Community Grapevine

The Third Annual North American Cohousing Conference, held September 19-21 at the University of Washington in Seattle, was a rousing success, with 180 participants from 51 cohousing groups from 16 states and four countries.

On Thursday the 18th, 60 cohousing activists gathered in the common house of Seattle's Puget Ridge Cohousing. In a consensus process (facilitated by Caroline Estes  of Alpha Farm in Oregon) participants formed a North American Cohousing organization, which, among other projects, will give cohousing communities more visibility nationally, and serve as a clearinghouse for inquiries about cohousing. Throughout the following days conference participants donated several thousand dollars to kick off the national organization.

One participant from Synergy Co housing in Florida remarked in the "Collaborating" workshop that she fondly thought of the FIC as "a wise parent of a successful cohousing child," according to Michael McIntyre  of Sunward Cohousing in Ann Arbor.

"The small group sessions I attended were fabulous," reports Rob Sandelin  of Northwest Intentional Communities Association. Many sessions and discussions continued through lunch and dinner, and small interest groups sprang up spontaneously throughout the weekend.

Joani Blank  of Doyle Street Cohousing in Emeryville, California, especially enjoyed "Urban Retrofits," in which participants revealed that retrofitting an existing building (Doyle Street, for example, is a former cement testing plant) is usually more expensive, not less, than constructing new buildings. The group also discussed how living in cohousing can make city living more enjoyable, with increased security and privacy, for example.

Speakers for plenary sessions on Saturday and Sunday mornings included Kathryn McCamant  and Chuck Durrett  of Doyle Street Cohousing (the architects who introduced cohousing to the US), Don Lindemann  of Sacramento Street Cohousing in Berkeley, California (and editor of Cohousing   magazine), Rob Sandelin  of Sharingwood Cohousing, Zev Paiss  of Nomad Cohousing (managing editor of Cohousing   magazine and founder of Rocky Mountain Cohousing Association), and Jim Leach  of Wonderland Hill Development Company. Plenary speakers reported on the current state of the cohousing movement (65 cohousing core groups with land, as compared with 16 two years ago); expectation of exponential growth for cohousing in the near future; how to make the cohousing development process easier for future groups; and "developer-initiated cohousing."

Sunday afternoon people took tours of several cohousing communities in Seattle and the surrounding area, including Winslow Cohousing, Puget Ridge Co housing, Sharingwood Cohousing, Vashon Island Cohousing, and Songaia Collective.

"Communal Frontiers," the annual Communal Studies Association Conference, was held at the Washington State Historical Society Museum in Tacoma, Washington, October 9-12, with scholars, communitarians, community museum curators, and others interested in communities. Joe Peterson   (Guest Editor of our Fall '96 Christian Communities issue) led a pre-conference tour of '70s-era Christian communities around the Yakima, Washington, area. Participants also toured Love Israel Ranch in Arlington, Vashon Island Cohousing, Winslow Cohousing on Bainbridge Island, the Hutterite Colony near Spokane, and the site of Home Colony, a turn-of-the-century socialist community on Puget Sound.

Participants also enjoyed the museum's special exhibit prepared by CSA conference coordinator Charles LeWarne   on Washington state communities: the historic communities Home Colony and Equality, and contemporary Winslow Cohousing, Love Israel Ranch, and the Hutterite Colony near Spokane.

Presenters focused on how communities provide political, social, and economic "frontiers," including scholarly analyses of communities as widely divergent as Elohim City in the Ozarks, a contemporary militant white separatist group, to the '70s commune Morningstar Ranch in California, where Lou Gottlieb  "deeded the land to God" and welcomed everyone.

Highlights of the conference included a benefit auction led by CSA president Harvey Baker  of Dunmire Hollow in Tennessee, and a salmon bake on the Puyallup Reservation, with Puyallup singers, dancers, and drummers.

At the Awards Banquet Sora Friedman   received an award for her paper on Jersey Homesteads, a historic New Deal community; Charles LeWarne received the Distinguished Scholar award for his work on Puget Sound communities; and the Distinguished Service award was presented to the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), publishers of this magazine. Caroline Estes   of Alpha Farm in Oregon accepted on behalf of the FIC.

Twin Oaks in rural Virginia (an egalitarian, income-sharing commune with 100 members on 460 acres) hosted their 30th Anniversary reunion party on June 13-15, with over 100 guests from all over the country. Festivities included performances at a Friday night coffeehouse, dancing, nature hikes, swimming, an art show, display of the community's 30th Anniversary Quilt, a Women's Tea, and a live theatrical performance of Walden Two (B.F. Skinner's novel about a behaviorist community which inspired the founding of Twin Oaks in 1967).

In late August Twin Oaks' 14th annual Women's Gathering drew approximately 200 participants, who celebrated women's creativity through dances, poetry, songs, and a variety of stage performances. The campfire, mudpit, and riverfield were popular gathering places, and the workshops offered a wonderful blend of political, spiritual, and cultural insights, according to Twin Oaker Valerie Renwick.

Over Labor Day weekend about 250 people from the East Coast and nationwide attended Twin Oaks' 5th Annual Communities Conference (in this decade, as they hosted them in the '70s and '80s as well). Sponsored by the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) and the Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC), conference workshops - "Our best ever," says Valerie - included Ecovillages, Permaculture, Community Networking on the Internet, and even Hacky Sack as a Model for Planetary Healing. Highlights included a benefit auction for the FIC which raised $1,200, a "fabulous desert party" in the community center, and a combination barbecue, talent show, and party at their neighboring community, Acorn.

In September Aprovecho Research Center in Cottage Grove, Oregon, completed a strawbale lodge to house additional interns. Aprovecho, which demonstrates and promotes fuel-efficient stoves and solar cookers worldwide, is also developing as a demonstrate site. They're now accepting applications for 10-week internships in Appropriate Technology, Sustainable Forestry, and Organic Gardening. 80574 Hazelton Rd., Cottage Grove, OR 97424; 541-942-8198; apro@efn.org; www.efn.org/~apro.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Sonoma County, California, seeks a six-month office administration work-exchange staffer. An intentional community and a nonprofit educational organization teaching aspects of ecology, horticulture, the visual arts, and social justice activism, OAEC is a dozen members on 80 acres about 65 miles north of San Francisco. They're looking for someone to do program and clerical work, public relations and publicity, and assistance with fundraising efforts. Contact Dave Henson, OAEC, 15290 Coleman Valley Rd., Occidental, CA 95465; 707-874-1557; oaec@igc.apc.org.

Holy Protection Gnostic Christian Monastery in Geneva, Nebraska, is seeking land for a move to southern California. "We're looking for a White Elephant," says Father Seraphim, "a large, older nursing home, rooming house, retreat center, or hotel." The six members of the Eastern Orthodox monastery have a successful business creating and marketing Byzantine icons, and now want to include retreat facilities as part of their community business.

Their land in south-central Nebraska is also for sale, and the monks would ideally like another community to buy it. Their facilities include 14.5 acres of fields and woods, with a 14,000-sq.-ft. (no kidding) community building with kitchen, dining room, large meeting rooms, chapel, dorm, and shop; outbuildings--a 3,200-sq.-ft. shop, two barns, a garage, and two guest houses; and an organic garden. Holy Protection Monastery, Rt. 1, Box 75, Geneva, NE 68381; 402-759-4952; MonksIcons@aol.com.

Riverside Community, an aspiring eco village/cohousing community near Menomonie, Wisconsin, received a go-ahead from their township board on a zoning variance and plan to begin construction on their first cluster of homes this spring, according to member Charlie Borden. Their 240 forested acres includes wetlands, riverbottom, crop land, hillside pasture, and prairie. An old farmhouse will serve as their common house, for shared meals, meetings, a shop, and childcare. Four households live on or adjacent to the land now.

Organized as a cooperative, with members buying shares, Riverside has openings for 24 adults, plus children. To help defray land expenses they created a recreation/preservation associate membership - members who won't live in the community but who will have full access to the property for wilderness enjoyment. As owner-builders, they intend to cut costs by sharing construction, with various members specializing in different construction areas.

Riverside's core values include "living lightly on the land, and using its resources with care, guided by the principles of sustainable land use and humane treatment of animals."

This fall Sunward Cohousing of Ann Arbor, Michigan, reached their goal of 40 member households. The new community is located on 20 acres just west of Ann Arbor, with forest, wetlands, and ponds. Construction, which began last May, is progressing well. Members expect to move in this summer.

"The myriad details, projects, conflicts, and decisions continue to challenge our collective skills as we find ways to grow together," reports Sunward member Michael McIntyre.

On October 1 members of Dancing Rabbit closed on their new property, 280 acres of rolling hills in rural northeastern Missouri, three miles from Sandhill Farm. Members paid for the land with loans from friends and families, and a loan from the Federation of Egalitarian Community's PEACH fund. (Skyhouse, a subcommunity of Dancing Rabbit, joined the FEC in the spring of '97.)

The Rabbits are creating a permaculture-designed land use plan, and will begin construction in the spring. Because of their relatively low land acquisition costs, they are able to offer memberships to people from all economic backgrounds. The group, which moved to Missouri in 1996, began their community journey in northern California four years ago.

Members of Jupiter Hollow (eight adults and four children living in seven houses) near Weston, West Virginia, face a dilemma common to many rural communities founded in the '70s. Newer members want to subdivide their 179 acres so each household can own their own house and land footprint, while some long-time members want to remain shareholders in the corporation that now owns all houses and land in common. Also, newer members who put money into the community, such as building or adding on to a house, want to get equity out again if they left.

The main issue is equity, and members' potential financial liability for each other. According to member Kaia, newer members point out that in their current arrangement, any members could theoretically be liable for creditor's liens against all other members. However, with privately owned individual houses and lots, one member's financial woes couldn't affect anyone else. A long-time member, Bruce Kimmel, points out that he and some other long-time members don't want to incur the costs and local government requirements of subdividing the land, and don't want to lose the ability to choose new members, which they can now do.

"We'll probably end up subdividing," says Kaia. "Maybe we could come up with a third option incorporating both views, creating a new entity that would include just a few houses as well as the common property."

Fifty-seven year old Bryn Gweled Homesteads in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania just finished repaving all their roads - "a very expensive project" - according to member Cathie Forman.

She says the first Saturday of every month is community day - a work party in the morning (maintaining their large community center, organic garden, swimming pool, tennis courts, hiking trails, roads), a potluck supper in the late afternoon, and a business meeting in the evening. However Saturday, October 4 was also their annual Children's Talent Show, with approximately 20 kids singing, dancing, performing magic tricks, and displaying artwork. Kids and parents reported it a great success.

Bryn Gweled's 70 households collectively own their 240 acres, have 99-year leases on their two-acre plots, and own their houses outright. They make decisions by consensus and run their affairs through committees - Property and Utilities, Roads, Community Center, Children's Activities, Membership, Garden, and Health and Welfare. Their common purpose, says Cathie, is the desire to live in community and revere and enjoy their land.

Ten Stones Community near Burlington, Vermont, has just completed a constructed wetlands, one of the first in the state, according to member Beth Comolli. The wetlands will process sewage far more sustainably than the usual sewer or septic systems. Ten Stones, which began building its first houses in 1993, is organized around values of community, ecology (five households have built strawbale homes), and support for each others' personal and spiritual growth. Their 88 acres, home to 13 households, includes woodlands, a meadow, a pond, and community gardens.

A two-minute clip about Ecovillage at Ithaca in Ithaca, New York, aired nationwide on CNN TV's "Earth Matters" program in early October.

"Many of the residents here say they came for both the sense of shared community and the natural living," said the narrator, over footage of the first of several cohousing communities in the ecovillage project and some of its 90 residents. Later in the clip: "This retired surgeon from St. Louis, Missouri, thinks that communal living is good for his health."

"This seemed to be an ideal preventative-medicine type of lifestyle: less stress, healthier environment," declared ecovillage resident Bill Webber.

The narrator ended with, "The community, residents say, may be a model for the new neighborhoods of the 21st century."

Right on, CNN.