Today’s big topic: 38 allotment owners reported to the police in controversial garden association
240 square meters must be stripped from this nationally known allotment house before it becomes legal. But the owner refuses, and has now been reported to the police as one of 38 allotment owners in Lilletoften.
What’s happening?
The Lilletoften allotment association in Odense is breaking almost every record when it comes to illegally oversized allotment gardens. The largest has been measured at 369 square meters, compared with the maximum permitted 60 square meters. But the nationally known association can likely boast several more records:
No fewer than 79 of the association’s 223 allotments are registered as their owners’ official home addresses during the winter half of the year. And that is despite the fact that the allotment gardens are not allowed to be occupied at all during the winter months. And as if that were not enough, the Municipality of Odense has now reported a full 38 allotment owners in Lilletoften to the police. The same attitude is found in several other allotment associations in Odense.
According to the municipality’s new tally, 737 of the roughly 3,700 local allotments are registered as their owners’ official home addresses during the prohibited winter months.
Why it matters!
And that is not acceptable, says Odense’s councilor responsible for the area, alderman for urban development and culture Lars Christian Lilleholt, politician from the Danish party Venstre (V).
»We have to remember that when people live in an allotment all year, they are cheating the community. They do not pay property taxes, and they undermine the entire idea behind allotment gardens, where an allotment is meant to be a green summer oasis«.
On the basis of the massive media coverage, most recently the TV 2 documentary ’The Lawless Allotment Gardens,’ which aired last night, Odense will bring together the municipalities trying to stop the lawlessness.
»That is why, together with Odense Mayor Peter Rahbæk Juel, from The Social Democratic Party (S), I have now invited the other municipalities from the TV 2 documentary to a joint meeting in Odense so that we can make a joint approach to the relevant ministers«, says Lars Christian Lilleholt. He is calling for changes to the law that would make it easier to stop illegal year-round residency and remove criminals from the allotment gardens.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
– Many more parents of young children in Copenhagen to be able to choose part-time daycare at a reduced price
Going forward, many more parents of young children in Copenhagen will be able to choose part-time daycare in childcare centers at a reduced price. This appears in a memo from the ongoing budget negotiations at City Hall that Politiken has seen.
According to the memo, starting next year, 25 percent of childcare centers must offer so-called modular spots with 30 hours of care a week at a price 15–20 percent lower than a regular full-time spot. Today, it is possible for parents on parental leave to get a part-time spot, but only in connection with parental leave. Going forward, it must be possible for everyone without restriction, which according to the memo will cost the municipality 4.2 million kroner a year.
– Slowing sales push more Copenhagen apartments onto the market
The pace of Copenhagen’s housing market has slowed markedly in recent weeks, with prices stagnating and the supply of owner-occupied apartments increasing.At the beginning of September, 1,955 owner-occupied apartments were listed for sale in the Municipality of Copenhagen. That is according to figures from Boligsiden released Thursday morning. That is an increase of 11.7 percent in the past month alone.
»We have not previously seen such a large increase in supply at this time of year in Copenhagen, and it is happening as a consequence of the fact that transactions are no longer moving quite as quickly as before«, says Birgit Daetz, a housing economist at Boligsiden, according to the news agency Ritzau.
– Copenhagen’s lost leprosy cemetery found
Archaeologists in Frederiksberg have now uncovered 20 skeletons on a construction site on Gammel Kongevej in what appears to be Copenhagen’s long-lost medieval leprosy cemetery. The graves are the first physical traces of the leprosy hospital Sankt Jørgens Gård, and several skeletons already show signs of the disease.
The cemetery is believed to date back to the 13th century and contains children, teenagers, and adults buried in multiple layers over several hundred years. Researchers say the find could offer rare insight into how leprosy spread and affected people in medieval Copenhagen.
Talk of town: Researchers use VR headsets in the fight against eating disorders
Through the virtual-reality trial, Ginnie Brøchner confronted both the inner voice that fueled her eating disorder and the guy she had come to associate with the illness.
What if the voice in your head telling you that you’re too fat could actually get a face and you could confront it?
That’s what happened to Ginnie Brøchner, who lost 19 kilos in just four months while going through a turbulent breakup and becoming intensely fixated on a man she was seeing. »Everything depended on whether he’d texted or not. I craved his attention. So I completely forgot to eat«, Ginnie Brøchner says.
Ginnie Brøchner developed a serious eating disorder without realizing it herself. She eventually signed up for a University of Copenhagen study using virtual reality to treat bulimia and anorexia. In the treatment, patients meet a digital avatar representing the inner voice that tells them to eat less, lose weight and that they are »disgusting« — and learn to talk back to it.
And it worked. After seven one-hour sessions, the eating disorder took up less space in participants’ lives and the voice became less dominant. For Ginnie Brøchner, the avatar gradually came to resemble the man she had been obsessed with. »He had become a symbol of my eating disorder, and my eating disorder had turned into him«. When she later ran into him in real life, she finally had the courage to shut him down completely.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.