of person who dobbed in Bethan Collings for living in an unconsented tiny home. We’ll never know who they are, because that’s how these people operate, but I reckon I’ve got this little scenario down pat.
There they are on Tuesday, sitting down to a nice cold cup of spite, when a little bit of news briefly brightens their miserable life. They read the story then watch the video. They listen to Collings say she’s neither sleeping nor eating, they see her cover her face and weep.
“Oh well,” they say to themselves, safe in their gated community, “the rules are the rules”.
While the news is always awash with stories of nasty, petty behaviour – I’m looking at you, minister – whoever’s triggered this one is a giant among mean.
Not content with the wretched state of the wider world, this person is keeping it local by narking on their neighbour for living in a tiny home without a resource consent.
This home, by the way, isn’t squalid, hazardous nor flying anything offensive. It’s attractive, off-grid and positioned on rented land on a lifestyle block. It also measures only 10m by 3m so unlikely hosts large noisy parties.
But unfortunately it is next door to a gated community, which is where Collings understands the complaint has come from.
“Some of the neighbours are lovely, but there’s also huge snobbery and Karenism, and I’m thought to be lowering the tone of the neighbourhood.”
While “lowering the tone” is occasionally used for grizzling about long lawns and uncollected wheelie bins, it’s almost always adopted by folks bemoaning any property not mirroring theirs.
They tend to think the term is a polite alternative to saying “ew, poor people”, hence it’s always found in public submissions opposing social housing.
The other phrases they like to wheel out are “not keeping in character” or “negative impact on resale value”, but really the meaning is the same.
Anyway, along came a council inspector to Collings’ property, then an abatement notice to “disestablish” it.
Collings, for her sins, says she tried to buy a regular property but the banks would’t lend to an unpartnered woman.
She works two jobs and has made a righteous stuff-up by thinking that because her tiny house can be shifted and is off-grid it falls within the Auckland Council’s rules.
Instead, its been labelled a minor dwelling in need of resource consent, something estimated to cost at least $40k.
And because it’s obviously not feasible to spend such a sum for consent on land she doesn’t own, Collings has less than a month to get out. The house she “put her heart and soul” into will be sold.
The process of consenting a New Zealand tiny house is murky at best and straight up impossible at worst. Rules differ between district councils, as do interpretations of what defines a permanent structure.
Tiny House Association chair Rebecca McLean says this means misunderstandings about compliance are rife and a national solution set in law is needed.
It is, but this particular example isn’t about that.
This is about a person peering over the battlements surrounding their homes and choosing to destroy someone else’s. They’ve done so during a housing crisis and for no apparent reason at all.
And while they’ll undoubtedly justify their actions by citing “the rules”, this type of person never really needs a reason for doing this type of thing.
They do it because they’re mean and they do it because they can.
A nasty, petty person nice and safe in their gated community. Imagine that.