Two families who settled in the rural locality of Nort sur Erdre, Loire Atlantique, have been ordered to leave their accommodation. The land owner, Jean Marc, is summoned to court on July 4th because he refused to dismantle these lightweight and removable houses.

Today we are asking people to support their way of living within lightweight and removable dwellings. We are also asking the mayor to regularise the yurts so that these families may continue to live the way they have chosen to. Despite this personal and local context, we are aiming for a better recognition of lightweight dwellings in France. As a matter of fact, this type of housing seems to be one of the many answers to the environmental and social emergency. 

Join the fight to support :

๏ Lightweight dwellings which allow people with low income to live in descent houses.

๏ People who wish to live according to their ethical values which in this case implies respecting the natural habitat surrounding them by minimizing land take.

๏ All those who desire not to have to assume a mortgage in order to access individual, expensive and land taking houses.

 

Key dates in the history of La Belletières’ yurts :

• May 2015 : Jean-Marc is the owner of a farm house next to a large piece of land with planning permission for development. Anne is a musician who also teaches music in the nearby schools. She is looking for a pleasant place in the country to settle down despite her low income and she brought to Jean-Marc’s attention housing issues in the rural surroundings of Nantes.

• June 2015 : Jean-Marc pitches a yurts which is connected to the power grid and to the onsite wastewater treatment system. Living together turned out to be very fulfilling for Jean-Marc and Anne. They helped each other out whenever possible, they collected fire wood and shared a vegetable patch together. Happy times. 

• 2018 : Following this positive experience, Jean-Marc offers Cecile and Louis to join the adventure. They had been unsuccessfully looking for a place to live in this location which was near their working places.

• July 2018 : Cecile and Louis had barely moved in after building a second yurt with Jean-Marc’s help, when they received a formal notice from the Mayor asking them to stop any work in progress.

• October 2018 : Jean-Marc, Anne, Cecile and Louis are summoned to the town hall where they were put on notice for not having asked for planning permission / a building permit. The Mayor’s office informally implies no planning permit would have been granted anyway. They have one year to dismantle everything !

• November 2028 : Cecile and Louis gave birth to their son, Mani. 

• January 2019 : a police officer comes to take pictures of the 2nd yurt. We only find out later that these were added to fill in an official complaint to the prosecutor.

• June 2021 : Cecile and Louis gave birth to their second child, a girl named Leo.

• December 2022 : After Anne moved out, Louis and Jean-Marc renovated her yurt. Soon after, the inhabitants of La Belletière welcomed Claire-Helene and Guillaume. The idea is still to offer quality housing in a rural setting at a lower cost. Despite 3 years of thorough research, their low income could not allow them to find a decent place to move out of the city.

• January 19th, 2022 : Jean-Marc is summoned to Nantes magistrate’s court on June 8th and July 4th because he built 2 yurts without a building permit. When Anne decides to leave, Claire-Helene and Guillaume come to settle down in this vacant accomodation fully aware of the on going legal issues.

 

Since March 2014, the ALUR ACT allows Mayors to integrate lightweight dwellings into their towns and cities’ development and planning schemes. Very few of them do so however. Make that change ! And don’t forget to share this petition massively.

Instagram : Les 104 (@sans.quatre)