Our Town
Sick of single-family solitude? Craving an antidote to urban isolation? The new era of tribal living has arrived.
by E.B. Boyd
Dave Henson has a garden he can’t afford, a restaurant-grade kitchen he can’t afford and a hot tub he can’t afford. He’s also managed to find a way to reduce the number of hours he has to be an on-duty parent — without having to pay babysitters.
That’s because Henson lives at the Sowing Circle in Occidental, CA, one of hundreds of intentional communities in the United States where singles and families are surrendering part of their much-vaunted freedom in order to live with others. In turn, they agree to share certain community responsibilities — and reap the benefits of not having to go it alone.
Twenty-five people live at the Sowing Circle, whose founders were primarily motivated by a desire to live sustainably. Residents have jobs outside the community. Their bank accounts are their own. And they own their own residences on the Sowing Circle’s property. But residents pool resources, time and energy to invest in communal facilities and responsibilities. One of the side benefits, Henson said, is that their lives are richer, in ways both material and intangible, than each would be able to afford on their own.
“There are six children from five families here. They’re growing up like siblings, and we all get to have the experience of raising six kids without having to be the primary caregiver all the time,” Henson said.
The Commune Grows Up
Intentional communities have come a long way over the last forty years. Once considered the provenance of hippies seeking to get back to the land, renounce worldly goods and perhaps submit to a guru, intentional communities today come in flavors as varied as their many residents’ tastes and needs.
“There is less focus on a specific spiritual tradition, or a specific ideology or a specific person,” said Henson, who teaches courses at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center on setting up and managing intentional communities. “Now it’s much more about mainstream people seeking to pool resources and share in the many benefits that a shared living setup can offer.”
Cost-savings draws some people into communities. In an era when median home prices in many neighborhoods around the country can easily top half a million dollars, some first-time home buyers turn to intentional communities as a way of getting into the housing market when no other avenue is available.
The Parker Street Co-op in Berkeley was started in 1987 as a limited equity housing cooperative. The two buildings south of the University of California campus house 24 mostly one-bedroom units. Each building’s fourth floor gives way to a large common space and deck overlooking the Bay, while gardens below overflow with edible plants and fruits. Residents lead their own lives but are expected to participate in the community. Relative to area housing costs, the co-op is a steal: Residents fork over $16,000 to buy into a unit and pay $420 a month in operating fees.
“It’s like owning my own apartment and having full access to all facilities and grounds, along with cooperating with other people and sharing those facilities,” said Ken Norwood, who has lived at Parker Street since 1988.
Home Sweet Communal Home
The Fellowship for Intentional Community started publishing a community directory in 1992. The first edition had 350 listings. Today, the FIC’s online directory has 1,730 entries, with about 20 added each month.
One of the fastest-growing types of communities is called “cohousing.” Walk around a typical cohousing community, like Winslow Cohousing on Bainbridge Island, WA, or Pleasant Hill Cohousing near Walnut Creek, CA, and they might not immediately look much different than any other suburban development or neighborhood that has single-family homes scattered among greenery. But look closer, and you’ll notice subtle design differences that break down walls between neighbors and encourage residents to spend time with each other.
Many have common houses where residents can hang out or share meals. Paths often lead from home to home. Back fences are often ripped out in favor of open spaces. And playground-grade play structures take the place of single-family swing sets.
It Takes An Eco-Village
Concern for the environment in the 1990s drove the growth of another type of community: ecovillages. Today, global warming worries and the potential of peak oil are fueling renewed interest. Diana Leafe Christian, who serves on the membership committee of Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina, said inquiries from potential members have quadrupled in the last year.
“A lot of people are thinking, ‘I need to get environmentally sustainable — and fast — and I want to do it with other people,’” said Christian, who is also the author of two books on communities: Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities and Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community.
Opened four years ago, the Bloomingdale Arts Building in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago is legally just a set of condos, carved out of three old factory buildings. But in essence, it’s an artists’ colony, where painters live next to set designers, and filmmakers next to writers. Thirty-eight residents ranging from recent college graduates to older retirees own their own live-work studios, but they also have access to a larger workroom and a common area. When the facility was remodeled, all units were designed to open onto a communal courtyard, and paths to the laundry room, mailroom and parking lot were configured to allow neighbors to bump into each other.
Laura Wethered, a painter who lives at the Bloomingdale with her partner, who works in theater, said the configuration created a supportive community for artists. “Whether you’re a kid growing up or an artist starting a new project, you’ve got somebody with talent down the hall you can ask a question of,” she said.
Community living advocates say the increasing interest in their cooperative way of life is a natural repercussion of the move away from extended families and into more solitary and nuclear-family setups that took place in the last century.
“Our culture has been moving toward a more individualist and alienated way of living,” said Tony Sima, who maintains FIC’s Communities Directory and lives at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri. “There’s nothing to facilitate interacting with neighbors. A lot of people are finding that that is not meeting all their needs for human connection.”
Andrea Vecchione has lived in intentional communities for five of the last ten years. She lived at the Bus Stop Co-op in Berkeley before moving out to a community in rural Marin nestled among horse farms and redwood groves. Eight people live in her community. Each resident has their own structure on the property, and all have use of a giant, rambling common house. Each pays rent to cover expenses, decisions are made on a consensus basis, and all pour in some kind of sweat equity to help with the upkeep.
“I love the family environment,” Vecchione said. “I love the dynamic of living with so many people, the interactions, the challenges when they come up, and the extended family matrix… I think that’s how humans were designed to interact. We’re villagers and tribal people.”
San Francisco writer E.B. Boyd always thought she’d spend her golden years in a rambling house with old friends. After researching this story, she’s beginning to wonder: Why wait?
