OverlayFS for User writing changes to root-owned directory

I am trying to give all Users on a system their own writable copy of a root-owned directory, and OverlayFS sounds like the tool for the job, but I am finding it not as straightforward as it sounded at first. First, the setup: > mkdir upper work merged merged-user > sudo mkdir -p lower/path/to > sudo touch lower/path/to/file > ls -l drwx------ 2 user group 4096 Aug 10 00:00 merged drwx------ 2 user group 4096 Aug 10 00:00 merged-user drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 10 00:00 lower drwx------ 2 user group 4096 Aug 10 00:00 upper drwx------ 2 user group 4096 Aug 10 00:00 work The goal at the end is to allow User user to write to any directory or path in the merged or merged-user mount point. First attempt, with mount: > sudo mount -t overlay overlay -o "lowerdir=$PWD/lower,upperdir=$PWD/upper,workdir=$PWD/work" merged > ls -l merged/path/to total 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 Aug 10 00:00 file > echo me > merged/path/to/file sh: merged/path/to/file: Permission denied I get it; at the kernel level, OverlayFS isn't touching the permissions, so the merged directory doesn't have the permissions setup I would like. Enter fuse-overlayfs : fuse-overlayfs -o "lowerdir=lower,upperdir=upper,workdir=work,squash_to_uid=$(id -u)" merged-user > ls -la merged-user/ total 8 drwx------ 3 user group 4096 Aug 10 00:00 . drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 10 00:00 path > echo me > merged-user/path/to/file sh: merged-user/path/to/file: Permission denied Still permission denied, even with the squash_to_uid option. Am I missing some other parameter that would enabled merged or merged-user to appear as the User's own directories?