“Why is it so hard?”
This article appeared in the print edition of the New York Times today on Page 1 of the Real Estate section:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/realestate/connecticut-cohousing-foreclosure.html
They Took a Chance on Collaborative Living. They Lost Everything.
A group that sought to create Connecticut’s first experiment in collaborative living fell short.
The article provoked discussion on the national cohousing supporters e-list. Someone there asked: “Given the appeal, why is it so hard to bring projects like this to fruition?”
Here was my response:
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With the current standards of our over-developed lifeways, housing is too expensive, the construction process is too complex.
Those of us making an effort to establish intentional communities are part of a movement, the eventual goal of which should be the greening of the whole society. It will involve finding ways to live more lightly and more locally — in order to reduce stresses on people and stresses on the planet.
There was nothing wrong with the way the Native Americans lived here in 1491. There was enormous diversity re: different lifeways among tribes, but it was generally healthful, generally sustainable, and generally conducive to full cultural enrichment for people.
The developmental ways of the Europeans have brought us to a crazy place in regard to complexity and expense; not to mention the burdensome necessity to labor for the institutions of the Leviathan in order to support it all.
We’re suffering from the stress of affluenza standards. The housing and related infrastructure that by law and by convention — and by ostensible preference of modern consumers — is very expensive. It’s too expensive.
And it’s too complex. Given those standards, “just us” folks who wish we could create an ecovillage or a cohousing community . . . can’t. We wish we could find a way to live ecologically, simply, cheaply. But it’s awfully hard within the context of our complex, expensive hyper-modern reality. Us amateurs don’t have ten million dollars and can’t endure ten million headaches.
My “Ecovillage New Jersey” group has been meeting and brainstorming and hoping for twenty years. We wish Chuck Durrett would just come in and do his highly professional thing, tap his well of expertise and financial resources, build it and let us pay it off gradually over time. It’s beyond us. Land in New Jersey is expensive and zoning laws tend to be prohibitive.
We are contacted all the time by people who “get it” about the need for and the desirability of an eco-communitarian lifestyle. Over the years we’ve seen an enormous amount of interest; dozens of initiatives have been launched. There are 20 million people in the NYC-NJ-Philadelphia area. Not a single full-scale intentional community has gotten built.
Personally, I’m working now with the Altair EcoVillage project in the next state over, Pennsylvania. Active since 1999 (!) they’ve built up some resources. But the challenges still seem daunting.
With the current standards of our over-developed lifeways it’s too expensive and too hard.
(Here’s where I turn for answers and solutions: https://youtu.be/WxC-rqY5ngg)
