Second home owner

[silversun]

Gorgeous weather here in Devon and yesterday morning the second home owners across the road turned up.
I've reported them to the police via email 101 but I'm still so angry that they have put our small hamlet of mainly over 60's at risk just because they fancied a change of scenery- they should be ashamed of themselves!
Please talk me down from going over there this morning😡😡

We live in a group of houses which are all holiday homes apart from ours and the one next door is a second home. The owners are here a lot - they live 1.5/2 hrs away. They're here at the moment and it wouldn't occur to me to report them. They spend almost all their time inside and venture out very occasionally for a walk on the deserted footpaths. Their interaction with anyone else is absolutely minimal (and was normally even before covid). In fact DH and I wonder why they come here if they don't go out but maybe the view is nicer...

I suspect if one of them was ill and needed treatment they would just go home to the city they live in where there are probably better equipped healthcare facilities and they will be registered with a GP.

I'm not a fan of holiday homes - they have a very detrimental affect on our community but I'm not going to go round shaking my first at people who barely leave the house.

Maybe they've already had the virus and are recovering at their country home, like Boris is.

The caravans could be travellers, or homeless people.

I think you e done the right thing reporting them, OP

I thought the rules were that second home owners were to stay at their primary home and not travel to their second home?! Hasn’t a Scottish MP just had to step down for doing just that?!
How the OP sounds bitter and jealous and petty is beyond me! There’s some nasty, rude people on this thread.

I have two homes.. And I on average spend 50% of my time in each.
My dp spends 75% time in our London flat.
Two of our dds are at uni.. In shared houses..
1dd lives in her own flat share in London
1dd lives 50% time in our London flat and 50% time with her bf.

We have all moved to our home in Cornwall for lockdown

I pay rates, taxes etc here in Cornwall on what many on this thread would say is our second home.. Certainly its not our daughters main home.
We have had this house for five years, we support local businesses.. During the difficult out of season times,.
We are currently using local farm shop and local pub home delivery services to try to help local economy.

I'd be upset if I got reported or told off by other residents.

@lakeswimmer People can deteriorate very quickly and there would be no time to travel to another hospital.

@Theredjellybean My DPs family have all had to move from the village the family have lived in for hundreds of years because second home owners from London have pushed house prices up beyond the reach of local people.

@alloutoffucks there are three people in the household who can drive and our nearest main hospital in an hour's drive away. I suppose they could suddenly all be so ill at the same time that not one of them was capable of driving 1.5/2 hrs to their own local hospital but it seems unlikely.

I'm not defending second homes, by the way, I live in an area with 80% holiday homes and it has a massive impact on the sustainability of rural communities but I am uncomfortable with generalisations about people's behaviour.

Just because someone is a second home owner doesn't make them a bad person - another of our 2nd home neighbours is ill in hospital with covid-19 and we sent a get well card because they're lovely and we're concerned about them.

Well done reporting them op. I hope the police are able to deter them from staying.

To all the second home owners on this thread thinking those judging them are bitter- not everyone wants what you have. I wouldn't want a second home if I could afford one, for a variety of practical and moral reasons. I certainly wouldn't defy public health advice and the wishes of rural people to avail myself of my spare house right now. And this 'oh poor city dwellers treated like we have the plague' bit is so disingenuous. You would hardly have travelled to the country if infection rates were comparable or higher there- you are deliberately moving from an area of higher infection to lower. This is callously selfish and myopic, and those criticising your profoundly shitty behaviour are justified.

You might not intend to go out once you're in your spare house (though I
am sceptical of that), but can you say with absolute certainty that you aren't already infected? That you won't get very sick while you're there? That you won't have some other illness requiring medical attention, or a car crash? In answering these questions, try to consider that you may not be quite as special as you believe yourself to be.

Health services in many rural areas are barely able to cope with the demands of the permanent population at the best of times. Piss off.

People should stay on their main home. That’s the area where they pay council tax and where healthcare is planned to cater for the resident population. If everyone goes to their second home they could overwhelm the smaller local health services.

A number of my friends are using their second homes on the IOW. They seem to have been there for a few weeks. I am surprised they are posting in FB to be honest. I can only imagine that they don't think they are doing anything wrong. To be fair they go there every weekend and all school holidays so they might not class themselves in the same pot... but really? The Island only has one hospital and it has an older population

I would report them in an instant.

Which one are you registered on the electoral roll on @Theredjellybean ?

The Chief Medical Officer of Scotland was sacked for doing exactly the same thing last week. She travelled to her second home two weekends running

Interestingly lots of people round here seem to have brought their motor homes and caravans on to their driveways when they wouldn't usually have them there. Suppose it's quite a clever way of having extra space with lots of people all at home or in case anyone gets sick.

I think you should stay wherever you are registered with your GP / electoral roll simples.

I also don't believe those in second homes will never go out. You are never going to buy a pint of milk or any fresh fruit or veg even if this goes on for weeks and weeks?

And if they brought food they are hardly contributing to local businesses are they?

I’m on the IOW and police put out a statement that they won’t be taking retrospective action over the second homers who travelled down over lockdown. Simply, we just don’t have enough police to do it. For me, the issue isn’t over second home ownership it is why they thought it was OK to travel and deliberately chose not to protect the NHS? Lockdown was brought in the flatten the curve - to stop us getting it all at once. It is incredibly selfish and we do feel let down by the authorities especially as we have a social conscience.

Sorry posted too soon! social conscience by sticking to the rules.

I know this will likely be a very controversial reply, but I am adding it as I think it might bring up a different side to the conversation that people haven’t thought of.

I am in the extremely vulnerable group and so my husband and I are self isolating (I haven’t been outside since February apart from when I had to go to A&E by ambulance both ways). We live in a very small flat with no outside space in a noisy polluted poorer part of central London. As you can probably imagine, this is becoming unpleasant.

We can’t do anything to change our situation during this crisis, but we have talked a lot about planning for a possible “next time”. Unfortunately I think this (or a similar crisis due to antibiotic resistance or chemical terrorism etc,) may happen again in the future and we would like to be in a more manageable situation if it does.

We can’t leave London permanently as my husband’s job can’t move and several times a year I need specialist medical treatment for rare conditions that is in London, but our quality of life here is really poor, not just during this crisis but generally (I am chronically ill and so often stuck spending a lot of time in our small flat).

We have been discussing that after all this is over we may try to buy a second home somewhere with a better quality of life. We have discussed this before (having a place with some sort of outside space that we could go to in the summer when our flat gets unbearably hot), but being trapped inside for months has really highlighted the drastic difference in quality of life between people like us in inner city flats and people in the countryside with gardens or easy access to public green spaces.

I totally understand people’s fears about other people crowding their local services etc. But it’s just unbearable for some of us in poor living conditions in cities at the moment.

To be honest, we probably won’t become the evil second home owners as I doubt we can make it affordable, but I sympathise with some of these people. (I say “some” because rich people with several perfectly nice homes in different locations is a different sort of case).

It would be fantastic if we could all live in idyllic countryside locations all the time, but these places are only quiet and idyllic because most of the rest of us live in crowded inner cities.

NotAnotherUserNumber your personal circumstances do sound difficult but if you were to buy a second home would you think your circumstances gave you the right to ignore lockdown?

I'd be interested to know why you think many of us wouldn't have considered that there are people in your situation. Do you think everyone in coastal and rural communities has pots of money, huge houses, acres of garden, robust good health and a total lack of empathy? There are people here who are in similar circumstances to you; living in cramped accommodation with no outside space and unable to leave their homes right now because of health issues. We have food banks too!

There also seems to be an assumption that if you live in a rural community you have no idea what urban living is like, many of us do, we've lived in cities and have sacrificed access to the conveniences and amenities that kind of environment offers in exchange for, what we consider to be, a better quality of life. I made that choice and am very happy with it despite the downsides.

I sympathise with your situation and there are no doubt many more people like you in your local area than there are in mine but lockdown is not idyllic for anyone.

Like I said, for me the issue here is not second home ownership but the flouting of restrictions and unnecessary travel. What I will say, though, is that there is a ridiculously high level of deprivation here and plenty of families cooped up with no outside space - doing exactly the same as you! It is not just an inner city problem. The majority are sticking to the rules and it’s very understandable that those people are pissed off with the rule breakers given those circumstances - especially as the woefully underfunded police force have openly admitted these “rules” won’t be enforced. It has caused a lot of bad feeling.

PrivacyOne Exactly, Cornwall is one of the poorest areas of the country.

It honestly wouldn’t bother me. What bothers me is the amount of curtain twitchers and reporting of others that’s going on. Scary.