Natural Humanists are against any unnecessary and selfish misuse of the planet’s land, which they believe belongs equally to all species of wildlife. Consequently, they’re opposed to all ‘second homes’, ‘holiday homes’, ‘mobile homes’, timeshares and caravans, which all prevent the land on which they stand, from becoming permanent biodiverse wilderness, effectively ‘stealing’ it from the animals, plants and other living things, which had an equal right and ability to share this land, for most of our planet’s history.
Holiday Accommodation
Natural Humanists are also against hotels, which misuse land in a similar way, believing that the only two morally-acceptable types of temporary or ‘holiday’ accommodation are hardwearing, ideally communally owned and maintained portable tents, sited temporarily and responsibly on wild land, not on nature-depleted campsites, which can be folded-up and transported by bike or public transport, take up no land when they’re not in use, and can be fully recycled at the end of their life, and‘home-swaps’, where somebody swaps their own home temporarily with somebody else’s home for a short amount of time, for example during a holiday, thereby taking up no additional potentially wild, biodiverse land at all.
They acknowledge that ‘house swaps’ are often better achieved by using a house-swap agency, which doesn’t require direct swaps, as it’s unlikely that both households that want to swap at any particular time will want to stay in each other’s property, or even in that region or country.
House-swap agencies effectively allow every household in the country, or the world, to ‘donate’ their property for a particular period of time, between specific dates, and then to use any other ‘donated’ property during that same period, with possible restrictions being placed on the ‘value’ of properties that a household is allowed to swap with. For example, the owners, or renters, of a low-cost bedsit may not be able to swap this for a large manor house, or they may be asked to pay an ‘upgrade fee’ if they do, or they may be required to share it with one or more other home-swappers.
Given that some areas will always have a very high demand for holiday accommodation, or weekday accommodation for workers, Natural Humanists believe that highly land-efficient and environmentally-responsible high-rise hotels, or blocks of small apartments, are acceptable in these locations, but only if users ‘swap’ use of one of these for their own home while they’re staying there and if, also, any member of the public without a home is allowed to temporarily live in these hotel rooms or small apartments, during periods of low demand, for a reasonable residential rent, for example, in a holiday resort only busy during the summer.
They also believe that a system should exist, managed by Artificial Intelligence, which allows people to live full-time in such ‘donated’ house swap properties, including those in less popular areas which wouldn’t normally be as easy to swap, if they’re happy to move frequently whenever the ‘house swap’ period for each property comes to an end, for example every week or fortnight. This may include people who would otherwise be homeless and people who prefer a transient lifestyle.
Caravans, Mobile Homes and ‘Park Homes’
In the USA alone, 11 millionhouseholds have a ‘Recreational Vehicle’ (or RV)[i] and there are around 1.14 millionregistered caravans, motor homes and mobile homes in the UK[ii], but caravans and mobile homes only last around 10 to 20 years, making them a huge waste of the world’s resources.
They also take up land, either at their permanent site or, in the case of caravans, at both the home or parking site where they’re stored when not in use, and at all the caravan sites around the world that their existence is directly responsible for creating a demand for.
Natural Humanists acknowledge that all caravans and temporary homes cause an unacceptable amount of pollution and harmful CO2 when they’re transported, adding to the owner’s or user’s carbon-footprint, polluting the environment, and contributing to disastrous global warming.
All caravans and temporary buildings are usually hugely wasteful of the materials and natural-resources needed for their construction, given their short lifespan, and they also need to be disposed of at the end of their short useable life, again causing pollution and wasting land that’s needed for landfill waste disposal sites, which could otherwise become wild and biodiverse.
Caravans are relatively poorly insulated, so need highly polluting heating or cooling to make them comfortable and habitable. Also, just like all single-storey buildings, they’re an unacceptably wasteful use of the Earth’s limited land, with multi-storey, space-efficient, long-lasting, extremely highly insulated permanent buildings, constructed with ‘green’ materials, always being a far more responsible alternative.
Second Homes and Empty Properties
Despite the large number of people in the world who are homeless, or in overcrowded properties, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, there are millions of empty properties worldwide[iii], including over half a million empty properties in the UK alone, most of which have been empty for over six months[iv].
In addition to these empty properties, 772,000 households in the UK have at least one ‘second home’ [v], whereas in the USA, there were a massive 7.5 million second homes in 2018 and, in Spain, 28% of households are believed to own at least one second home[vi]. Natural Humanists believe that both empty properties and second homes, immorally waste the potentially biodiverse land on which they’re built, while, at the same time, significantly reducing the availability of permanent homes for other people, and also, due to the laws of supply and demand, making those properties that are available, far less affordable to buy, or to rent.
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References
[i] housegrail.com (Pete). “12 RV Sales and Industry Statistics in the UK – 2025 Update”. Updated 4 Apr 2025. housegrail.com. 2 June 2025. https://housegrail.com/rv-sales-and-industry-statistics-uk/
[ii] housegrail.com (Pete). “12 RV Sales and Industry Statistics in the UK – 2025 Update”. Updated 4 Apr 2025. housegrail.com. 2 June 2025. https://housegrail.com/rv-sales-and-industry-statistics-uk/
[iii] Williams, Mark. “A property problem: there are millions of empty homes”. 21 October 2024. Modus. 3 June 2025. https://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/modus/built-environment/homes-and-communities/property-problem-millions-empty-homes.html
[iv] Empty Homes Network. “Council Taxbase Statistics 2024: Release empty homes statistics increasing
Latest news”. December 4 2024. Empty Homes Network. 29 May 2025. https://ehnetwork.org.uk/read/council-taxbase-statistics-2024-release-shows-rise-in-number-of-empty-homes
[v] Kulakiewicz, A., Grimwood, Gabrielle Garton and Cromarty, Hannah. “Research Briefing CDP-2022-0001”. 4 January 2022. parliament.uk. 27 May 2025. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2022-0001/
[vi] Clark, Tom. “20+ Surprising Second Home Ownership Statistics You Need to Know”. May 12 2025 Habitatista. 3 June 2025. https://www.habitatista.com/545/second-home-ownership-statistics/