Advance Praise for Creating a Life Together [623246]

Advance Praise for Creating a Life Together
Before aspiring community builders hold their first meeting, confront their first realtor,
or drive their first nail, they must buy this essential book: it will improve their chances for
success immensely, and will certainly save th em money, time, and heartbreak. In her friendly
but firm (and occasionally funny) way, Diana Christian proffers an astonishing wealth
of practical information and sensible, field-tested advice.
—E RNEST CALLENBACH ,AUTHOR ,ECOTOPIA AND ECOTOPIA EMERGING
W ow! The newest, most comprehensive bible for builders of intentional
communities. Covers every aspect with vital information and dozens of examples of
how successful communities faced the challenges and created their shared lives
out of their visions. The cautionary tales of sadder experiences and how communities
fail, will help in avoiding the pitfalls. Not since I wrote the Foreword to Ingrid Komar's
Living the Dream (1983), which documented the T win Oaks community,
have I seen a more useful and inspiring book on this topic.
—H AZEL HENDERSON ,AUTHOR CREA TING ALTERNA TIVE FUTURES AND POLITICS OF THE SOLAR AGE.
A really valuable resource for anyone thinking about intentional community.
I wish I had it years ago.
—S TARHA WK ,AUTHOR OF WEBS OF POWER , THESPIRAL DANCE , AND
THEFIFTH SACRED THING ,AND LONG -TIME COMMUNITY MEMBER .
Every potential ecovillager should read it. This book will be an essential guide
and manual for the many Permaculture graduates who live in
communities or design for them.
—B ILLMOLLISON ,COFOUNDER OF THE PERMACULTURE MOVEMENT ,AND AUTHOR ,
PERMACULTURE : A D ESIGNER 'SMANUAL
Creating a new culture of living peacefully with each other and the planet is our
number one need—and this is the right book at the right time. Creating a Life T ogether
will help community founders avoid fatal mistakes. I can't wait to tell people about it.
—H ILDUR JACKSON ,COFOUNDER ,GLOBAL ECOVILLAGE NETWORK (GEN); CO-EDITOR ,
ECOVILLAGE LIVING : RESTORING THE EARTH AND HERPEOPLE

Creating a Life T ogether is a comprehensive, engaging, practical, well-organized, and
thoroughly digestible labor of love. Hopefully scores of wannabe community founders
and seekers will discover it before they launch their quest for community, and avoid the
senseless and sometimes painful lessons that come from trying to reinvent the wheel. This
book is a gift to humanity—helping to move forward the elusive quest for community,
fueling a quantum leap towards a fulfilling, just, and sustainable future.
—G EOPH KOZENY ,PRODUCER /EDITOR OF VIDEO DOCUMENTARY ,
“VISIONS OF UTOPIA :EXPERIMENTS IN SUSTAINABLE CULTURE ”
While anyone can build a village, a subdivision, or a housing development,
the challenge is filling it with people who can get along, who can reach agreements,
and who can achieve far more together than they ever could alone. If your
aspiring ecovillage or intentional community gets even this far — and this
awesome book will show you how — then maybe you have a realistic chance
of living sustainably and, by example, of changing the world. My appreciation
grows daily for this thorough, practical, and engaging guide.
—A LBERT BATES ,DIRECTOR ,ECOVILLAGE TRAINING CENTER ,AND INTERNATIONAL
SECRETARY ,ECOVILLAGE NETWORK OF THE AMERICAS .
Developing a successful community requires a special blend of vision and
practicality woven together with wisdom. Consider this book a marvelous mirror.
If the abundant, experience-based, practicality in this book delights you then you probably
have the wisdom to realize your vision.
—R OBERT GILMAN ,FOUNDING EDITOR OF INCONTEXT ,A Q UARTERLY OF HUMANE
SUSTAINABLE CULTURE ,AND AUTHOR OF ECOVILLAGES ANDSUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
So many well intended communities fail because they don't even know the questions
to ask, let alone where to find answers. This book offers a wealth of detailed information
that will help guide communities to finding what is right for their specific situation,
and greatly increase their odds of their success.
—KATHRYN MCCAMANT ,COHOUSING RESIDENT ,ARCHITECT ,AND PROJECT MANAGER ,
AND AUTHOR OF COHOUSING

NEWSOCIETY PUBLISHERS

Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalog record for this publication is available from the National Library of Canada.
Copyright © 2003 by Diana Leafe Christtian.
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Cover art by Sally A. Sellers, detail from "Family in B-flat" (1998) hand-dyed,
hand painted and commercial cottons 45" x 81." Illustrations by Jacob Stevens.
Printed in Canada by Friesens, Second Printing, July 2004.
New Society Publishers acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
Paperback ISBN: 0-86571-471-1Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Creating a Life T ogether should be addressed to New Society
Publishers at the address below.
T o order directly from the publishers, please add $4.50 shipping to the price of the first copy, and $1.00 for each
additional copy (plus GST in Canada). Send check or money order to:
New Society Publishers
P .O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada1-800-567-6772
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologi-
cally sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a mannerthat models this vision. W e are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. W e areacting on our commitment to the world’s remaining ancient forests by phasing out our paper supply from ancientforests worldwide. This book is one step towards ending global deforestation and climate change. It is printed onacid-free paper that is 100% old growth forest-free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free, and
printed with vegetable based, low VOC inks. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and pur-chase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com
NEW SOCIETY PUBLISHERS www.newsociety.com

Dedication
For my friend Al Rasche for helping make this book possible,
and for my mother Rosetta Neff, for abiding loyalty, good humor,
and every kind of support.

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Foreword – By Patch Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
INTRODUCTION :CREATING A LIFETOGETHER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
The Successful T en Percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
What Are Intentional Communities and Ecovillages? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Cohousing Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Why Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
What Y ou’ll Learn Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii
Is this Information Really Necessary? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Is this Advice “Corporate”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
How to Use this Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx
PART ONE: PLANTING THE SEEDS OF HEALTHY COMMUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER 1: T HESUCCESSFUL TENPERCENT – AND WHYNINETY PERCENT FAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Lost V alley – How One Group Did It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What W orks, What Doesn’t W ork? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The Successful T en Percent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Why Ninety Percent Fail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
“Structural Conflict” – And Six W ays to Reduce It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
What Will it Cost? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
How Long Does it T ake? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
How Many People do Y ou Need? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
CHAPTER 2: Y OUR ROLE AS FOUNDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
What Kind of Person Founds a Community? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
What Else Y ou’ll Need . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
“If Only I Had Known!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
CHAPTER 3: G ETTING OFF TO A GOOD START . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Don’t Run Out and Buy Land – Y et . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
When Y ou Already Own the Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Organizing Y our Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Getting Real about Finances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Collecting Funds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
viTable of Contents

Raising Money from Suppporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Attracting and Integrating New Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Creating “Community Glue” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Pioneers, Settlers, and the Flow of Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
CHAPTER 4: C OMMUNITY VISION – W HAT ITIS,W HYYOUNEED IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Sound a Clear Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Elements of a Community’s Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Y our Vision Documents and Vision Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Do it First . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
CHAPTER 5: C REATING VISION DOCUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
More Than One Vision? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
A Sacred Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
”That’s Not Community!” – Hidden Expectations and Structural Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Exploring the T erritory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Sharing from the Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Writing it Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
CHAPTER 6: P OWER ,D ECISION -MAKING ,AND GOVERNANCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Power – The Ability to Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Focused Power, Widespread Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
How Consensus W orks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
What Y ou Need to Make Consensus W ork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
“Pseudoconsensus” and Structural Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Agreement Seeking – When Y ou Don’t W ant to use Full Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Multi-winner V oting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Community Governance – Spreading Power Widely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
More than One Form of Decision Making? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
What Decision-making Method Should Y ou Use? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
PART TWO: SPROUTING NEW COMMUNITY : TECHNIQUES & TOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
C
HAPTER 7: A GREEMENTS & P OLICIES :“ G OOD DOCUMENTS MAKE GOOD FRIENDS ” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Remembering Things Differently . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Giving Y ourselves Every Chance of Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
vii

Y our Community’s Agreements and Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Abundant Dawn’s Agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
CHAPTER 8: M AKING ITREAL:ESTABLISHING YOUR LEGAL ENTITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Why Y ou Need a Legal Entity – Before Buying Y our Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 5
Using a Lawyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Finding the Right Lawyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
CHAPTER 9: T HEGREAT LAND -BUYING ADVENTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Legal Barriers to Sustainable Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Shopping for Counties – Zoning Regulations, Building Codes, Sustainable Homesteads, and Jobs . . . . . 82The Proactive Land Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Friendly Loans from Friends and Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Onerous Owner-financing (Better than None at All) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Do-it-Y ourself Refinancing with a “Shoe Box Bank” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
When One Person Buys the Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Acquiring Fully Developed “T urn Key” Property – Confiden ce, Persistence, and Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . 92
If at First Y ou Don’t Succeed … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
C
HAPTER 10: F INDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Choosing Y our Site Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
How Much Land Do Y ou W ant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Raw Land – Lower Initial Cost, Y ears of Effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Developed Land – Electricity, T oilets, and Showers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Fully Developed T urn-key Property – Move Right In (With a Big Financial Bite) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Buying Property Like the Professionals Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Conducting the Search – On Y our Own or with a Real Estate Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Investigating Likely Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
T aking Property Off the Market While Y ou do Further Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2
C
HAPTER 11: N EIGHBORS AND ZONING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
How Zoning Issues can Impact Community Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Zoning Issues and Y our Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Gambling with Former Use Permits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Seeking a Zoning Exception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Negotiating for What Y ou W ant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Zoning Exceptions, Neighbors, and Public Hearings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
CHAPTER 12: F INANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOUCANLIVEWITH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
About “Renting Money” – What Y ou Should Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
viii

Private Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
When One Member Buys the Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Protecting Y our Sole Owner with a T riple Net Lease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Owner Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Bank Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Drawing on the Cohousing Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
What about Grants and Donations? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Refinancing Y our Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
CHAPTER 13: D EVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Earthaven’s Development Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Listening to your Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Creating your Site Plan Y ourselves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Avoiding “Urban Refugee” Syndrome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Creating Privacy in the Midst of Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Designing for Conviviality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
CHAPTER 14: I NTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CANWEAFFORD TO LIVETHERE ?) . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Rural Communities — How Will your Members Make a Living? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
The Risks of Community Businesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Keeping Member Assessments Affordable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Joining Fees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Housing Arrangements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Site Lease Fees and the Debt Load . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Labor Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Building Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Can People Afford to Join Y ou? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
CHAPTER 15: L EGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Checklist for Choosing a Legal Entity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
How Y ou’ll Hold Title and Arrange Members’ Use Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Organizational Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
How Y ou’ll be T axed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Overview: Corporations and Non-profit Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Homeowners Associations – T ax Advantages (and Disadvantages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178Condominium Associations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Housing Co-ops – Separate Ownership and Use Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Non-exempt Non-profit Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
ix

CHAPTER 16: I FYOU’REUSING A TAX-EXEMPT NON-PROFIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Advantages of a 501(c)3 – Donations, T ax Breaks, Limited Liability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Disadvantages of a 501(c)3 – Onerous Requirements, Irrecoverable Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Land-owning Entities and 501(c)3 Corporations – The Best of Both W orlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192How One Group Retained Control of its Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Title-holding Corporations – Collecting Income from “Passive” Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194Private Land T rusts – Protecting the Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Community Land T rusts – An Irrevocable Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
For “Common T reasury” Communities – 501(d) Non-profit Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
PART THREE: THRIVING IN COMMUNITY — ENRICHING THE SOIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
C
HAPTER 17: C OMMUNICATION ,PROCESS ,AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT :
THEHEART OF HEALTHY COMMUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
The “Rock Polisher” Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Nourishing Sustainable Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
The Roots of Conflict: Emotionally-charged Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
High W oundedness, High Willingness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Seven Kinds of Community Conflict W e Wish W e’d Left Behind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206T wenty-four Common Sources of Community Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
The Fine Art of Offering Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Receiving Feedback – Listening for Kernels of T ruth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Threshing Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Creating Specific Conflict Resolution Agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Helping Each Other Stay Accountable to the Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
A Graduated Series of Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
C
HAPTER 18: S ELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Select for Emotional Maturity — the “Narrow Door” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
But is it Community? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Passive Victims, Outraged Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Membership Screening and the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Dealing W ell with Saying “No” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
How Can Y ou T ell? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Questions, References, “Long Engagements” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
APPENDIX 1: S AMPLE COMMUNITY VISION DOCUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
APPENDIX 2: S AMPLE COMMUNITY AGREEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
APPENDIX 3: S ETTING UP AND MAINTAINING A 501( C)3 N ON-PROFIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
RESOURCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
x

xiAS SOMEONE WHO KNEW LITTLE of intentional
communities in 1992, I’m grateful to those devot-ed activists in the Fellowship for IntentionalCommunity who patiently educated me – LairdSchaub, Geoph Kozeny, Caroline Estes, JennyUpton, Dan Questonberry, T ony Sirna, HarveyBaker, Elph Morgan, Jillian Downey, T reeBressen, Betty Didcoct and Paul DeLapa.
I couldn’t have written this book without
being editor of Communities magazine for the last
decade, and have learned much from its staff,columnists, contributors, and guest editors: LanceScott, Billie Miracle, Ellie Sommer, V elma Kahn,Cecil Scheib, McCune Renwick-Porter, JacobStevens, T ristan Masat, Bill Metcalf, Albert Bates,Jan Bulman, Irwin Zucker, Douglas Stevenson,Carolyn Shaffer, Steve Niezgoda, Joyce Foote,Robert Foote, Deborah Altus, Tim Miller, JoePeterson, Lois Arkin, Hank Obermeyer, JeffGrossberg, Blair V oyvodic, Michael McIntyre,Daniel Greenberg, Jeff Clearwater, Rob Sandelin,Luc Reid, Larry Kaplowitz, Elana Kann, BillFlemming, and Patricia Greene.
I am deeply grateful to the Fellowship for
Intentional Community for generous permissionto excerpt information from ten years of articlesin Communities magazine, which helps illustrate
community principles in every single chapter ofthis book. I appreciate the shared stories andinsights of community veterans Judie Anders,Dave Jacke, John Charamella, Patch Adams,Brad Jarvis, Corinne McLaughlin, GordonDavidson, Stephen Gaskin, Michael T raugot,
Diamond Jamison, River Jamison, SusannaMcDougal, Stephan Brown, Barbara Conroy,Don Lindemann, Katie McCamant, ChuckDurrett — and especially Colorado compadresBuzz Burrell, Denise Coté, Zev Paiss, PantherWilde, the late Mike Mariner, Allen Butcher,Ben Lipman, David Lynch, John Cruickshank,John and Betsey McKinney, Judith Y arrow, RobJones, Jan Laser, Nancy W ood, and Jim W etzel.
I am grateful to the people who helped set
me on the path towards learning, teaching, andwriting about communities: Dan Drasin,Dorothy Ives, Gordon-Michael Scallion, Ernest“Chick” Callenbach, Jerome Ostentowki, BillB e c k e r ,D o n M a r k l e ,a n d H i l d u r J a c k s o n .
I’m especially obliged to the community
founders who generously shared their stories —V elma Kahn, T ony Sirna, Arjuna daSilva, V alerieNaiman, Chuck Marsh, Peter Bane, Dianne Brause,Kenneth Mahaffey, Hank Obermeyer, Luc Reid,Dave Henson, and Adam W olpert — heroes all.
Enormous thanks to the people who offered
expert advice: Frances Forster, James Hamilton,Bob W atzke, Zev Paiss, Chris ScottHanson, JimLeach, Dave Henson, Gregory Clark, CindyMaddox, Carolyn Goldschmidt, Steve Goldstein,and Bill Goodman; and those who critiqued chap-ters: T ree Bressen, Geoph Kozeny, V elma Kahn,Patricia Allison, Harvey Baker, and Paul DeLapa.
V ery special thanks to Rick T obin, Brecharr
Hemmaplardh, and Don Rose.
Acknowledgments

I’M A COMMUNITY FOUNDER .I k n e w w h e n I
entered medical school in 1967 that I would cre-ate an intentional community to offer low-costmedical care. I knew health care delivery was inbig trouble, and as a nerd activist interested incybernetics, I wanted to create a model thataddressed all the problems of care delivery. Inorder for health care delivery to be inexpensive, Ithought the staff should live in the communityand it would include farming and host of supportfacilities. I know the medicine I wanted to prac-tice would include helping stimulate patients’ liv-ing vital, independent lives. Concerned for thehealth of communities and society as much as ofindividuals and their families, I had read copiousutopian and dystopian literature.
I was sure I wanted to do this in an inten-
tional community. I visited T win Oaks in 1969and other communities as well, all of which allfed my hunger to live this lifestyle, which I knewwould be good for both staff and patient. I knewI would start a community when I graduated in1971, and wrote up an eight-page paper with ourfirst mission statement.
The innocence of that document makes me
smile today. Like any good nerd, I tried to findany literature to help guide me on how to makemy community vision happen. Nothing. So Ispoke with fellow communards and dove rightin. I wonder what we would have done different-ly if we had run into this thorough, intelligent
book back then. Maybe looking at all we had todo would have scared us away. W e probably hadfewer meetings than any founded community inhistory. W e also made every known mistake. Y etfor me, community living was a magical nineyears. At a certain point in our process we real-ized that in order to continue with our hospitaldream we would have to take most of the stepsthis book lays out so well.
Only a few community members wanted to
continue in our medical service mission. The resthave all have all stayed together these 33 years asfamily, though no longer as an intentional com-munity. In 1993, the incredible people who choseto continue to create our medical communityrealized we needed to do things differently, andmade a commitment to the kinds of organiza-tional structures this book suggests.
V ery few communities would survive long
without the depth of structure you’ll find here.Whether you use this wisdom or not — it still isworth all the efforts to create and live in commu-nity. I’ve had no burnout or regrets. Communityhas made everything in my life easier and hasallowed me to have huge dreams, inconceivablewithout community. The skills I’ve learned, prac-tical and human, seem infinite. My love forhumanity has thrived and expanded. Nothingabout community has been easy, but it all has
xiiForeword
BYPATCH ADAMS

been fun. This is the work for political activists
who want to live their solutions. If we are to sur-vive as a species we will do so learning the ecstasyof community. We do have to get together.
Creating a Life T ogether shows what to pay
attention to in forming new communities andecovillages, and offers exercises to develop com-munity intelligence. Do these exercises even if youdon’t agree with them; consider them trainingwheels. Of course no book can be complete; youstill might make a million mistakes. I suggest
reading this book and then visiting ten communi-ties to see how they did it.
I thought it would take four years to build our
free 40-bed hospital in community. Now, in our33rd year, we may finally break ground this year.W e’re ready. W e’ve learned that the journey tocommunity is nurturing, and so will you. Goodluck!FOREWORD xiii

There is hardly anything more appealing, yet apparently more elusive, for humankind at the end of the
20th century than the prospect of living in harmony with nature and with each other.
— Robert and Diane Gilman, Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities
Do not be afraid to build castles in the sky.
That is where they belong.
But once the dreams are in place,
Y our job is to build the foundation under them.
— Henry David Thoreau

“IFOUND THE LAND !” Jack exclaimed over
the phone. As the originator of EarthDance
Farm, a small forming community in northernColorado, he had been searching for just theright community land for years, since long beforehe and a circle of acquaintances had begun meet-ing weekly to create community. He was so sureit was the right land, he said, that he’d plunkeddown $10,000 of his own savings as an optionfee to take it off the market for two months sothat we could decide.
I had joined the group several weeks earlier,
and I knew nothing about intentional communi-ties then. However, it had seemed in their meet-ings that something was missing.
“What’s the purpose of your community?” I
had finally asked.“What’s your vision for it?” Noone could really answer.
That Saturday we all drove out to the land to
check it out.
And promptly fell apart. Confronted by
the reality of buying land, no one wanted tocommit. Frankly, there was nothing to committo.No common purpose or vision, no organi-
zational structure, no budget, no agreements.In fact we hadn’t made decisions in the groupat all, but had simply talked about how won-derful life in community would be. AlthoughJack tried mightily to persuade us to go in with
him on the land, there were no takers, and hebarely got his money out before the optiondeadline.
The Successful Ten Percent
I’ve since learned that EarthDance Farm’s expe-rience is fairly common. Most aspiring ecovil-lages and community groups — probably 90percent — never get off the ground; their envi-sioned communities never get built. They can’tfind the right land, don’t have enough money, orget mired in conflict. Often they simply don’tunderstand how much time, money, and organi-zational skill they’ll need to pull off a project ofthis scope.
I wanted to know about the successful ten
percent, those groups that actually created theircommunities. What did they do right?
I’ve sought the answer to this question ever
since, in my years as editor of Communities maga-
zine, and by visiting dozens of communities andinterviewing scores of community founders. AndI’ve seen a definite pattern. Generally, foundersused the same kinds of skills, knowledge, andstep-by-step processes to create widely differentkinds of communities, from urban group house-holds or rural ecovillages.
xv/fl1lftIntroduction /fl1rt
Creating A Life Together

Creating a Life T ogether is an overview of that
process, gleaned from some of the most innova-tive and successful community founders inNorth America. This is what they did, and whatyou can do, to create your community dream.
What Are Intentional Communities and
Ecovillages?
A residential or land-based intentional commu-
nity is a group of people who have chosen to livewith or near enough to each other to carry outtheir shared lifestyle or common purpose togeth-er. Families living in a cohousing communities inthe city, students living in student housing coop-eratives near universities, and sustainability advo-cates living in rural back-to-the-land homesteadsare all members of intentional communities.
Community is not just about living together,
but about the reasons for doing so. “ A group ofpeople who have chosen to live together with acommon purpose, working cooperatively to cre-ate a lifestyle that reflects their shared core val-ues,” is one way the non-profit Fellowship forIntentional Community describes it.
What most communities have in common is
idealism: they’re founded on a vision of living abetter way, whether community members literal-ly live together in shared group houses, or livenear each other as neighbors. A community’sideals usually arise from something its memberssee as lacking or missing in the wider culture.
Ecovillages are intentional communities that
aspire to create a more humane and sustainableway of life. One widely quoted definition (byRobert and Diane Gilman) defines ecovillages as“human-scale, full-featured settlements in whichhuman activities are harmlessly integrated intothe natural world in a way that is supportive ofhealthy human development, and which can besuccessfully continued into the indefinite future.”An intentional community aspiring to
become an ecovillage attempts to have a popula-tion small enough that everyone knows eachother and can influence the outcome of commu-nity decisions. It hopes to provide housing, workopportunities, and social and spiritual opportu-nities on-site, creating as self-sufficient a com-munity as possible. T ypically, an ecovillage buildsecologically sustainable housing, grows much ofits own organic food, recycles its waste productsharmlessly, and, as much as possible, generates itsown off-grid power.
Sirius Ecovillage near Amherst,
Massachusetts, grows a large percentage of itsorganic food, generates a portion of its own off-grid power, and offers tours and classes on sus-tainable living. EcoVillage at Ithaca has builtthe first two of its three planned ecologicallyoriented cohousing communities on 176 acresn e a r I t h a c a ,N e w Y o r k ,a n d o p e r a t e s i t s o w norganic Community Supported Agriculturefarm for members and neighbors. W e’ll exploretwo aspiring ecovillages in the following chap-ters: Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri,and Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina. Iuse the term “communities” in this to meanecovillages as well as other forms of intentionalcommunity.
More and more people are yearning for more
“community” in their lives; you may be one ofthem. These are people who feel increasinglyisolated and alienated, and want somethingmore satisfying. This can mean seeking to createcommunity where they are, or it can mean seek-ing residential, land-based intentional commu-nity. It includes cohousing, shared group house-holds, ecovillages, housing co-ops, environmen-tal activist communities, Christian fellowshipcommunities, rural homesteading communities,and so on.
xviCREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Many peruse the hefty Communities Directory,
which lists over 600 communities and where theyare and how to join them. Others browse the webfor individual community websites, beginningwith such starting places as the Fellowship forIntentional Community (www.ic.org); TheCohousing Network, (www.cohousing.org);Ecovillage Network of the Americas(www.ena.ecovillage.org); or the NorthwestIntentional Communities Association(www.ic.org/NICA).
Cohousing Communities
Cohousing is another increasingly popular formof contemporary intentional community.Cohousing communities are small neighbor-hoods of usually 10 to 40 households which aremanaged by the residents themselves, and whichhave usually been developed and designed bythem as well (although increasingly cohouserspartner with outside developers). Cohousersown their own relatively small housing units andshare ownership of the whole property and theirlarge community building (with kitchen, diningroom/meeting space, and usually a children’splay area, laundry facilities, and guest rooms).Cohousing residents conduct their communitybusiness through consensus-based meetings, andenjoy optional shared meals together three orfour nights a week.
“Cohousers believe that it’s more readily pos-
sible to live lighter on the planet if they cooper-ate with their neighbors, and their lives are easi-er, more economical, more interesting, and morefun,” observes Chuck Durrett, one of two archi-tects who introduced cohousing to NorthAmerica from Denmark in 1986. By 2002, 68completed cohousing communities were up andrunning in North America, and approximately200 more were in various stages of development.The growing interest in intentional commu-
nities, whether ecovillages, cohousing, or otherkinds of communities, isn’t just wishful thinking.By 2002 the yearning for community, and indi-vidual communities, has been favorably — andsometimes repeatedly — covered by the New
Y ork Times, USA T oday, The Boston Globe, NBC’s
“Dateline,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,”CNN, and National Public Radio.
Why Now?
I believe we’re experiencing a culture-wide, yetdeeply personal, phenomenon — as if some kindof “switch” has simultaneously flipped in the psy-ches of thousands of people. Aware that we’re liv-ing in an increasingly fragmented, shallow, venal,costly, and downright dangerous society, andreeling from the presence of guns in the schoolyard and rogues in high office, we’re longing for away of life that’s warmer, kinder, more whole-some, more affordable, more cooperative, andmore connected.
This is partly because we’re so unnaturally
disconnected. Post-W orld W ar II trends toward
nuclear families, single-family dwellings, urbanand suburban sprawl, and job-related mobilityhave disconnected us from the web of humanconnections that nourished people in our grand-parents’ day, as well as numbing us with simula-tions of human interaction on TV sitcomsrather than living in a culture small-scale andstable enough that we’d have such interactionsourselves.
The people interested in intentional commu-
nities aren’t extremists. They’re the people nextdoor. Many are in their 40s and 50s; they’veraised families, built careers, and picked up andmoved more times than they can count. They’retired of Madison Avenue’s idea of the AmericanDream. They want to settle down, sink roots,INTRODUCTION xvii

and live in the good company of friends. Others
are young people; fresh out of college, hyper-aware of our precarious environmental situation,and disgusted with the consumerist mall ethic,they say “No thanks.”
W e’re also recognizing that living in commu-
nity is literally good for us. Scientific researchshows that our health improves when we live ina web of connection with others. “Of all themany influences on our health, interpersonalrelationships are not only a factor, but increas-ingly are being recognized as the most crucial fac-
tor,” physician Blair V ovoydic writes inCommunities magazine.“Being connected to other
people probably makes you physically healthierthan if you lived alone.” This appears to be espe-cially true for older people, who tend to stayhealthier longer, recover from illness more quick-ly, and live longer than the elderly not living incommunity.
It’s also healthier for the planet. At a time
when — every day — we’re losing 200,000 acresof rainforest “lungs,” we’re spewing a million tonsof toxic waste into the atmosphere, and 45,000people die of starvation every day, living simply,
cooperating, and sharing resources with othersmay be the only way of life that makes any sense.
“Small, independent, self-sufficient commu-
nities have the greatest ability to survive the nor-mal cycles of boom-and-bust which our econo-my and culture go through, and an even betterchance of surviving the major catastropheswhich may loom ahead as our oil supply dwin-dles,” writes Thom Hartmann in his book The
Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight.
What better place than intentional commu-
nities to downsize possessions, share ownershipof land and tools, grow healthy food, sharemeals, make decisions collaboratively, andtogether create the kind of culture that nourish-es our children as they grow up, and ourselves as
we grow older? And what better place thanintentional communities to show the rest of theworld that even hyper-mobile North Americanscan choose to live this way?
What You’ll Learn Here
It’s becoming increasingly obvious to many of usthat intentional community living is one key tosurviving, even thriving, in these disintegratingtimes. But, like members of the EarthDanceFarm, few of us know where to start.
Creating a Life T ogether is an attempt to help
your ecovillage or intentional community get offto a good start. It attempts to distill the hardexperience of the founders of dozens of success-ful communities formed since the early ’90s intosolid advice on getting started as a group, creat-ing vision documents, decision-making and gov-ernance, agreements and policies, buying andfinancing land, communication and process, andselecting people to join you. It’s the informationI was looking for when I began this journey. It’ssimply what works, what doesn’t work, and hownot to reinvent the wheel.
And this information is not only for people
forming new communities — whether or notyou already own your land. It can also be valu-able for those of you thinking about joining com-munity one day — since you, too, will need toknow what works. And it’s also for those of youalready living in community, since you can onlybenefit from knowing what others have done insimilar circumstances.
Because forming a rural community involves
more variables than other kinds of communities(for example, how members might make a liv-ing), I focus more on rural communities.However, most of the steps and skills describedin these chapters apply to urban and suburbanxviii CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

communities as well. This book also focuses on
communities in which decisions are made by allcommunity members, and doesn’t examineissues specific to ashrams, meditation centers, orother spiritual or therapeutic communities inwhich decisions are made by one leader or asmall group. Why you need a legal entity(Chapter 8), and what you should considerbefore choosing a legal entity (in Chapter 15),apply to forming communities and ecovillagesanywhere; however, information on specific legalentities (in Chapters 15 and 16) apply only tothe United States.
Is This Information Really Necessary?
Many communities that formed in the 1970s and1980s, including large, well-established ones,weren’t familiar with most of this informationwhen they started, and apparently didn’t need it.Nonetheless, I urge you to learn these steps andskills. Why? First, because establishing an ecovil-lage or new community is not easy, then or now.Getting a group of people to agree on a commonvision, make decisions collaboratively and fairly,and combine their money with others to ownproperty together can bring up deep-seated emo-tional issues — often survival-level issues — thatcan knock a community off its foundations. Iwant you to have all the help you can get.
Second, since the mid-1980s, the cost of
land and housing has skyrocketed relative tomost people’s assets and earning power. Zoningregulations and building codes are considerablymore restrictive than they were in earlierdecades. And because of media coverage thathighlights any violent or extreme practices in agroup, the “cult” stereotype has become part ofthe public consciousness, and may affect howpotential neighbors feel about your group mov-
ing in next door.Newly forming communities can flounder
and sink for other reasons, too. Not being able toagree on location. Not having enough time todevote to research or group process. Not havingenough access to capital. Not finding the rightland. Based on the hard lessons of the “successful10 percent” (and the “unsuccessful 90 percent”),today’s community founders must be consider-ably more organized, purposeful, and better cap-italized than their counterparts of earlier years.
Is This Advice “Corporate”?
As you skim these pages you’ll see many figuresand percentages — “business and finance” infor-mation — and you’ll no find advice on the spiri-tual principles involved in forming a community.Is this book just some representation of “the sys-tem” you may be trying to leave behind? Why isthere no mention of the spiritual aspects?
I’m presuming that your own spiritual
impulses and visions about community arealready well developed; that you know very wellwhy you want to live in an ecovillage or inten-tional community or create your own. As for allthe business and finance advice, consider it a setof tools designed to get you from your uniquepersonal impulses of spirit to the manifestationof that vision in physical form. And while I’m notpart of “the system,” I study the system in orderto learn how to use some of its more useful toolsto create alternatives to it. As an old adage fromIndia says,“It takes a thorn to remove a thorn.” Atthe present time, anyway, it takes budgets andbusiness plans, and a rudimentary understandingof real estate and financing, to create alternativesto a society in which these tools are necessary.Consider the skills and steps in this book to bethe shovels and soil amendments you’ll need togrow your own community, from the seeds ofyour vision into a flourishing organism.INTRODUCTION xix

How to Use this Book
Most of the skills to learn and steps to take in
forming an ecovillage or intentional communityare not linear, but simultaneous. So although theinformation is presented in a step-by-step way,some tasks must be undertaken together. Forexample, although you’ll need to create a legalentity for owning land before you buy propertytogether, what kind of land you want as well howyou intend to organize ownership and decisionmaking, makes all the difference in which legalstructure(s) you choose in the first place.
/fl1lftI suggest first reading this book quickly, to get anoverview, and then a second time, slowly andthoroughly, then collect and read other resourcesfor more detailed information. I also suggest thateveryone in your group read this book, not justthose who are getting started and assuming lead-ership roles. The more of you who are informed— and hopefully disabused of common miscon-ceptions about starting new ecovillages and com-munities — the more empowered and effectiveyou’ll be as a group.
So let’s get started.xxCREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Part One: Planting the
Seeds of Healthy
Community

ONE GRAY NORTHERN CALIFORNIA night in
November 1988, six would-be community
founders piled into a small pickup truck andheaded for Oregon. Their vision at the time wasto create a Community Land T rust with housesin the Bay Area and rural land within commut-ing distance. They’d just learned of an 87-acreproperty with a stream and 25 buildings in ruralOregon that had fallen to the IRS in the 1970sfor $1.7 million in unpaid taxes. The former siteof a Christian intentional community, the prop-erty had a large dining lodge and kitchen, 12small rustic cabins, two dorms that could sleep125, laundry and garden outbuildings, a largewoodshop, an office/classroom complex, and apartially finished residential fourplex. Back taxesnotwithstanding, it was what many communityfounders dream of — a rural property withmany buildings — so off they went.
T en hours later they clambered out of the
cramped truck into the cold rain and surveyedthe scene. “It was extraordinarily depressing,”recalls Dianne Brause. What had once beengroomed, beautiful lawn was now shoulder-highgrass. The once-beautiful vegetable garden grewthistles eight feet high. Forty-five acres of for-merly magnificent forest was an open field of
stumps and brambles, clear-cut seven years earli-er by the Christian group to raise money to paytheir tax lawyers. Pushing through the wet wallsof grass, the visitors examined the first few build-ings. Most, empty and neglected for almost sevenyears, had broken windows, rotting roofs, andsagging steps. The group creaked open doors tofind cold, dirty, foul-smelling rooms full ofdebris and mold. When the former owners real-ized the IRS would foreclose on their property,they stripped the buildings of everything move-able: furniture, carpets, sinks, stoves, vent fans,and fixtures. They had ripped the sprinklers outof the lawns and removed every light bulb. Now,as the group picked their way through litter, bro-ken glass, and dead birds, they found no runningwater — the pipes had frozen and broken theprevious year. Not only this, they said, but theproperty would probably now cost at least half amillion dollars; its zoning had reverted frommultiple occupancy to the county-wide regula-tion of “no more than five unrelated adults,” andthe place was probably still saddled with enor-mous IRS debt. Cold, soaked, and miserable, thegroup left. Obviously, the place was a bust.
2/fl1lftChapter 1 /fl1rt
The Successful Ten Percent —
and Why Ninety Percent Fail

But not for two members on that fateful day.
Dianne Brause, a former conference centerteacher, saw beautiful land with gentle meadowsand some great trees left standing, excellent gar-dening potential, and all the right buildings — anideal community and retreat/conference center.Kenneth Mahaffey, a businessman who bought,renovated, and rented out old houses, saw anexcellent piece of real estate, an exciting land-pur-chase challenge, and the ideal site for a communi-ty. Dianne had experience and interest in com-munity and good people skills; Kenneth hadexpertise in real estate and finance. Both weremovers and shakers who made things happen.
Within six months they had closed on the
property. T oday it is Lost V alley EducationalCenter, a thriving community of 22 adults andseven children, with clean, renovated buildings,restored vegetable gardens, a reforestation proj-ect with sapling Douglas firs and hardwoods,and a vibrant conference center business.
Lost Valley — How One Group Did It
Kenneth and Dianne’s first challenge was findingout who controlled the property and to whomthey should submit a bid. W as the IRS still incharge? Since it had been seven years since theIRS takeover, was the huge tax lien about toexpire? After much confusion and delay, theywere finally able to send a bid via a local legalfirm representing the unknown owners, thoughthey were told they must not, under any circum-stances, contact the IRS.
The property had been appraised at
$557,000 a few years earlier, and before that,when it was still forested, at $750,000. The backproperty-tax bill turned out to be $50,000, butthey believed it could be reduced. Many otherparties had been interested in the property, andone had bid $250,000 a few months earlier, butwere no longer sure they could pay it. By guess-
ing at their chances of success, the possible back-taxes outcome, the probable challenge to rezon-ing, and the property’s state of ruin, Kennethtook a leap of faith and bid $80,000.
Over the next three months they heard
nothing. Their inquiries led nowhere and theygot conflicting stories about who really con-trolled the property. Finally Kenneth andDianne contacted the IRS directly, and eventu-ally learned that the legal owners were now theSeattle law firm that had fought the IRS onbehalf of the previous owners. They called theSeattle lawyers, who said they knew nothing ofthe bid. The next day, however, they called back,saying,“If you can raise $90,000 we can close inthree weeks.”
With closing costs and lawyers’ fees, the
property would cost about $100,000. Kennethraised the money from friends, creating three-month bridge loans at 8-10 percent interest. Hestipulated in his sales offer that the IRS rescindtheir $1.7 million lien on the property. Theseven-year period was up and the IRS had todecide whether to sue for the money or drop theclaim. Fortunately, they chose to drop it.
Kenneth and Diane incorporated Lost V alley
Center, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit educationalorganization. The property closed in April,1989. T echnically, Kenneth held the title, but thenew non-profit considered itself the proudowner of 87 acres of grass, thistles, and run-down buildings. Although it still had a $50,000back property-tax burden and uncertain futurezoning, they’d scored a half-million dollar prop-erty. In a few months Kenneth remortgaged oneof his real estate holdings and paid off the bridgeloans. Then he loaned the organization another$100,000 to create a fund to repair and renovatethe property.
THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 3

Like many other community founders, they
faced a serious zoning challenge. The previousowners had been allowed “multiple occupancy,”but the county planning department decided thatthe property’s grandfather clause was invalidbecause of the length of time between the previ-ous use and current use of the property. So theproperty reverted to the county’s normal zoningrules, meaning no more than five unrelated adultscould live on the land, despite the fact it was 87acres with 25 buildings. While they eventuallydid manage to get the multiple-occupancy zoningreinstated, buying the property without knowingthis was quite a gamble. Usually, to be among “theten percent,” community founders need to resolvezoning issues before buying the land.
T wo months later, in June, Dianne, Kenneth,
and five others interested in becoming communi-ty pioneers moved to the land and set to workwith a will.
The first month they cleared all the buildings
of piles of junk, rebuilt the water system,restored the basic landscaping, and planted aquarter-acre vegetable garden. By August, they’dset up the woodshop and the Lost V alleyCenter’s business offices, and repaired the dormbuildings, one of the fourplex residences, thedining hall, and five classrooms. They created abrochure for their conference and retreat center,and plastered local stores and bulletin boardswith flyers — following advice to be as active andpublic as possible about their intended confer-ence center activities. They went out of their wayto meet their neighbors and join in neighbor-hood picnics and volleyball games, and invitedthe neighbors to their open houses. InSeptember, joined by a few more pioneering res-idents, they renovated some of the cabins, set uptheir commercial kitchen, supplied their dormswith mattresses, blankets, and linens, andbought used furniture for all facilities. In
October they hosted their first conference.
Another challenge was to show the county
why the back property taxes of $50,000, should bereduced. Lost V alley pointed out that according tocounty law, since they and the previous ownerswere both 501(c) non-profits, they shouldn’t bepenalized for the length of time lapsed betweenthe dissolution of the previous community andtheir own purchase of the land. The countyagreed, and in January 1990 reduced the backtaxes to about $10,000. The county also generous-ly decided that the work of Lost V alley fell withintheir own tax-exempt guidelines, and wouldn’t beliable for further property taxes as long as all activ-ities on the property supported Lost V alley’s owntax-exempt purposes.
Over the first four months of 1990, Lost
V alley residents and volunteers also planted moregardens and began a reforestation project, start-ing 1,000 trees in their seed orchard and 800 babyDouglas fir and other trees in the clearcut. Theydeveloped a watershed restoration program withfederal agencies, designed Ancient Forest T ourprograms, and began agricultural research andeducational projects. They held their first resi-dential permaculture design course and began abimonthly environmental education program.They continued renovating — cleaning or replac-ing all their carpets, installing fire safety systems,and renovating another cabin. They remodeled asmall building as a staff kitchen and youth hosteland began hosting overnight guests.
Lost V alley was on its way.
What Works, What Doesn’t Work?
Since the early 1990s, I’ve been intensely curiousabout what it takes for a newly forming commu-nity or ecovillage to succeed. So, first as publish-er of a newsletter about forming communities4CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

and then as editor of Communities magazine, I
interviewed dozens of people involved in theprocess of forming new communities and ecovil-lage projects as well as founders of establishedcommunities. I wanted to know what worked,what didn’t work, and how not to reinvent thewheel.
I learned that no matter how inspired and
visionary the founders, only about one out of tennew communities actually get built.* The other90 percent seemed to go nowhere, occasionallybecause of lack of money or not finding the rightland, but mostly because of conflict. And usual-ly, conflict accompanied by heartbreak. Andsometimes, conflict, heartbreak — and lawsuits.
What was going on here?! These people
started out trying to create a way of life based onideals of friendship, good will, cooperation, andfair decision-making. What had these foundersnot known?
The Successful Ten Percent
Lost V alley’s story illustrates the major steps offorming a new community or ecovillage —establishing a core group with a particular visionand purpose, choosing a legal structure, findingand financing property, and moving in and reno-vating (or developing land). It also involves creat-ing an internal community economy and refi-nancing any initial loans if necessary. (Sinceecovillages are a form of intentional community,I’ll use the term “community” to mean ecovillagesas well as other forms of community).
Each of the communities we’ll look at has
undertaken a similar journey, and roughly in thesame order. Most of the seven founders ofSowing Circle/Occidental Arts and EcologyCenter in northern California were an alreadyestablished group of friends and housemateswho in 1995 formed a partnership (later replacedby a Limited Liability Company) to purchase
property, and a 501(c)3 non-profit to managetheir planned conference center business. Theyconducted a thorough property search, findingan 80-acre, million-dollar property with existingcommunity buildings and cabins. They bought itfor $850,000, paid for by a combination of ownerfinancing and loans from their families, and sec-ond and third mortgages from friends and col-leagues. They moved in and renovated for eightmonths, started up their conference center busi-ness, and refinanced with a single private loan
five years later.
In 1998, dozens of web surfers from around
the country coalesced around an Internet call forpeople to cofound an income-sharing communi-ty in rural New England. After planning theMeadowdance community via e-mail and in per-son for a year, the forming community grouplocated 165 acres of nearly ideal land in ruralV ermont for $250,000. Six group members will-ing to move ahead formed a Limited LiabilityPartnership and through members’ loans raisedmost of the funds to buy and develop the prop-erty. They spent a year seeking a conditional usepermit from the county for their large multipur-pose community building, but, after spending$20,000 on tests, permits and fees, they didn’t getit. So, they bought a house in town and startedup their software testing and typing/editingbusinesses there. In 2002, after the businesseshad started to take off, they began looking forrural land again.
Each of these communities are among “the
ten percent” — the forming communities thatactually get up and running. W e’ll learn moreabout each of them in later chapters.
But what about the other 90 percent of form-
ing communities — the ones that fail?
THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 5
*The figure is somewhat higher for forming cohousing communi ties. Approximately 25 percent seem to actually get built, according to Cohousing
magazine editor Stella T arnay.

Why Ninety Percent Fail
In the early 1990s, a founder I’ll call Sharon
bought land for a spiritual community I’ll callGracelight. At first it looked promising. Sharonhad received unprecedented and unusually rapidzoning approval for a clustered-housing siteplan. She met regularly with a group of friendsand supporters who wanted to be part of thecommunity. But over the next 18 months, firstthe original group and then a second group fellapart, disappointed and bitter. Sharon struggledwith money issues, land-development issues,interpersonal issues. After two years she said shewas no longer attempting community, and in factloathed the idea of community and didn’t evenwant to hear the “C”-word.
What had this founder not known?
How much money it would take to com-
plete the land development process beforeshe could legally transfer title to eachincoming community member. Sharon
had no budget in advance, and no idea whatit would cost to complete county require-ments for a site plan and roads, utilities, etc.
How much each lot would eventually
cost, and that she shouldn’t have fos-tered hope in those who could neverafford to buy in. Sharon knew that some
people in the group wouldn’t be able tobuy in, but counted on her sense that “itwill all work out somehow.”
That she’d need adequate legal docu-
ments and financial data to secure pri-vate financing. Sharon believed that
telling potential financial contributorsher spiritual vision for Gracelight wassufficient. It didn’t occur to her to providea business plan, budget, or financial dis-closure sheet, or to demonstrate to poten-
tial investors how and when they mightget their money back.
That she should make it clear to every-
one at the outset that as well as having avision she was also serving as landdeveloper. Sharon didn’t think of herself
as a “developer,” and never used the term,in spite of the fact that she financed andwas responsible for the purchase anddevelopment of the land.
That she needed to tell people that she
fully intended to be reimbursed for herland-purchase and development costsand make a profit to compensate hertime and entrepreneurial risk. Sharon
didn’t think in terms like “entrepreneurialrisk,” even though she was taking one.When group members in the first andsecond forming community groups final-ly brought up financial issues and askedpointed questions, she was offended. Andgroup members were offended too, whenthey learned Sharon was going to make aprofit. One can argue for or against mak-ing a profit on community land; the pointis, Sharon didn’t make her intentionsclear at the outset.
That she needed to tell people from the
beginning that, as the developer, shewould make all land-development deci-sions. Again, one can argue either way
about one person making decisions abouthis or her own financial risks in forming acommunity — but Sharon should havemade these clear.
That a process was needed for who was in
the group and who wasn’t, and for whatkinds of decisions the group would make
6CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

and which Sharon alone would make.
That consensus was the wrong decision-
making option for a group with no com-mon vision or purpose, with onelandowner and others with no financialrisk, and with no clear distinctionbetween those who were decision-mak-ing members of the group and thosewho were not. In fact, the group wasn’t
practicing consensus at all, but rathersome vaguely conceived idea of it.
“Structural Conflict” — And Six Ways to
Reduce It
After years of interviewing founders like Sharon
and hearing their stories of community break-up,heartbreak, and even lawsuits, I began to see apattern. Most new-community failures seemed tor e s u l t f r o m w h a t I c a l l “ s t r u c t u r a l ” c o n f l i c t —problems that arise when founders don’t explicit-ly put certain processes in place or make certainimportant decisions at the outset, creating one ormore omissions in their organizational structure.These built-in structural problems seem to func-tion like time bombs. Several weeks, months, oreven years into the community-forming processthe group erupts in major conflict that could havebeen largely prevented if they had handled theseissues early on. Naturally, this triggers a great dealof interpersonal conflict at the same time, makingthe initial structural conflict much worse.
While interpersonal conflict is normal and
expected, I believe that much of the structuralconflict in failed communities could have beenprevented, or at least greatly reduced, if thefounders had paid attention to at least six crucialelements in the beginning. Each of these issues,if not addressed in the early stages of a formingcommunity, can generate structural conflict“time bombs” later on.1. Identify your community vision and create
vision documents There’s probably no more
devastating source of structural conflict incommunity than various members havingdifferent visions for why you’re there in thefirst place. This will erupt into all kinds ofarguments about what seem like ordinarytopics — how much money you spend on aparticular project, or how much or how oftenyou work on a task. It’s really a matter ofunderlying differences (perhaps not alwaysconscious) about what the community is for.
All your community members need to be onthe same page from the beginning, and mustknow what your shared community vision is,and know you all support it. Y our sharedvision should be thoroughly discussed,agreed upon, and written down at the get-go.(See Chapter 4.)
2. Choose a fair, participatory decision-mak-
ing process appropriate for your group.And if you choose consensus, get trainedin it. Unless you’re forming a spiritual, reli-
gious or therapeutic community with a spir-itual leader who’ll make all decisions — andyou all agree to this in advance — yourmembers will resent any power imbalances.Resentment over power issues can becomean enormous source of conflict in commu-nity. Decision-making is the most obviouspoint of power, and the more it is sharedand participatory, the less this particularkind of conflict will come up. This meanseveryone in the group has a voice in deci-sions that will affect their lives in communi-ty, with a decision-making method that isfair and even-handed. How it works — theprocedure for your decision-makingmethod — has to be well-understood byeveryone in the group.
THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 7

A more specific source of community
conflict is using the consensus decision-mak-ing process without thoroughly understand-ing it. What often passes for consensus inmany groups is merely “pseudo-consensus”— which exhausts people, drains their ener-gy and good will, generates a great deal ofresentment all by itself, and causes people todespise the process they call “consensus.” Soif your group plans to use consensus, you’llprevent a great deal of structural conflict bygetting trained in it first. (See Chapter 6.)
3. Make clear agreements — in writing. (This
includes choosing an appropriate legal enti-ty for owning land together). People
remember things differently. Y our agree-ments — from the most mundane to themost legally and financially significant —should absolutely be written down. Then iflater you all remember things differently youcan always look it up. The alternative —“we’re right but you folks are wrong (andmaybe you’re even trying to cheat us)” — canbreak up a community faster than you cansay, “Y ou’ll be hearing from our lawyer.” (SeeChapter 7.)
4. Learn good communication and group
process skills. Make clear communicationand resolving conflicts a priority. Being able
to talk with one other about sensitive sub-jects and still feel connected is my definitionof good communication skills. This includesmethods for holding each other accountablefor agreements. I consider it a set-up forstructural conflict down the road if you don’t
address communication and group processskills and conflict resolution methods earlyon. Addressing these issues at the start willallow you to have procedures in place later onwhen things get tense — like practicing firedrill procedures now, when there’s no fire.
(See Chapter 17 and Chapter 18.)
5. In choosing cofounders and new members,
select for emotional maturity. An often-
overwhelming source of conflict is allowingsomeone to enter your forming communitygroup, or later, to enter your community, whois not aligned to your vision and values. Orsomeone whose emotional pain — surfacingweeks or months later as disruptive attitudesor behaviors — can end up costing youuntold hours of meeting time and drainingyour group of energy and well-being. A well-designed process for selecting and integratingnew people into your group, and screeningout those who don’t resonate with your val-ues, vision, or behavioral norms, can saverepeated rounds of stress and conflict in theweeks and years ahead. (See Chapter 18.)
6. Learn the head skills and heart skills you
need to know. Forming a new community is
like simultaneously trying to start a new busi-ness and begin a marriage — and is every bitas serious as doing either. It requires many ofthe same planning and financial skills aslaunching a successful business enterprise,and the same capacities for trust, good will,and honest, kind interpersonal communica-tion as marrying your sweetheart. Foundersof successful new communities seem to knowthis. Y et those who get mired in severe prob-lems have usually leapt in without a clue. LikeSharon, these well-meaning folks didn’t knowwhat they didn’t know. So the sixth majorway to reduce structural conflict is to take thetime to learn what you’ll need to know.
Community founders must cultivate both
heart skills and head skills.. This means learninghow to make fair, participatory group decisions;
8CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

how to speak from the heart; how to face conflict
when it arises and deal with it constructively; andhow to make cooperative decisions and craft fairagreements. It means learning how to createbudgets, timelines, and strategic plans; and howto evaluate legal entities for land ownership orbusiness or educational activities. It means learn-ing the real estate market in your desired area,local zoning regulations, and, if needed, how tosecure loans with reasonable terms. It meanslearning how to structure healthy and affordableinternal community finances. It means learningabout site planning and land development. Itmeans doing all this with a sense of connectionand shared adventure. Plunging into the land-search process or trying to raise money withoutfirst understanding these interrelated areas is asure invitation to trouble.
Community founders tend to be specialists,
but in fact they must be generalists. I’ve seenfounders with spiritual ideals and compellingvisions flounder and sink because they have noidea how to conduct a land search or negotiate abank loan. I’ve seen founders with plenty of tech-nical or business savvy — folks able to build anifty composting toilet or craft a solid strategicplan — who didn’t know the first thing abouthow to speak honestly and from the heart toanother human being. And I’ve seen sensitivespiritual folks as well as type-A “get-the-job-done” folks crash and burn the first time theyencountered any real conflict.
Not everyone in your forming group needs to
have all these skills or all this information —that’s one reason you’re a group! Nor must yourgroup possess all these skills and areas of expert-ise among yourselves when you begin. Y ou canalways hire training for your group or expertisein whatever you need, whether it be a consensustrainer, communication skills trainer, meetingfacilitator, lawyer, accountant, project manager/
developer, land-use planner, permaculturedesigner, and so on.
Many well-established North American
communities never included most or all of thesesix structural ingredients at their origin, anddon’t see why they should have. “Hey, we’re herenow, aren’t we?” In the 1960s, ’70s, or early ’80s,people usually just bought land and got started.Some of these communities are still with ustoday, and proud of it.
Nonetheless, for communities forming today,
I recommend addressing all six of these issuesearly on, for all the reasons already noted.
What Will it Cost?
How much it will cost in total (and how much itwill cost each founder) is a question that canonly be estimated by creating a financial modeland plugging in the numbers. T o do that, you’llneed to start with certain assumptions. Will yoube rural, semi-rural, suburban, or urban? Whatare land values in your desired area? Will yourenovate or develop your property? How manymembers will you have? Will you have commu-nity businesses? How will you structure yourinternal community finances to meet monthlyland payments and other expenses? If your num-bers show that your plan is too expensive or oth-erwise unworkable, revise some of your assump-tions and try again.
How much it costs communities that have
formed since the early 1990s (when it becameharder to do than in previous decades) varieswidely, depending on all the above factors, butmostly on land values. For example, in 1996seven founders of Abundant Dawn communitybought a beautiful 90-acre owner-financed par-cel on a river with a farmhouse, cabin, and barnin rural southwestern Virginia for $130,000.THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 9

They paid $13,000 down, contributing slightly
more than $1,800 each.
At the other end of the spectrum, in 1994
seven founders of Sowing Circle/OccidentalArts & Ecology Center bought an 80-acre,owner-financed fully-developed “turn-key” prop-erty in Sonoma County, California with rollinghills, panoramic views, stands of oak and red-wood, two 20-year-old organic gardens, and 16community buildings and cabins. They paid$850,000, with each member contributing about$20,000 to the $150,000 down payment.
Figure on several hundred thousand dollars
or more to buy and develop your land, depend-ing on your desired area and the magnitude ofyour plans. The cost per person will depend onhow many founders and/or members split thecosts. If you use owner financing, private financ-ing, or bank financing, multiply that amount sev-eral times over for the true land-purchase cost,including all the principal and interest paymentsyou’ll be making over the years. (See Chapters 9,10, 11, 12, and 14.)
How Long Does it Take?
It also takes enormous amounts of time to pull
off a project of this magnitude. Even if you meetweekly, you’ll still need people to work on variouscommittees that work and/or meet betweenscheduled meetings — gathering information,calling officials, crunching the numbers, draftingproposals, and so on — for at least a year, or eventwo years or longer.
The founders of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
in Missouri first explored their ideas and organ-ized their initial group in 1993, began their landsearch in 1995, and bought land in 1996. Theyworked steadily to develop it and raise their pop-ulation for the next six years, and they continueto do so. The founders of Earthaven Ecovillagein North Carolina began with an original group
in 1990, searched for land for four years, reorgan-ized their group and bought land in 1994, andrefinanced and began developing in 1995. Theyhave spent the past seven years developing it andincreasing their membership, and they also con-tinue to do so.
Generally, the larger your group and/or the
smaller your assets, the longer it’ll take. And thefewer your numbers and the greater your assets,the faster it will happen. For example, thefounder of Mariposa Grove, an urban communi-ty in Oakland, California, began looking forproperty in 1998, bought it in cash in 1999, andspent the next three years renovating it andattracting members. The two founders of LostV alley Educational Center found their propertyin 1988, bought it (also paying cash) in 1989, andrenovated it and got it ready to host workshopparticipants by 1990. They’ve spent the past 12years continuing to develop the physical infra-structure and build the community.
So this is really a trick question. While it can
take from a year to several years to find and buyproperty, develop it, and establish your member-ship and financial base, there’s really no endpoint. Like a marriage or a business, growing acommunity is never really “done.”
How Many People do You Need?
Forming community groups usually start outwith one or two or a few people with an idea,grow larger (fluctuating in size as people attenda few meetings for awhile and get more involvedor lose interest and leave), and shrink to a muchsmaller number when it’s time to commit moneyto buy a particular piece of property.
See Figure 1 (on page 11) for some examples
of how many people are involved in the commu-nities we’ll examine in this book.10CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 11
Lost Valley 20+ 7 – 12 2 23
Rural (OR) 87 acresFounded 1988-89
Earthaven 150 15 – 20 12 – 21 57
Rural (NC) 320 acresFounded 1990-94
Sowing Circle/ 10 5 – 12 7 11
Occidental Arts & Ecology CenterSemi-rural (CA)80 acresFounded 1991-94
Dancing Rabbit 500 – 1000 20 – 30 6 16
Rural (MO)280 acresFounded 1993-96
Abundant Dawn 40 – 60 12 7 9
Rural (VA)90 acresFounded 1994-96
Mariposa Grove 12 – 13 0 1 9
Urban (CA)Founded 1998-99
Meadowdance 50 – 75 30 – 40 online 6 9
Rural (VT) 20 in-person
Founded 1998-00Community Total Envisioned
# of MembersMembers at Early
MeetingsMembers at
Property
PurchaseMembers in
2002TABLE 1: HOW MANY PEOPLE DO YOU NEED?

It doesn’t just take information and skills,
money, time, and people to form a community,but also a sense of connection, sometimes called“community glue” — born of group experienceslike preparing and eating meals together, workparties, weekend trips, and long, intimate con-versations. Gathering and weaving the thread ofskills, information, money, time, people, andexperiences is complex, and often overwhelming— what cohousing activist Zev Paiss calls “the
longest, most expensive personal-growth work-shop you’ll ever take.”
/fl1lft
Next we’ll take a look at the kind of person
who pulls it off — that unsung hero, the com-munity founder.12CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Newly forming spiritual communities seem to experi-
ence more structural conflict than most groups; proba-bly because spiritual community founders sometimestend towards a soft-focus, whole-picture orientation— what’s popularly called “right-brained” thinking. Thisoften frustrates and even repels other potentialcofounders who may use more logical or systematic“left-brained” thinking. Like Sharon, founders of spiritu-al communities are sometimes accused of deceivingothers about money and power issues, when in factthey simply hadn’t focused on clear, explicit communi-cation about finances and decision-making, and didn’trealize such clarity was necessary. These founders often dismiss the primarily “left-brained” potential
cofounders who could help them, considering themmerely “bean counters,” when the latter simply want tounderstand the financial, legal, and decision-makingarrangements before they leap in wholeheartedly.
If you operate more in right-brained mode, I urge
you to ally yourself with more left-brained compadreswho can help ground your community ideals in work-able business and legal strategies. And if you’re a hard-core left-brainer, I urge you to hook up with more holis-tically oriented colleagues who will help you keep yourheart open and help you remember why you want tobring forth this wonderful vision in the first place.
WE SET OUT TO CHANGE OUR WORLD…
by Roberta Wilson
As fate would have it, Winslow Cohousing onBainbridge Island near Seattle, formed in 1988, endedup being the first owner-developed cohousing com-munity in the U.S. We certainly didn’t have much experience to go on. Only one of us had lived in anintentional community, and only a few had even visited any intentional communities. None of us had seen cohousing in Denmark, and of course there were
no models of it close to home. What we had wasMcCamant and Durrett’s
Cohousing book and an
incredible amount of energy.
As with all communities, we made some wise
choices and some poor ones. We met every week-end for over two years, with many of us meeting in SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES: TROUBLE IN PARADISE

THE SUCCESSFUL TEN PERCENT — AND WHY NINETY PERCENT FAIL 13
committees during the week. This vigorous schedule
allowed us to buy land, get through the constructionprocess, and move into our 30 duplexes and flats bySpring 1992, but it cost us potential members whocouldn’t devote such time to development. Findingloans for what looked to financial institutions likesome kind of middle-income commune was difficultand may have cost one credit union representative hisjob. The stress resulting from engaging some of ourown members to work for us hurt the group and hurtsome of these members as well. Our original groupwas deeply bonded by the sheer effort of the project.Yet, after move-in we retreated to our individualhomes to recuperate. While our idealism had carriedus through the forming stages, we weren’t quite pre-pared for the reality of living cooperatively — so manyof us were used to having our own way in the world.
We also had the inevitable turnover. We had prob-
lems with new residents who either had their ownheroic notions, or who soared and then dove as thehoneymoon phase ended. We had kids who couldn’tget along, a dog that bit, divorces and deaths, birthsand celebrations. For the most part, our surroundingneighbors were friendly. We figured out a work sys-tem, each serving on clusters — Administration,Process and Communication, Grounds, and CommonFacilities. We figured out a meal system, with dinnersfive nights a week. We figured out how to work withconsensus. We learned to keep good track of ourfinances, and we continued to work towards emo-tional literacy. We still struggle with issues such asmember participation and how to make capitalimprovements, yet our meetings are now civil, effi-cient, and more emotionally honest. Folks have foundtheir own level after the first years of feeling over-whelmed. Some of them have been disappointedwith the lack of emotional intimacy, while others,
especially teens, have felt uncomfortable living in afishbowl.
At times, most of us have probably asked our-
selves, “What am I
doing here?” — a question, I
believe, that arises from a complex calculation oftime and energy spent and one’s tolerance for con-flict. Sometimes I’ve asked myself, after a difficultconfrontation, why I should put so much of my lifeenergy into something that seems, at the time, to giveback little. Yet I’m sure that at other times each of ushas surely declared: “I can’t
imagine living anywhere
else!” — a response to the very personal exchangesthat make living in community so rewarding. I can callmy neighbor and ask her to turn off the coffee potthat I forgot. Children come to visit and play with mydog. A neighbor pauses from her chores a momentand tells me about her life. In the forest, we scatterthe ashes of a member who died; in our orchard, webury the family dog. A neighbor’s sister comes to stayand offers massages. The children are delivered toschool by adults who share the duty. Our communi-ty feels safe.
The idealism, dreams, and devotion, while still
here, have given ground to the practical and the realexperience of living in community — the good, thebad, and the ugly. Community is seeping into ourcells, I believe, so that even the challenges becomejust part of who we each are. Cooperative culture isgaining ground over our individual upbringing in com-petition; slowly, we are giving up the need forabsolute control. We set out to change our world, andnow community is changing us.
Excerpted with permission from Communities
Magazine , Spring 2000.

VALERIE NAIMAN W AS A WOMAN with a
mission.
In 1991, as she and a group of people inter-
ested in forming community in the mountains ofwestern North Carolina began their land search,she sold her local business so she could devotefull time to the project. T o better understand thelocal real estate market and real estate financing,she studied for and got real estate sales and bro-kers’ licenses, and took a job with a local realtycompany, which allowed the group to learnabout any new properties as soon as they cameon the market.
She also contacted communitarians nation-
wide, asking which legal entities they’d chosen forgroup land ownership, and why, and she learnedas much as she could about the various legal enti-ties communities could use to own propertytogether. She studied Community Land T rustsby making calls to the School of Living inPennsylvania, and by visiting the Institute forCommunity Economics in Ohio, organizationsthat help groups set up Community Land T rusts.She eventually didn’t recommend this specificform of land ownership to the group, and theylater created a Homeowner’s Association to ownproperty and a 501(c)3 non-profit to carry out itseducational mission.In 1993, the group found 320 acres of owner-
financed land that fit most of their criteria. Afterthe group spent over a year in confusion and con-flict about the community’s ultimate vision, andwhether or not to buy this particular property,V alerie drew up and submitted a contract on theland herself, with a loophole in case she neededto get out of it. She hosted a “founders meeting”of tea and fundraising, inviting group memberswho shared the same community vision, and aninterest in this particular property, as well asother local people interested in forming an inten-tional community. By the end of the afternoonthey had raised the $100,000 down payment.
Over the next few months the group contin-
ued adding members and raising funds to begindeveloping the property, and bought it inDecember 1994.
The following year, V alerie visited the E. F .
Schumacher Society in Massachusetts to learnhow the group could create a small, private “shoebox bank” to raise funds. The group adopted thisidea, created the EarthShares fund, and over thenext few years raised enough money to pay offthe owner-financers.
Other founders of “successful ten percent”
communities have traveled a similar path. Recentcollege graduates T ony Sirna and Cecil Scheib
14/fl1lftChapter 2 /fl1rt
Your Role as Founder

were environmental activists with degrees in
computer science and civil engineering respec-tively, before founding Dancing Rabbit inMissouri. They educated themselves well in realestate, zoning regulations, financing possibilities,and non-profit legal structures to buy their landand create the financial and legal structures thatsupport their ecovillage dream.
In order to establish the Sowing Circle com-
munity and its non-profit educational organiza-tion, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center,cofounder Dave Henson left his environmentalactivist job and spent eight months as the group’sfull-time point person. He researched possibleproperty sites and sources of financing anddonations, negotiated with the owner of theirchosen site, and drafted and instituted variousfinancial and legal plans through which to carryout their purpose.
And Luc Reid, a software engineer and
cofounder of Meadowdance community inV ermont, was an almost full-time on-line andoff-line student of every aspect of communitydevelopment he could find, learning as much ashe could about what had and had not workedwell in other recently formed communities.
Contrast these folks with Sharon and
Gracelight community. W ell-meaning and moti-vated, Sharon nevertheless hadn’t a clue that sheneeded to educate herself in new fields anddevelop new skills to pull off a task of this mag-nitude. Community founders must anticipatechallenges not faced by community founders ofearlier times. These include the fact that “ideal”property isn’t ideal if zoning regulations andbuilding codes prevent you from developing itthe way you want to. If your group wants ruralland, a lack of decent-paying local jobs will affectyour community’s attractiveness to future mem-bers. Difficulty attracting members will affectyour ability to pay back any land purchase and
development loans, so your group must con-sider your site relative to available jobs beforebuying land. And the initial impression yourgroup makes on potential neighbors willaffect whether they will support your gettingany needed conditional use permits or zoningvariances.
What Kind of Person Founds a
Community?
Certain recognizable characteristics stand out in
successful community founders, or at leastamong “burning souls” — a cohousing term forvision-driven founders who work zealously tomanifest their dreams.
Dianne Brause and Kenneth Mahaffey of
Lost V alley are clearly burning souls. So areV alerie Naiman of Earthaven, T ony Sirna andCecil Scheib of Dancing Rabbit, Dave Hensonof Sowing Circle/OAEC, Luc Reid ofMeadowdance, and other founders you’ll meet inthese pages.
Founders need to be visionaries — people
who can imagine, visualize, or feel somethingthat doesn’t exist yet. Most of the group seeingthe Lost V alley property for the first time saw adreary wreck; Kenneth and Dianne saw a thriv-ing community and well-appointed, successfulconference center.
Founders must be leaders — people who can
inspire others to believe a particular vision ispossible and who motivate them to take actionand make that vision come true. The people whojoined Dianne and Kenneth at Lost V alleywouldn’t have jumped into that uncertain ven-ture, or worked so fiercely over the first year,without Dianne’s and Kenneth’s burning beliefthat Lost V alley would soon host successfulworkshops and conferences.YOUR ROLE AS FOUNDER 15

Founders of “the ten percent” are often suc-
cessful entrepreneurs, or have at least one experi-enced entrepreneur in their group. T echnicallyan entrepreneur is someone with the ability toorganize and manage a business, assuming therisk for the sake of the profit, but I’m referringmainly to the aspect of instinctive business savvy— someone with an inner “radar” about whatwill work financially. Entrepreneurs take risks,based as much on intuition as on experience.They take the initiative. They’re focused, task-oriented, on-point. They know how to createbudgets and strategic plans. Kenneth Mahaffeywas a successful real estate investor beforecofounding Lost V alley; he took an enormousrisk buying property that might require paying$50,000 of back taxes and might not have thenecessary use permit restored. V alerie Naimanhad been a successful movie costume designerand owner of a retail costume shop; she took ahuge risk by selling her business and investingtime and money to pursue legal structures andreal estate for an untested, non-mainstream proj-ect, then investing substantial sums inEarthaven’s down payment and EarthSharesfund. Not all people with this ability use it tomak e m o n ey . Da v e H ens o n, w h o has en tr ep r e-neurial savvy in spades, was a fairly well-knownand effective environmental activist beforecofounding the Sowing Circle/OAEC project.
And lastly, founders must be physical
builders — people who know how to alter theirproperty to help create their vision, from reno-vating a building to digging ponds, building cab-ins, or erecting solar panels. Kenneth Mahaffeyand Dianne Brause and the first members threwthemselves into cleaning and renovating the LostV alley property, as did Dave Henson and his fel-low cofounders at Sowing Circle/OAEC. Assoon as they’d purchased their properties, V alerieNaiman and the cofounders of Earthaven, and
T ony Sirna and Cecil Schaub and thecofounders of Dancing Rabbit, immediatelybegan building roads, setting up camping areas,and creating the first rudimentary shelters ontheir undeveloped parcels of land.
Vision, leadership, entrepreneurial skill, and
willingness to physically build must be present inyour group, but not necessarily all in the sameperson. As founders you must certainly havevision — without which nothing will happen.Y ou’ll need leadership to inspire yourselves andthose who’ll join you to support that vision.Y ou’ll need one or more entrepreneurs whoknow what will work financially, and who arewilling to take a risk — and thus inspire the restof you to take a risk. And you’ll need to get phys-ical on the land to turn your vision into reality.
Given these “ingredients,” here’s my recipe for
growing an intentional community:
1. Imagine, visualize, or feel something that
doesn’t exist yet.
2. Inspire yourselves and those that join you to
believe your particular vision is possible andyou can make it happen.
3. Use entrepreneurial skills to do all this with-
in your estimated budget and time frame(revising either as necessary).
4. Use labor, tools, and energy to create the
physical expression of your vision on yourproperty.
What Else You’ll Need
Y our group will also need patience, faith, goodcommunication skills, tenacity, and the willing-ness to acknowledge each other.
•Have patience. Forming an effective
working group, learning good decision-16CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

making and group process skills,
researching your options, acquiring and ifnecessary developing property simplytakes time — from one to several years,depending on the scale of your plans, howmany are in your group, how well capital-ized you are, and other factors.Regardless of how everyone in yourgroup would like things to progress morequickly, they probably won’t. Y ou’ll alsoneed to consider the timetables of othersinvolved, including lawyers, zoning offi-cials, and lenders. Elana Kann and BillFleming, project managers for W estwoodCohousing in Asheville, North Carolina,warn that founders must understand andaccept the difference between what is andwhat is not in their control. Elana andBill observe that probably 95 percent ofthe major variables involved in a formingcommunity are not in the founders’ con-trol — land value and availability, banks’lending policies, and city or county zon-ing regulations. T o make expectationsmore realistic and reduce anxiety, someexperienced community founders recom-mend taking your most optimistic timingestimate at the beginning of your projectand doubling it.
Faith. T rust that it’s meant to be, that
you’re being guided by a higher power.Dianne Brause would have been over-whelmed by fear and a sense of responsi-bility in what she and Kenneth and theothers were attempting to pull off, butwas repeatedly saved by her willingness totrust that it was meant to be. “ After somany synchronistic events that didn’t fitthe scientific odds, I chose to act as ifsome higher force was really in charge,that the project was really a kind of
sacred trust that we were privileged totake on,” she recalls. “This belief allowedme to trust that things were actuallybeing taken care of.” Other founders haverelayed similar stories of trust andcourage in the face of what seemed likeoverwhelming odds against their project.
Good communication skills. Y our group
will no doubt find strength in your mem-bers’ diversity, yet that can also be a chal-lenge. Y ou’ll need to learn how to hearand accept perspectives quite differentfrom your own. Besides obvious differ-ences of gender, age, economic circum-stances, or spiritual or religious orienta-tion, you may differ widely in your com-munication styles and in your needs forsafety, self expression, recognition, andconnection. Some will express themselvesintensely, and often. Some will share howthey feel; others will consider bringing upfeelings irrelevant or annoying. Some willwant to gather data, consider options,and plan extensively, while others willwant to dispense with talking and “get onwith it.” In fact, the kinds of peopleattracted to forming community are typi-cally explorers, doers, risk-takers, andentrepreneurs — and as such, likely to beimpatient with the nuances of skilledgroup process or consensus decisionmaking.
T enacity. Y ou’ll need determination and
stamina. The ability to hold to a visionand persevere has made all the differencebetween groups that built their commu-nities and those that felt too discouragedto continue. Sometimes it will seem likethe process is going well and moving for-
YOUR ROLE AS FOUNDER 17

ward; other times it’ll feel like you’re
stopped at every turn. Keep your eyes onthe goal, lean into the wind, and keeptraveling.
Willingness to acknowledge others.
Y ou’ll need to thank and acknowledgeeach other many times for ideas, propos-als, legwork, research, patience, livingroom meeting space, snacks, tea, andchildcare. There’s no faster way to slowdown progress than burnout, which usu-ally results from too many long hours ofcontributing to a common cause withoutrecognition or acknowledgment. Y ou’reall essentially volunteers — gifting thegroup with your time and life energy tofulfill your vision. Y ou’re going to need tofeed each other with the basic nourish-ment that keeps volunteers going — thesimple courtesy of heartfelt thanks.
“If Only I Had Known!”
“Why would anyone want to go through all this?”
exclaimed Patricia Greene, after she’d given herheart and soul to forming a new community thatdisbanded after the first year.
Why don’t they just join one?” ask some
long-time activists in the communities move-ment. “So many communities have alreadydone all the start-up work, why do that all overagain?” Most community activists have metscores of shiny-eyed idealists sharinggrandiose-sounding plans for community whoclearly have no idea how much hard, humblingwork is involved.
And it’s true — growing a new community is
at least as difficult as it is rewarding. I’ve heardmore than one founder say: “If I’d had any idea
how hard this would be I never would have doneit!” After a pause, however, they usually add witha smile, “Thank God I didn’t know, though,
because here we are.”
“Be careful what you tell your readers about
forming community,” warns a friend who livedfor years at a permaculture-based community inNew England. “Don’t be so realistic about theprocess that you scare them off.” He told me if Ireally wanted to help potential communityfounders achieve their goals, maybe I should sayrelatively little, so I don’t discourage anyonewho’d otherwise just plunge in and figure it outas they went along, as most community foundersdo. Whatever your level of interest in forming anew community, it’s my hope that after readingthis book you’ll either say, “Great, I’m inspired.Let’s get started,” or,“Whew, I’m glad I found that
out. I’ll join one instead!”
I know a fine couple whom any community
would covet as members. He’s a carpenter, she’s awriter. Both are lively, intelligent, spirituallyinspired individuals who have decades of previ-ous community experience between them. Butno community they’ve visited has seemed quiteright, in its location, its financial arrangements,or in its qualities of spiritual and intellectual“juice.” I don’t think this couple is too picky.They know just what they want and they haven’tfound it yet. I think they’re simply communityfounders at heart. And you may be too.
/fl1lft
So let’s move on. Next chapter — getting yourgroup off to a good start.18CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

SUNDAYS AT DUMAWISH
“We’re Creating Something More Than
Mere Housing Here”
by Virginia Lore
It is Sunday, which means that we will spend three to
four hours today with our cohousing partners, talkingabout pavers and concrete mosaics, our new waitinglist policy and how to save the birch trees on the westend of the property. About 40 of us will crowd intoKurt and Kara’s living room, and, using colored cards,will make decisions in nine minutes that would havetaken Kevin and me two days to debate. Small chil-dren will wander up from the childcare area down-stairs for whispered consultations with their parents.They will be sent back down when the conversationgets too intense. Sometimes I’ll go down with them.The intensity almost always gives me a headache.
There is plenty to be intense about. We’re six
months away from move-in, and the walls are beingframed. We’re one household away from full member-ship. Since Kevin and I joined this summer, we’ve seenfive households join and one household withdraw. Ouraffiliate membership process is rigorous, and unit selec-tion is based on the date of affiliate membership. Thesedecisions have not been made without introspection,earnest discussion (mediation in two cases), and tears.
There are times when I would rather be anywhere
than in another cohousing meeting. Today, for exam-ple. If I were less committed, I’d be home on thecouch, eating popcorn and watching
The Big Chill. So
why will I go to the meeting instead?
I will go partly because I’ve skipped the last two
weeks. Most of us have to take an occasional breakfrom the fervor of the construction process. I have noqualms about trusting the community to make deci-sions, which will ultimately be best for the sum of us.
I will go partly because I want to see people. Imiss the folks I don’t see on the development com-
mittee. I want to see how much Eleanor has grown inthe last two weeks, to hug Mem, and to find out howBruce and Karen are enjoying the group. I look forwardto Ethel’s earthy laugh, Kurt’s jokes, and to watchingfrom across the room as Meg puts a quilt together.
Mostly, however, I will go out of faith. Cohousing
is now both my religion and my politics. I continue toask myself “Is this best for the group?” before puttingup my green “Yes” card in response to a proposal,because I sense we are creating something larger thanmere housing here.
If there is a cathedral for this new church of ours,
it is the land. We have watched as the land wascleared and the grading completed. We have seen theretaining wall built — the earth pinned into place bygrouting and rebar, held by shotcrete. We havewatched from the street above the site the installationof the footings, the pouring of foundations. We havewatched the units at the far end go up first — we’vewitnessed the snaky white neoprene tubing laid forthe radiant floor heating, and come back to the meet-ings to tell each other, “They’ve started framing!”
This is what keeps me going to the meetings: in six
months we will be neighbors, part of somethingwe’ve all built together. If our process makes us moreloving, unselfish and useful to each other, that is onlyto be expected. In this community, we will not onlyhave potlucks and hold babies, but we will practicegentleness, honesty, love and compassion in a tribalsetting. We’ll have a place to eat, work, and makemusic among folks we have learned to trust, and it isthis we will offer to the world around us.
It is as if we are both watching a miracle happen
and creating it at the same time. Could there be anybetter way to spend a Sunday?
Excerpted with permission from
Communities magazine, Spring 2000.YOUR ROLE AS FOUNDER 19

YOUR GROUP HAS GATHERED FOR your first
meeting to talk about forming a new com-
munity. Where do you start?
I suggest starting with a general overview of
the basic steps involved in growing an intention-al community. Y ou could begin by asking every-one in your in your group to skim through thisbook, then read it more thoroughly later on, andthen read some of the recommended resourcesfor more in-depth information.
There is also a wealth of information to be
found on community websites. Y ou’ll find photosof communities, vision statements, lists of values
and goals, outlines of community processes, andcommunity histories. By browsing communitywebsites you’ll get a wonderful sense of the rich andvaried possibilities for community organization.
Visiting communities is another excellent
way to empower your community dreams withreal-life reality checks. I also suggest talking withas many founders as you can, of both communi-ties that are thriving, as well as those that arestruggling or didn’t work out. My hope is thatyou’ll begin your community journey with agreat deal of information and increasingly realis-tic expectations.
While the following chapters describe steps
community founders can take, don’t assumethese steps are linear. The process of growing acommunity is more organic — simultaneouslyongoing andstep by step. See T able 2 for an idea
of what this can mean.
Cohousing communities have a slightly dif-
ferent process from other communities. Someadditional key steps can include partnering witha developer, raising development financing, get-ting a construction loan, and securing individualmortgages. (See Chapter 12.) This is an increas-ingly popular model of intentional communityin which people develop, build, and manage their
20/fl1lftChapter 3 /fl1rt
Getting Off to a Good Start
VISITING ESTABLISHED COMMUNITIES
Visiting communities can bring a sense of reality to the
project — and hone your sense of what you want, anddon’t want, in your community. I suggest contacting anycommunities you’d like to visit ahead of time and askingwhether they welcome visitors. Ask if you can offer sev-eral hours’ labor when you visit them, as communitiesalways need extra labor for work projects, and yourbeing willing to work will make them more likely to inviteyou. Bring old clothes, work gloves. and food to share.You’ll learn much and will probably have a great time. Besure to send a thank-you note afterwards.

Organize your
group ———>
(Chapter 3)Create your
vision documents———>(Chapter 4-5)Research the
real estatemarket in yourdesired area ——————>(Chapters 9-10)Research
zoning issues inyour desiredarea: possible
costs to getexceptions ifneeded ——->(Chapter 11)Learn your
financingoptions: figure
out your group’sborrowingpower ———->(Chapter 12)Develop or
renovate yourproperty asneeded ——————>
(Chapter 13)
GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 21
Develop good communication skills ———-> ongoing -————————————————————>
Learn to deal well with conflict ————> ongoing ——————————————————————>
(Chapters 17-18)
Research com-munities: Learn
as much as youcan about howfounders formedthem ———>(All chapters)Decision-
makingmethod: choose
(and learn howto use them)
————->
(chapter 6)Choose a loca-
tion: create site
criteria———->(Chapter 9-10)
Choose & set
up your legalentity. ———>
(Chap’s 8, 15-16)Conduct your
propertysearch:choose yourproperty ——>
(Chapters 9-10)Finance and
buy yourproperty—————>(Chapter 12)Organize your
internal communityfinances (and
reorganize asneeded)
(Chapter 14)
Create community agreements & documents —————> ongoing ———————————————>
(Chapter 7)
Choose new people to join you ——————-> ongoing ———————————————————>
(Chapter 19)
own neighborhoods. They live in smaller-than-
normal housing units and share ownership ofcommunity areas, usually including a commongreen, a garden space, and a large common build-ing with a kitchen and dining room, children’splay area, laundry facilities, and guest rooms.
Members optionally share dinners together sev-eral evenings a week, and usually make decisionsby consensus.TABLE 2: THE COMMUNITY-GROWING PROCESS
—————> ——————>
*Remember, most of the above steps are not linear, but can overlap.

Don’t Run Out and Buy Land — Yet
Many people interested in starting a community
assume the first thing you should do is buy land.Even though a beautiful piece of property can betempting, buying your property first is generallynota good idea — and can be a huge risk for con-
flict later because all the necessary structureshaven’t been put in place. I advise against itunless you’ve taken the following steps:
1. One person or a small group already has the
necessary funds to buy it, and can cover itsmortgage payments for a year or so.2. The person or small group has set up an
appropriate legal entity for property owner-ship, or sets it up soon after.
3. The documents of the legal entity (or other
community documents) spell out the rela-tionship of each future member’s financialcontribution toward ownership and deci-sion-making rights, whether people will haveequity in the property, and other financialissues.
4. The individual or small group buying the
property have agreed on the vision for thecommunity and have created its vision22CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
MANY WAYS TO FORM COMMUNITY
Property and Housing
 Buy or rent several houses on the same block andshare backyards; turn one into a community building. Buy or rent a large house and turn some of its roomsinto common areas. Rent apartments in an apartment building; turn oneapartment into shared common community space.  Buy an apartment building (or buy several housingunits in a planned community, condominium, or hous-ing co-op) and do the same. Buy land with an existing house or houses (or anoffice building, retail store, factory building, ware-house, theater, church, or motel) and turn it into hous-ing and common areas.  Buy a former conference center or camp and do thesame.  Buy raw land and start from scratch.
Ownership
 The community can own the whole property andlease housing facilities or homesites to members.  Members can hold title to their individual housingunits or lots and houses, and share ownership of com-mon land and community buildings.Degree of Closeness
 Community members can be closely involved ineach other’s lives — sharing living space or kitchens,living in close proximity, sharing equipment and tools,or having a car co-op. Members can be less involved — living in separatehousing units or in separate houses (in clustered hous-ing, in more widely spaced but still clustered housing,or on separate lots), or sharing fewer resources incommon.
Degree of Financial Interdependence
 Community members can work for community busi-nesses (and/or outside businesses), share incomes,and share a common treasury. They can have a hybrid economy — working forcommunity businesses and sharing profits for food,housing, medical insurance and other necessities, butkeeping any outside earnings or assets separate. They can have fully independent incomes, and sharesome or many community expenses.

documents, and anyone joining subse-
quently must necessarily agree to thisvision. Or these will be created by the ini-tial buyers and the people joining themsoon after — but none of the new people will
put their money in until the vision is fully
agreed upon and written down, and every-one knows what it is they’re agreeing tojoin.
Why all these safeguards should be in place
will become clear as you read on.
When You Already Own the Property
Many aspiring community founders are peoplewho’d like to turn their family-owned land intoan intentional community, or groups of friendswho have just purchased land together and ask,“Now what?”
If your group has already purchased land,
every chapter in this book is still relevant to yoursituation, except perhaps Chapter 10 on findingthe right property and Chapter 12 on financingit. Definitely read “Legal Barriers to SustainableDevelopment” and “Shopping for Counties —Zoning Regulations, Building Codes,Sustainable Homesteads, and Jobs” in Chapter 9,as well as Chapter 11 on zoning — you still mayhave these issues to deal with.
Frankly, property owners who want to turn
their already-owned land into the site for anintentional community often have the greatestchallenge, even though it may seem as if theyhave already overcome the largest hurdle. Whenone or more people are the owner-landlords andthe rest are tenants, or when a land-based busi-ness is also involved and one or more people arethe owner-employers and the rest employees,there’s an imbalance of power. The owners haveenormous power over everyone else, who can beevicted or fired at any time. And the owners have
privileges the others probably do not, such as, forexample, the right to all financial knowledge con-cerning the property or business, and the right toenter or lock others out of any building on theproperty.
The owners often have a genuine desire to
experience a sense of community in the group, aswell as a strong desire to retain control over allaspects of property use and any activities whichcould affect property value — since, after all theybear sole financial risk for it. But these twodesires are essentially incompatible. Y ou can’tsimultaneously have “community” and total con-trol over the whole property. This situation oftenresembles a “feudal lord and serfs” situation.People move there believing the place is a com-munity, yet have no financial/legal risk or respon-sibility and no real decision-making power, evenwhen the landlord/employers may have set upsome kind of “consensus” process (which theycan of course override anytime). Not to mentionthat the tenants/employees may consciously orunconsciously resent the owners for having allthe power. Or that the owners may truly believethey don’t want power over anyone — but areunwilling to relinquish it until or unless othersshoulder their load of the financial, legal, main-tenance, and other responsibilities. Or that how-ever benign the owners, the others may projectall kinds of parental/authority-figure issues ontothem, further clouding the issue. Such inadver-tent “fiefdoms” tend to repel competent, solvent,and informed community seekers, yet attractpeople with few skills and limited funds who are,perhaps unconsciously, seeking a generous “par-ent” to take care of them. The owners end upfunctioning like a subs titute mom or dad —
whether or not they welcome the role — with apassel of community “children” to look after.
GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 23

This isn’t community — no matter how badly
everyone wants it!
A situation like this canwork, however, when
there are agreements about how people can buyin to property ownership and how the size oftheir financial contribution (equal shares?unequal shares?) relates to decision-makingrights. There must also be a legal entity for own-ing the property together, which ideally outlinesthese agreements in its bylaws or operatingagreements. (See Chapter 9.) The group mustalso find a way to legally protect the owner fromthe ongoing financial and legal responsibilitiessuch as mortgage payments, property taxes,insurance, and maintenance costs, and legallyshare these responsibilities, such as through aT riple Net Lease document. (See Chapter 12.)
What if some or all potential community
members cannot afford the entire buy-in fee atonce, but can make a down payment and mort-gage payments over time? One solution would befor the owner to become the owner-financer —the “bank” — and set up promissory notes witheach person. (See Chapter 12.)
What if the property is worth so much
money, say, several million dollars, that theowner cannot find enough (or any) other poten-tial community members who, even with owner-financing, can afford to buy in and equally shareproperty ownership? One solution could be tosubdivide a smaller portion of the property andmake it available to shared group ownership.Another possibility is individual member owner-ship of separate lots (or a cohousing-typearrangement with individually owned housingunits and shared common property). A clause incommunity membership documents could out-line members’ rights and responsibilities aboutusing and enjoying the adjoining larger property.The owner would still own and control theexpensive property, and could be one member
among many in shared ownership of the subdi-vided property.
What if the owner wants to preserve the
property in perpetuity as wilderness, or farm-land, or community, for example, and doesn’tmind taking a financial loss in terms of the rightto sell it one day at full market value? The ownercan place a conservation easement on the prop-erty or create a land trust or community landtrust before seeking like-minded fellow mem-bers. (See Chapter 16.)
If you’re a property owner seeking to create
community on your land, please take these issuesinto account. Be willing to release total controland find ways for people to become fully partici-pating, responsibility-sharing fellow communitymembers. And if you cannot or don’t want torelease full control but still want live in closeproximity with others, please do so and enjoy it— but don’t advertise it as “community”!
Organizing Your Group
Following are some start-up suggestions and rec-ommendations from other founders:
Decide how often you’ll meet, and where. It
helps to schedule meetings on the same day atregular intervals, for example, every Sunday from1:30 to 5:00. Y ou might begin by meetingmonthly or every other week, but when youbegin exploring financial and legal options andstart your land search, you’ll most likely need tomeet weekly, with smaller committees workingon various tasks between meetings.
At the same time, you’ll need to be flexible in
your expectations about meeting participation.W eekly meetings can become tiresome, especial-ly for parents of small children. Some groupshave found ways to make participation easier for24CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

people, by arranging for childcare during meet-
ings, sending meeting agendas out ahead of time,or using e-mail or phone surveys to gather inputand ideas. Since some people will have consider-ably more time to devote to the project than oth-ers, some groups have created an internal “timebank” system of credits for hours spent in meet-ings, committee work, and research tasks. Thegeneral idea is that each member “owes” the com-munity a certain number of credits over a periodof several years. This way people who can’t offermuch project time in the present have the oppor-tunity to make up for it later.
Choose a decision-making method; decide how
you’ll run meetings. If you chose consensus as
your decision-making method, get trained in itas a group, or you could end up operating fromwidely divergent assumptions about how it’sdone, or crippling your meetings with “pseudo-consensus.” (See Chapter 6.)
Y ou’ll also need to decide how meetings will
be run. Most groups learn, after time, to allownewcomers and visitors to offer ideas and opin-ions, but to limit decision-making rights to groupmembers. Some suggestions and informationabout conducting meetings are offered below.
Facilitation. Having a facilitator can make
all the difference in how productively andsmoothly your meetings run. Y ou canarrange for one or more group membersto be trained in facilitation, or you canhave all members take a facilitation work-shop, and rotate the role in your group.Y ou could also exchange meeting facilita-tion with other communities or withforming-community groups in your area.
Agendas. Having meeting agendas created
ahead of time and sent out to everyone inyour group before meetings makes a hugedifference in how well your meetings
function. Agenda planners schedule eachitem for discussion in a particular meet-ing, and note expected amounts of dis-cussion time for each. People won’t beable to attend every meeting, and know-ing what topics will be decided or dis-cussed ahead of time allows them toattend particular meetings, based on theirown priorities.
Evaluation. Allow time at the end of the
meeting for evaluation, listing on a largepiece of easel paper what you did well andwhat could have been better. Doing thisregularly will help your group improvecommunication and meeting skills.
Minutes. Decide who will take notes or
minutes, what you’ll include in them, howthey’ll be distributed, and by whom.Encourage people in your group who aregood at taking minutes to do it regularly.Distribute the completed minutes toeveryone by e-mail and/or postal mail.
Decide on some general principles for your
community. As a preliminary step, and as prepa-
ration for your later visioning process, ask your-selves what are the general principles uponwhich you’ll base your community. Define yourbottom lines in terms of:
Potential location and relationship to the
land (urban or rural, small gardens orlarge farming operation, and so on).
Preferred distances from cities, major
airports, educational resource centerssuch as colleges or universities, wildernessor recreation areas, and other placesimportant to your group.
Lifestyle issues (whether you’ll have diet
preferences, or will be oriented to single
GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 25

people, families with children, or multiple
generations; pet issues; sexual orientationand gender issues; drug-use issues).
Preferred financial set up (whether
everyone will contribute the same or dif-ferent amounts, or contributions will betied to decision-making rights; or whichexpenses the community might share).
Spiritual issues (whether you’ll have a
preferred spiritual orientation or practice,be spiritually eclectic, or secular).
Political issues (whether you’ll be
activists, or will support politically activemembers).
Educational issues (whether you’ll offer
classes, or will be a model and demon-strate site, and so on).
Create a preliminary financial model. As noted
in Chapter 1, you’ll need to create a rough finan-cial model to get a general idea of the amount ofmoney to raise. Read Chapters 9 through 16 toget a sense of the steps involved. Then consider
your probable type of location (urban, suburban,semi-rural, or rural), your preferred area and cur-rent property values there, and whether you’llseek raw land, developed property, or a fullydeveloped turn-key property, in order to esti-mate likely down payment and mortgage costs.Also estimate the costs of attracting more mem-bers (if applicable), creating your legal entity,searching for likely properties and investigatingthe best ones, and any property development orrenovation. Divide these by your estimated finalnumber of members for a rough estimate of howmuch the project may cost each member house-hold. If you don’t have information for some ofthese variables, take your best guess. Comparethis information with your group’s probableassets and borrowing power (see “Getting RealAbout Finances”). As noted earlier, if the num-bers are too high, revise your assumptions (forexample about your desired location or numberof members), and try again.
W ork out a preliminary timeline. Ask your-
selves the length of time in which you’d ideallylike to accomplish everything necessary to moveto community and set up your physical infra-structure. Creating a preliminary timeline basedon this estimate will provide a baseline for com-paring your expectations to the reality as itu n f o l d s . Y o u w i l l m o s t l i k e l y n e e d t o r e v i s e i tmany times as you progress through the steps.
Timelines, like budgets and flow charts, are
planning tools to help you anticipate what mightbe needed at various points, and to give your-selves a series of small goals to help you achievelarger milestones. Timelines can also be helpfulby serving as a kind of visualization tool. It’s theprocess of planning — not necessarily any givenplan — that’s important.26CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
SOWING CIRCLE’S GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Here’s what Sowing Circle founders agreed on and
wrote down as their principles:1. We’ll support an educational center.2. We’ll be non-dogmatic and diverse.3. We’re not attached to any one lifestyle, diet, or
spiritual purpose.
4. We’ll consider each person in a couple relationship
as a single, individual member.
5. We’ll each make equal financial contributions and
have equal shares of ownership.
6. We’ll each have equal decision-making rights and
each contribute equal amounts of labor.
7. We’ll share expenses and reduce our level of
consumption.

Create a decision log. A record of decisions is an
invaluable reference. Update it frequently, post acopy on the wall before meetings, make copiesavailable for members to take with them. Give acopy to each new member who joins the group.
When a group doesn’t create a decision log,
people tend to continually revisit the decisionsthat have already been made, which wastes timeand drains the group’s energy. Stand by yourdecisions and resist the temptation to revise pre-vious decisions because new group membersmay want something else. It’s fine to revisit adecision when there is a good reason to do so,but don’t do it frivolously. (See Appendix 2 forBuffalo Creek’s decision log.)
Agree on criteria for group membership. What
qualifies someone to become a decision-makingmember of your group? Are there a minimumnumber of functions or meetings newcomersmust attend before having decision-makingrights? (See Chapter 18.) Many groups find thata small, non-refundable financial investment($100 or so), and/or a smaller dues fee of perhaps$10 a month tends to generate group commit-ment and helps separate out the mildly curious.
Identify your vision and create your vision doc-
uments. The light that will guide all your efforts,
this will be one of your first major tasks as agroup. (See Chapters 4 and 5.)
Keep accurate financial records. In the begin-
ning you’ll probably have minor expenses such asrefreshments, copying, and postage costs. As youbecome more committed, expenses mightinclude consensus facilitation training, expensesassociated with visiting communities or attend-ing communities conferences, and so on. Whilemore significant expenses will arise later, you’llneed to decide at the outset how to keep finan-
cial records, taking into account how much duesor financial contributions will be, and whetherany part of these are refundable, and so on.
Begin writing community policies and agree-
ments. At some point you’ll need to draft agree-
ments and policies, with regard to financialexpectations, communication processes, behav-ioral norms, and other issues. Some of theseyou’ll need now as a forming-community group;others later, as shared owners of your property.(See Chapter 7.)
Help each other stay accountable. Before long
you’ll need to draft documents and budgets, visitproperties, and research financing options, zoningregulations, and other matters. Y ou’ll probablyassign yourselves tasks and completion dates, asmany of these tasks will need to be completed bya particular date so the group can take the nextstep. Y et, because unexpected work or family com-mitments or the inability to manage time wisely,people often don’t do what they say they will, withnegative consequences for the group. Y ou’ll needrelatively painless, guilt-free ways to help you stayaccountable to each other, such as task reviews,task wall charts, buddy systems, and other means.Sowing Circle founders agreed that one personwould call each person to ask if he or she hadcompleted their tasks. It was set up as an officialtracking system, not a criticism, so no one wouldfeel singled out. (See Chapter 17.)
Establish guidelines for group process. This
means making decisions cooperatively, communi-cating honestly, and holding each other account-able for responsibilities. It means giving feedbackand asking for change without making each otherwrong, and facing and resolving conflict.
GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 27

While many groups don’t deal with these
issues until they’re forced to, I believe learningthese skills early in your group life is one of themost significant aspects of creating a healthycommunity. Some groups set aside a separatemeeting once a month where members canopenly express their frustrations or concernsand seek to resolve them. Some amount of con-flict is normal and expected. It’s important tocreate a conflict resolution plan and practice itbefore you have any significant conflict, like hav-ing a fire drill before you have a real fire. (See
Chapters 17 and 18.)
Identify goals, record and celebrate your
progress. Groups, like individuals, feel energized
and successful when they see themselves pro-gressing steadily toward their goals. T o helpfocus your efforts, you can write down each ofyour goals on a timeline chart (for example, cre-ating your visioning documents, getting consen-sus training, creating your site criteria). Post the
28CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Bill Fleming, a cohousing founder, cautions communi-
ty groups against using “magical thinking,” a term for abelief common to four-year olds in which simplyimagining something means it will happen. “Mommy, Ican fly to the moon!”
Community founders engage in magical thinking
when they disdain facts and research gathered byother members on, say, legal options or environmen-tal issues, and consider the research results to be mereopinions, no more valid than anyone else’s. Magicalthinking is in play when people distrust the process ofcounting or measuring anything to predict likely out-comes (acres, square feet, years, dollars, amounts ofprincipal and interest) in favor of intuitive guesses andinner guidance, or by dismissing tools such as budg-ets and business plans as being “oppressive” or“restricting our creative flow.”
This is related to the pervasive anti-business feel-
ing which is common in communities — distrust oroutright fear of financial planning, borrowing money,interest on loans, contracts and written agreements,corporations and other legal entities, and the like. Ican understand it. In my younger years I was against anything remotely related to business, multinational
corporations, or the government. Like many othercountercultural folk, I was also intimidated by toolsand processes used by the mainstream, didn’t under-stand how they worked, and turned them into sym-bols of everything I rejected.
But over time I learned not to mistake the tool for
the motivation. I learned “business” is not the samething as deceitful business practices, money is not thesame thing as domination and the lust for power, legalstructures are not the same as corporate greed.
Every community formed since the early 1990s
that I know of, has been motivated by a spiritualimpulse and/or by environmental and social justiceconcerns. Their founders learned to understand anduse tools also used by mainstream culture — creatinglegal entities, buying property, borrowing money,paying interest — in order to create viable alternatives
tomainstream culture. They use these tools to help
create the kind of world where people shareresources, make decisions cooperatively, and aremindful of their relationships with the Earth, their plantand animal relations, and each other.
I urge you to do the same.“MAGICAL THINKING” AND THE ANTI-BUSINESS ATTITUDE

chart on the wall before meetings, estimating the
date by which you’d like to accomplish each goal.Highlight or circle each goal as you achieve it.Revise the timeline often, since it probably won’tbe accurate for long, but always show youralready-achieved goals. Celebrate when youreach certain milestones; honor and acknowledgewhat you’ve done. Creating community is a hugeundertaking, yet here you are doing it, step bymeasurable step.
Getting Real about Finances
One of the most common pitfalls for forming-community groups is unrealistic expectationsabout how much it will cost. T o become familiarwith the kinds of expenses associated with buy-ing and developing community property, readChapters 9 through12 on locating, buying, andfinancing community land (and keep in mindthat these prices will most likely be higher now).Y ou can get an overview of property prices in thearea you’re considering by looking in the realestate sections of the papers or calling a few real-ty companies there.
How much can you contribute? At some point
you’ll then need to discuss your individual finan-cial situations openly, including whatever incomeor assets you each could make available to theproject. People are reluctant to share their per-sonal financial information for many reasons —normally it’s no one else’s business, and it violatesa cultural taboo. W ealthier people are oftenreluctant to discuss their finances for fear ofmaking themselves vulnerable to reactions rang-ing from resentment to outright violence, whilethose with fewer assets wish to avoid pity or evendismissal by others.
Here’s an exercise you can use to begin the
discussion while preserving everyone’s financialprivacy. Write the following on a sheet of easel
paper and hang it where everyone can see it:
A: Down Payment/Development. Amount
you could pay as an equal financial contribu-tion for the down payment and propertydevelopment.
B: Monthly Member Assessments. Amount
you could pay on an ongoing basis as month-ly member assessment fee for property pay-ments (principal and interest on any loan(s)for property acquisition; property taxes,insurance, repair and maintenance fund).
C: Potential Private Loans. (If applicable)
Amount you could make available to thegroup as a private loan for property purchase
and development.
Hand out identical pieces of paper and ask
each person to write down an amount for A, B,a n d i fa p p l i c a b l e t o t h e m ,C ,w i t h o u t i d e n t i f y i n gthemselves. Collect the papers, add up eachamount, and write these totals on the easelpaper. Without anyone’s feeling embarrassed,you can get a general sense of what your groupcan afford at this point.
If you’re like most groups, you’ll probably
need to borrow money for property acquisition,thus your other financial baseline is your group’stotal borrowing power. T wo exercises in“ Assessing Y our Potential Borrowing Power” (seeChapter 10) can help you figure this out easily.
A t s o m e p o i n t , m e m b e r s w i l l n e e d t o s t o p
being anonymous and let the group know howmuch each may be able to contribute to thedown payment and other land-purchase expens-es, and everyone’s potential borrowing power. Isuggest having general discussions first, thenGETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 29

schedule a discussion at a subsequent meeting
where you’ll tell how much you could contribute,so everyone will have a chance to think about itahead of time.
No doubt a few group members will have far
greater assets than most others, and some willhave far less. More affluent members will be ableto contribute more money than others, either asthe project’s required contribution, or as a privateloan (and sometimes, though it’s rare, as an out-right donation to the project). Keep in mind thatyour group will have several choices with regardto handling contributions to the property pur-chase and development. Some examples include:
Y ou can each pay equal contributions,
and tie those contributions to equal prop-erty ownership rights and responsibilitiesand decision-making rights, as SowingCircle/OAEC founders did.
The community could pay for its proper-
ty purchase and development with loanedfunds, with norequirement for a buy-in
fee, and all members could pay monthlyfees that reimburse the loan(s), asDancing Rabbit did.
Y ou could gather equal contributions
from founders that guaranteed the rightto build on a plot of land, as Earthavenfounders did.
One member could buy the property, and
essentially loan this amount to the othergroup members, who would pay themember back over time.
One member could buy the property and
the community could refinance as a hous-ing co-op, with the founder being reim-bursed all funds except his or her co-opshare, as Mariposa Grove plans to do.When someone can’t afford it. When a member
can’t afford the buy-in fee, some groups reluc-tantly decide that they won’t be able to join thecommunity. Other groups figure out ways tomake it financially possible for everyone to join.For example:
The community could loan the person
part of the money for the required downpayment from its development fund, asSowing Circle/OAEC did. The personthen reimburses the development fundover time. Alternatively, another groupmember, or several members, could loanthe person part of the required contribu-tion.
The community could buy the property
with equal contributions from mostfounders, but allow some founders to payhalf down and the rest in monthly pay-ments with interest, as Earthaven did.
The community could buy the property
with equal contributions from mostfounders, but allow some founders to payw i t h t h e e q u i v a l e n t o f s o m a n y y e a r s ’labor for the community at some agreed-upon hourly wage, through a labor con-tract, as Earthaven did with some earlymembers.
The person doesn’t contribute to the land
purchase, but pays the community amonthly rental fee to live in community-owned housing. The community wouldneed clear agreements about whether theproperty-use and decision-making rightsare different for founders who are ten-ants. Alternatively, the tenant-memberscould save money over time to pay thebuy-in fee.
30CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

The person could rent a room or a rental
unit, or share housing with another com-munity member. Again, doing this wouldrequire clear agreements about any dis-tinctions in property use and decision-making rights.
If the amount of financial contribution is
tied to the size and cost of the housingunit, the community could create studio-sized housing units for founders withfewer assets, as some cohousing commu-nities have done.
In “lot model” cohousing communities, in
which each member buys a lot and buildstheir own dwelling, the community couldallow the member to use the kitchen andshower facilities of its common house, andbuild a small sleeping hut on his or hersite, while saving enough money is tobuild a house, as Sharingwood Cohousingin W ashington did.
There are most likely many other ways to
help founders without enough funds for thebuy-in fee. Sometimes the process of accommo-dating people in this situation can backfire, so it’scritical to put any alternative arrangements inwriting in advance, to protect both the commu-nity in general and the specific membersinvolved. (See Chapter 18 for Pueblo Encantata’sexperience with one such arrangement.)
Collecting Funds
While your expenses will be minor at first, onceyou’re about to create a legal entity and beginyour land search, you’ll need several thousanddollars from each committed member for costsassociated with forming a legal entity and theland-search process. When you find a likelyproperty, expenses can include an option fee totake the property off the market and, if needed,
costs associated with researching its feasibilityfor your group and/or getting an exception tozoning regulations. Community groups createdifferent methods for collecting funds; for exam-ple, collecting a small monthly amount andassessing yourselves larger lump sums at keypoints along the way.
If you hire a member of your group to devote
full or part-time to the project for a time, that’sanother expense. (Or you could do as one groupdid, and give the person a deep discount on buy-in costs and/or the first choice of homesite orliving space.)
Raising Money from Supporters
Y ou might also raise funds from others.Earthaven cofounder V alerie Naiman suggestshaving a document showing your community’sGETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 31
YOUR COMMUNITY NAME
One of the most rewarding aspects of creating a new
community is choosing a name. It will not only inspireyour group and invoke your vision, but will reflect yourvalues and aspirations to potential cofounders, lenders,zoning officials, and neighbors. Positive-affirmation andnature-affiliated names such as “Abundant Dawn,”“Earthaven,” and “Meadowdance” seem to work well. I
don’t recommend pretentious, flowery, or overly idealis-
tic names, since (perhaps because their founders werenever grounded in business, legal, and financial reali-ties?) communities with such names often tend to endup as part of the “ninety percent.” Even if a communitywith a pretentious name gets off the ground, beingcalled “Harmony Bliss Spirit” can prove downrightembarrassing during the inevitable periods when peo-ple feel disillusioned or find themselves embroiled inconflict.

mission and purpose, values, and goals to show
to friends, family, and others who might want tosupport your community project. Y ou couldorganize fundraising events such as benefit par-ties, with donated live music or catering, or ben-efit auctions with donated auction items, as wellas offering supporters the opportunity to givelow-interest loans. Along with membershipdues, gifts and friendly loans from supporterscan total several thousand dollars.
Attracting and Integrating New
Members
At some point you may decide you’d like other
people to join your group. Y ou might want tosimply tell friends and acquaintances what you’redoing and invite them to a meeting, or you couldcast a wider net and draw from the public.
If you decide to draw from the public, target
your promotion to people with values and inter-ests compatible with your future community. Ifyou’re planning an ecologically sustainable com-munity with organic gardens, for example, mailpress releases to local environmental organiza-tions and post flyers at health food stores, farm-ers’ markets, and organic-food restaurants.
Use aspects of your vision statement and
your mission in your flyers or brochures. Forexample,“W e’re seeking to form a community of____(kinds of people)___, to buy ___(numberof acres)___ in ___(county/counties)___ inorder to ____(purpose of community)______.If it’s a longer brochure, include a few paragraphssummarizing the key aspects of the values andgoals of your community. Use this in any pressreleases you may send out as well.
One of the best ways to attract like-minded
people is a community website. I suggest creatingone as soon as your group feels committedenough. The purpose of your flyers, brochures,press releases, and classified ads should be to
whet people’s appetites and send them straight toyour website, where they’ll learn much moreabout your interests, values, and plans. This iswhere you reveal as much of yourselves as possi-ble. Use your vision statement and other visiondocuments (“This is what we’re about”), yourdecision log (“This is what we’ve done so far, andwhat we ask new people to agree to”), and your“How to Join Us” document (“These are the stepsand requirements for joining our group”). Makesure you clearly describe the financial require-ments for participating, once you’ve decided onthem. Y ou can include photos of yourselves look-ing like a friendly and engaging bunch of folks,perhaps a “Frequently Asked Questions” docu-ment, relevant agreements or policies, and photosof your intended property once you’ve found it.Be sure to make it simple to request informationthrough the website, and designate a member ofyour group to handle these inquiries.
Y ou’ll want the information on your website
to draw only the people who resonate with yourgroup’s particular values and vision. If you don’tuse a website, you can use brochures and packetsof printed materials to accomplish the samegoals.“It’s more important to reach the right peo-
ple than simply a lot of people,” notesMeadowdance cofounder Luc Reid.
Y ou could follow up any inquiries by sending
out a thank-you letter and a questionnaire forinquirers to fill out and return.
A next step could be for interested people to
visit your group. Have a regular procedure ofwelcoming visitors at the beginning of meetings,and introduce everyone around the circle. If theyshow an interest in becoming members, givethem a copy of your vision documents and your“How to Join Us” document (even though theymay have already seen these on your website), a
32CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

current version of your decision log, and other
relevant materials. Explain your process forwhen and how new members can participate inmeetings and when they’ll have full decision-making rights. (Some communities require newmembers to take a consensus workshop beforebecoming full members. ) Community consult-ant Rob Sandelin suggests assigning new mem-bers a “buddy” who will be available by phone toanswer any questions about your process andyour progress so far.
Creating “Community Glue”
Forming a community is not really about yourproperty-purchase and development goals, butabout generating a sense of community — akind of group well-being in which you’ve con-nected with each other emotionally and knoweach other deeply.
Rudolf Steiner said that shared physical
activities — when people move the body andvocal chords — bonds people at such deep levelsthat their connection tends to last. This certainlyconfirms most groups’ experience of what makespeople feel connected and committed to eachother — working together in shared labor, eatingtogether, telling each other their life’s experiences,speaking from the heart about personal or inter-personal issues, singing, dancing, doing rituals,and celebrating birthdays and holidays.
Most groups have weekly or monthly
potlucks, often associated with business meet-ings, which certainly contributes to communityglue, as well as making decisions together andpersonal sharing, such as check-ins and wisdomcircles. (These are explored more fully inChapter 17.)
One of the best ways for a group to experience
a sense of community is to rent a rustic lodgewith kitchen facilities for the weekend, with activ-ities that might include preparing food and eating
meals together, hiking and swimming, playingvolleyball or other sports, making music andsinging, and telling stories around the campfire.
Storytelling is an excellent way to create inti-
macy on deeper levels, especially if the topics areself-revealing and personal. One way groups cando this is to tell their life stories, focusing espe-cially on life-changing events or those that affect-ed them deeply. Another is to ask each person toshare for 20 minutes or so about the attitudes intheir family of origin on such normally taboosubjects as religion, money, or social class. Suchsessions can not only lead to a much closer senseof connection, but can also help people under-stand how each group member might approachsuch community issues as sharing commonproperty or handling community finances.
If the group is small enough, or if there’s
enough time, each person can tell stories in turn.
GETTING OFF TO A GOOD START 33
BREAKING BREAD TOGETHER
In some communities individual households have
kitchens and eat meals at home, with shared meals oneor more times a week. Other communities have centralkitchen and dining facilities where members share threemeals a day. How many shared meals are necessary tomake a difference in community glue?
“Count up the number of days in a week that a group
shares meals, and you’ll have a reasonably good barom-eter for measuring the closeness of that community,”observes community activist Geoph Kozeny. “When thefrequency gets up to four meals a week or so, somehowthe social glue gets stronger.”
Almost every community described in this book
begins common meals by standing in a circle and hold-ing hands and either taking a moment of silence, offeringa prayer, or singing a song.

If time is more limited, people can put their
names in a hat and draw out as many names asthere is time for, with future meetings planned soeveryone will get a chance. Shyer members canchoose not to speak, but will still enjoy listeningto other people’s stories. The group can use akitchen timer to help each other keep to theiragreed times. Storytelling evenings are so enjoy-able they can be repeated many times.
Pioneers, Settlers, and the Flow of
Members
T wo kinds of people are usually attracted to
forming communities — pioneers and settlers.Pioneers take risks and leap into the unknown.They start the group, do the research, find theland. Settlers wait and see if the pioneer groupcan pull it off. They come in later, when more isknown about the project, and when there’s some-thing more visible to join. Settlers need the pio-neers to break trail for them. Pioneers need thesettlers to join when it’s time to raise money andmake the project happen. Pioneers are like entre-preneurs. Settlers are like wait-and-see investors.Forming community groups need both.
In most groups, relatively few people meeting
in the early months will actually end up movinginto the community (although it’s possible atight group of friends will go the whole distance.“The group you start with won’t be the groupyou’ll end up with,” says Sowing Circlecofounder Adam W olpert. “Even some of yourkey founding group members may not be therewhen you buy your property.”
People usually leave when you reach certain
milestones:
When you identify your community
vision and write your vision documents,some people could realize it’s not for
them and leave. However, new people willjoin, attracted by your group and yourcommunity vision.
When you agree on criteria for your
property more members could exit —that’s not really the kind of land theywanted. But new people will join — it’sexactly the kind of land they wanted.
When you agree on financial criteria for
your community, you could have anotherexodus — some can’t afford it. But morewill come, and your financial criteria willlet them know whether they can afford it.
When you decide to purchase a particu-
lar property there may be a stampede forthe door. Some back off because it’s notthe right property after all. Others fleebecause it’s a supreme reality check. Nowthat they’re staring community full in theface — gulp! They realize they’re notready for it; it’s too huge a commitment,too great a lifestyle change.
However, after this point, many more people
may join the group — because they like you,they like your vision, they can afford it — andthey like your beautiful property! This is oftenthe time when settlers, watching from the side-lines, get active again, and bring their check-books.
/fl1lft
Y ou’re on your way. Next, your first significantstep towards community — identifying yourcommunity vision.34CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

IT W AS CRISIS TIME at a community I’ll call
Willow Bend. This small community in the
rural Midwest launched itself in the earlynineties with no vision or vision statement. Thatmeans they had no shared expression of theirdesired future, no “why we’re here” agreementthat aligned community members and inspiredthem to work toward their shared aspirations.
Then the bottom fell out of the market for
the wooden children’s toys they manufactured astheir primary community business. Overnightthey lost almost half of their annual incomebase. Under severe financial strain, the membersheld long meetings to figure out what to do.Unfortunately different Willow Benders hadwidely different ideas about their purpose forbeing a community.
“We’re here to show people a low-consump-
tion lifestyle that works financially,” says T om.“W e’ve got to recoup our losses somehow.”
“No way!” exclaims Kathleen.“W e’re just here
to enjoy ourselves and not have to work for theman. W e’ll just eat beans for awhile.”
“How can you say that?,” asks Andy, incredu-
lous.“W e’re supposed to radicalize people! W e’resupposed to show that you don’t have to competeso much and can share things equally and all get
along!”
Except they weren’t getting along, and were
competing mightily themselves, for the underly-ing basis of Willow Bend’s reality. With no com-mon vision, they had nothing to return to — nocommon touchstone of values, purpose, or aspi-rations about why their community life mat-tered, how it fit into the larger world. Becausethey use consensus decision making, no majorityof Willow Benders with the same vision coulddetermine the vision for the whole group. On thesurface it looks like they were arguing aboutmoney. But they were actually expressing theinherent structural conflict of not all standing onthe same ground. And unlike folks in forming-community groups, people with different visionscan’t simply go their separate ways and start dif-ferent communities. Willow Bend was theirhome, and no one could ask anyone else to leavebecause of their “wrong” vision. As the conflictgrew intense several people saw no way out andleft the community. Now Willow Bend had twocrises — not enough money and not enoughpeople to carry out the tasks of their other com-munity businesses.
35/fl1lftChapter 4 /fl1rt
Community Vision — What It Is,
Why You Need It

I hope this (true) story illustrates why it’s so
important to establish why we’re here as a basisfor creating community — and why everyone inthe community needs to be on the same page.
Kat Kinkade, cofounder of T win Oaks com-
munity in Virginia, describes a similar circum-stance. Once some friends of hers were appalledby what they read in the vision documents of aparticular community. But when they met some-one from that community whom they liked verymuch, they decided to visit, and found everyonethere to be friendly, warm, and charming.Figuring that actions speak louder than wordsthey decided to ignore the community’s declaredvision and values and join anyway.
But as Kat’s friends lived there over the
months, they found themselves increasingly atodds with the community’s founders. Whileeveryone was warm and courteous at first, thenewcomers’ values and goals weren’t compatiblewith the community’s, and soon they wereembroiled in serious conflict over the directionthe community. Eventually the dissension anddistrust grew so bitter that Kat’s friends left thecommunity — and so did several other mem-bers, disillusioned by the bad blood generated bypower struggles over vision and values.
“This left the group weak, angry, and
exhausted,” says Kat. “It was a communitytragedy, and not an uncommon one.” I’ve heardthis same story more than once about othercommunities.
So the first major task members of a forming
community group is to clarify and write downtheir vision, and make sure they all agree on it.
Some well-known, long-lived, apparently
successful communities don’t have and never hada common vision, or at least, never wrote any-thing down. This can work — but in my opinionit doesn’t work well for long. Not having a com-mon vision can blow a community apart when a
major challenge or crisis occurs. Or it can slowlyerode everyone’s vitality and well-being over theyears as each conflict arising from differentvisions adds to the accumulation of resentment.
“ A common vision is neither necessary nor
sufficient for starting a new community, sincemany have gotten by without one, and some thathad one failed,” observes community activist T reeBressen. “But a common vision greatly increasesthe probability of success. If your group is goingto all the trouble to start a community, can youafford not to give yourselves the best possiblechance?”
Sound a Clear Note
A vision doesn’t start out as necessarily “visual,”and although written down, it’s much more thana collection of words. It begins as a quality ofenergy that grabs you and doesn’t let go. It’s likea beam of energy leading your group from whereyou are to where you want to go.
Y our vision must be articulated in a way that
others can understand easily. It must be simple,clear, and authentic. As Sirius cofoundersCorrine McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson say,it must “sound a clear note on inner levels,” so itwill attract others who resonate with that note.
“It’s like a tuning fork against which you
measure your resonance,” says Adam W olpert,cofounder of Sowing Circle/Occidental Arts &Ecology Center. “It shows how well you’re doingin the theory-practice gap. It helps you aimhigh.”
Once it’s written down, a well-crafted vision:
Describes the shared future you want to
create.
Reveals and announces your group’s core
values.36CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Expresses something each of you can
identify with.
Helps unify your effort.
Gives you a reference point to return to
during confusion or disagreement.
Keeps your group inspired.
Draws out the commitment of the people
in your group.
“By describing what we want to have hap-
pen,” says Adam W olpert, “it’s like an insurancepolicy for the future, for what we don’t want to
have happen.”
Elements of a Community’s Vision
The terms “mission,” “purpose,” “values,” “goals,”“objectives,”“aspirations,”“interests,” and “strategy”are often associated with a community’s vision.These words mean different things to differentcommunities, as you’ll see in the sample visiondocuments. Here’s how I use these terms.
Vision. This is the shared future you want to cre-
ate, your shared image of what’s possible, the thingthat motivates your actions to create community.It’s often expressed as the “who,” the “what” andthe “why” of your endeavor. Ideally it’s described inthe present tense, as if it were happening now.
Mission, Purpose. Y our group’s mission or pur-
pose expresses your vision in concrete, physicalterms. It’s what you’ll be physically doing as wellas experiencing as you manifest your sharedimage of what’s possible. T o understand the dif-ference between “vision” and “mission,” considera community with the vision: “ A world whereeveryone has adequate, healthy shelter.” Its mis-sion, to express this vision physically, could be:“T o build a model demonstration village usinglow-cost natural building materials, and through
outreach programs teach our building methods,particularly in Third-world countries.”
Va l u e s . Y our group’s vision arises out of its
shared values, the characteristics and processesyou deem worthy. V alues are expressed by howyou behave now, and how you intend to behave,on a daily basis, as you live in community. In theabove example, the community might hold val-ues of sustainability, fairness, kindness, generosi-t y ,s e r v i c e ,a c c e s s i b i l i t y ,t h r i f t ,a n d c o n s e r v a t i o nof resources.
Interests. This includes experiences, states of
being, or physical things people may be interest-ed in relative to your future community. Interestsusually arise from values and can be expressed asgoals. Many of you may be interested in com-posting, perhaps because you value sustainabili-ty, and express that as a goal to build compost foryour future community garden.
Goals, Objectives. Goals or objectives are mile-
stones you commit yourselves to accomplish, butshort-term, often in a few months or a year. Y ourcommunity’s goals are measurable: you knowwhen you’ve accomplished them. In the aboveexample, the group might want to finish buildingtheir model village in three years, and in the fol-lowing year begin their outreach program tocountries in Central America.
Aspirations. These are strong desires or ambi-
tions for inspired, elevated goals, arising fromvalues. Y our community may have a goal to con-struct a meeting hall for 100 people in two years,and, because you value beauty and sacred space,your aspiration is to build a meeting hall thatwill be beautiful, calming, and uplifting.COMMUNITY VISION — WHAT IT IS, WHY YOU NEED IT 37

Strategy. Y our strategy affirms a series of goals in
a particular time-frame. If your vision expressesthe “who,” “what,” and “why” of your communi-ty, your strategy encompasses the “how,”“where,”and “when.” It usually involves budgets and cash-flow projections and time lines. Altering yourvision will completely change the future you’recreating, but altering your strategy only changeshow you end up getting there. In the aboveexample, the group’s strategy for achieving theirgoals might be to raise $500,000 and share low-cost building methods in the first two years byoffering public workshops and seeking grantsfrom private donors and public foundations.
As we’ll see in the next chapter, a communi-
ty’s vision arises in part from the resonance of itsindividual members’ combined values, interests,aspirations, and goals.
Nature’s Spirit, an aspiring spiritual commu-
nity in South Carolina, expressed the differencebetween their vision (their dream), mission(their physical activities), and goals (their specif-ic, measurable actions) this way:
Vision: A world that values the diversity of all life
and provides for its sustainability by living in har-mony with nature and spirit.
Mission: To create a community in which we work
to expand our consciousness by living in the ques-tion: How does one live sustainably in harmonywith nature and spirit? This will enable us to be ofservice, share our experiences, and link with simi-lar local and global efforts.
Goals:
 Procure and care for a commons — a land
trust that will ecologically support a smallvillage of 50+ people.  Build a self-sustaining infrastructure to sup-
port our basic needs.
 Create homes, gathering places and guest
facilities using sustainable building meth-ods and energy sources.
 Maintain an organic stewardship of the land
that will provide for our own and others’food needs while giving back to the Earth.
 Create and nurture a spiritual center as the
core of our community.
 Create an interdependent social system.  Initiate necessary enterprises to assure eco-
nomic viability with minimal dependenceon institutional structures and the marketsystem.
 Establish educational, leadership, intern-
ship, and exchange programs that willenable us to be of service to others, com-municate and share our experiences, and
link with similar local and global efforts.
Your Vision Documents and Vision
Statement
Some communities have formal vision documents
that describe in inspirational terms the sharedfuture they hope to create together. Other groupsmay have various documents that give a sense oftheir vision, often conveyed through a vision state-ment, possibly a brief description of their purposeor mission, inspirational or factual paragraphsabout their community and what they hope for it,and sometimes lists of shared values and goals.These can appear in internal agreements andcovenants or formal documents associated withthe legal entity through which the communityowns land (corporate bylaws, partnership agree-ments, or operating agreements), and in promo-38CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

tional literature such as website text, brochures,
and information packets for prospective members.
Y our community’s vision is not the same
thing as its vision statement, although a vision
statement serves some of the same functions.The vision statement is your vision articulated— a condensed version in a few sentences. “It’slike a notice posted at the gate to all who wouldlike to enter,” says Stephen Brown, cofounder ofthe former Shenoa Retreat and ConferenceCenter in California. “It says, in effect, ‘This is
what we are about; this is what we hope to
accomplish; thisis what guides us’.”
Shenoa Retreat and Learning Center: We h ave
joined together to create a center for renewal,education, and service, dedicated to the positivetransformation of our world.
Harmony Village Cohousing: W e are creating a
cooperative neighborhood of diverse individualssharing human resources within an ecologicallyresponsible community setting.
Meadowdance Community: W e are an egalitar-
ian, child-centered community that welcomeshuman diversity, ecological sensibility, mutuallearning, and joy.
Earthaven Ecovillage (from “ReMembership
Covenant”): (W e are) an evolving village-scalecommunity dedicated to caring for people andthe Earth by learning, practicing and demon-strating the skills for creating holistic sustainableculture, in recognition and celebration of theOneness of all life.
A well-crafted vision statement:
Offers a clear, concise, compelling expres-
sion of your group’s vision and mission(and sometimes, its goals).
Is short, ideally about 20-40 words.
Embodies the same quality of energy as
your vision.
Helps focus your group’s energy like a lens.
Offers a shorthand reminder of why
you’re forming community.
Helps awaken your vision as a energetic
presence.
Is easily memorized, and ideally each of
you can recite it.
Communicates your group’s core purpose
to others quickly: “This is what we’re
about.”
Allows your group to be specific about
what it is — and is not.
Is what potential new members want to
see first.
And, like your community vision itself, the
vision statement:
Is something every member can identify
with.
Helps unify your effort.
Keeps your group inspired.
Reveals and announces your core values.
Gives you a reference point to return to
during confusion or disagreement.
Like the examples above, your vision state-
ment should be fairly clear and unambiguous.There seems to be a high correlation betweenclear, specific, and grounded vision statementsand communities that actually get built — andbetween flowery, vague, or downright preten-tious vision statements and communities thatnever get off the ground.COMMUNITY VISION — WHAT IT IS, WHY YOU NEED IT 39

(Note: Some of the communities from which
I excerpted sample vision statements, pg. 39, usethe terms “vision statement” and “mission state-ment” differently than I’ve just described. Butyou’ll get the gist.)
Do It First
Identify and articulate your vision first, before
buying property together. If not, you could endup like one eco-spiritual community in theNortheast. Six years after moving to their land,
and after finishing a major building project, theybegan having differences about what their nextsteps should be. They couldn’t understand whytheir conflict was so intense. Why were they soat odds with each other? What was wrong withthose other people? Finally the group called in agroup process consultant who asked each mem-ber to fill out a questionnaire about what theyvalued and aspired to in their community. The40CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Our Mission: To create a society, the size of a small
town or village, made up of individuals and commu-nities of various sizes and social structures, whichallows and encourages its members to live sustain-ably. (“Sustainably” means in such a manner that,within the defined area, no resources are consumedfaster than their natural replenishment, and theenclosed system can continue indefinitely withoutdegradation of its internal resource base or the stan-dard of living of the people and the rest of theecosystem within it, and without contributing to thenon-sustainability of ecosystems outside.)
We encourage this sustainable society to grow to
have the size and recognition necessary to have aninfluence on the global community by example,education, and research.
While Dancing Rabbit is still a small community in
the pioneering stage, we call ourselves an ecovillagebecause our vision is of something much more thanwhat we currently are.We intend to grow to be a small locally self-
reliant town of 500 to 1000 residents, committed toradical environmental sustainability. We will behoused in a variety of living arrangements, eat a vari-ety of foods, and work on varied projects. It will bea society flexible enough to include egalitarian com-munities, cohousing, and individual households. Butwhile we may have different approaches to someissues, the common desire for environmental sus-tainability will underlie all key decisions at DancingRabbit.
Although Dancing Rabbit will strive for self-suffi-
ciency and economic independence, we will notbe sequestered from mainstream America. Rather,outreach and education are integral to our goals. Wewill vigorously promote ourselves as a viable exam-ple of sustainable living and spread our ideas anddiscoveries through visitor programs, academic andother publications, speaking engagements, and thelike.
(See Appendix 1 for more sample vision documents.)
EXCERPT FROM VISION DOCUMENTS, DANCING RABBIT ECOVILLAGE

questionnaire revealed that community members
lived in either one of two subtle but different par-adigms of reality, expressed by the following twovision statements:
1. W e are an educational organization and
model demonstration site based on ecologi-cal principles. W e live as a residential com-munity in order to facilitate our work hostingclasses and workshops.
2. W e are a community of supportive friends
valuing an ecologically sound, sustainablelifestyle, and to help others, we offer classesand workshops in these topics.
Some community members believed the
first was the community’s reason for being, oth-ers believed the second — and until that timeno one knew the other reality existed. It was a stun-
ning revelation. Different people had differentvisions, which they incorrectly assumed every-one shared. Although by this time people werearguing most of the time, their core problemwasn’t interpersonal conflict. Their problemwas structural — built into the system. Theirs
was definitely a “time-bomb” kind of conflict,with members unable to see it’s not that “John’sbeing unreasonable” or “Sue’s irresponsibleagain,” but that John and Sue were each operat-ing from a different assumption about why thecommunity was there in the first place. Andwhat should they do with such structural con-flict? Which people should stay in the commu-nity and which had the “wrong” vision andshould move out?
Having a clear, grounded, inspired vision and
vision statement does not in itself ensure a com-munity’s success. I knew two forming communi-
ties with beautiful vision statements that brokeup. One halted because its members were youngparents with too many responsibilities to spendthe time that creating a community requires. Theother was geographically challenged — its mem-bers were aligned in vision, but members hadstrong loyalties to two different locations. Someforming community groups with well-alignedvisions have broken up for other reasons, such aslosing their chosen property to a competingbuyer with more money. And some new commu-nities with great visions that have already movedto their property and begun building, have some-times been brought down by conflicts withneighbors, zoning regulations that restrictedtheir expansion, or the departure of too manymembers. Although it doesn’t solve everything, atleast an inspired common vision gives a chal-lenged community a central core to rally aroundduring challenges like these, and encourages themto have the heart to persevere.
Other structural-conflict issues can break up
communities as well — coming to grief overhow decisions should be made, or what theiragreements were, or through exhausting inter-personal conflict. Nevertheless, and I can’temphasize this strongly enough — for the bestchance of success, make creating your vision andvision statement the firstthing you do.
/fl1lft
How do you do this? We’ll explore that next.COMMUNITY VISION — WHAT IT IS, WHY YOU NEED IT 41

THE PROCESS OF COMMUNITY visioning can
be exciting and challenging. It involves
deeply held values, strong interests, and highaspirations. It brings up both known and hiddenexpectations and assumptions.
The members of your group may hold many
shared values and some differing values, and sim-ilar as well as wildly different ideas and expecta-tions. Some of these may be realistic, others not.Y our task is to unearth, sift, and refine theseideas and expectations until you come up with agrounded yet inspiring description of yourshared community future.
This generally involves two steps:
1. Exploring the territory. Yo u e x p l o r e y o u r
dreams, hopes, and expectations for commu-nity in a series of visioning sessions, writingdown highlights of what you learn, ideally onlarge sheets of easel paper. The sessions caninclude wide-ranging discussions, deep per-sonal sharing, and visioning exercises. It’sbest if these sessions are long — half-day,day-long, or weekend meetings.
2. W riting it down. A smaller task force or
committee uses this material to draft a pre-liminary vision description and vision state-ment. The whole group critiques the work,makes suggestions for improvement, and
sends it back to the small group for revision.The back-and-forth process between the taskforce and whole group can occur as manytimes as needed until it’s done. The larger orthe more diverse your group, the longer thisprocess may take.
Some groups finish within a few weeks or
months, but only if they’re relatively small, theirmembers know each other well, or they’re fairlyhomogeneous in interests and values. But if yourgroup is large, your members diverse, or yourplans ambitious, it can take more than a year.The six cofounders of Shenoa Retreat andConference Center spent a year and a half iden-tifying and crafting their vision documents. The15 to 20 members of Earthaven’s original groupspent two years.
Some community veterans say it’s better if the
group is relatively small, for example betweenthree to five people, or at least no more than ten.Visioning with a smaller number of people helpsreduce the likelihood that the group will try tocontort itself this way and that in order to includethe diverse visions often found in a larger group.
“It’s far better to start with a very small
group, even two or three people who have a
42/fl1lftChapter 5 /fl1rt
Creating Vision Documents

strong agreement about the purpose of the com-
munity, and allow it to unfold organically fromthat strong and firm nucleus or seed, than it is tostart with 20 people who have no clear agree-ment or purpose, and then try to discover one,”advise Robert and Dianne Gilman in their bookEcovillages and Sustainable Communities.
However, regardless of the size of your group,
everyone needs to contribute to the vision. Itdoesn’t work if especially influential people artic-ulate the vision and everyone else just goes alongwith it. When people don’t “vote” for the vision atthe outset by helping create it, they end up “vot-ing” for it later, through their behavior. Thosealigned with the vision will vote “Y es” by behav-ing consistently with it; those who were neverreally aligned may vote “No” on the vision bybalking at or unconsciously sabotaging certainprocesses or tasks later. If everyone in the groupparticipates in the visioning process and buys intoit at the beginning, the community functions as amore harmonious, cohesive whole later on.
More Than One Vision?
Y ou may not be able to resolve vision differenceseasily. Let’s say you discover that most people inyour group want a rural self-reliant homestead atleast an hour’s drive from the city, but otherswant a country place that’s no more than 30 min-utes from their city jobs. Among both the hour-away and job-commuter groups, some definitelywant open, honest feedback but others wantnone of that “touchy-feely stuff.” Some of thefor-process as well as anti-process people want ahomeschooling co-op; others don’t. With diver-sity like this, you’re probably not destined to endup in the same community. But your visioningprocess wouldn’t be wasted. It could help bringclarity to what each of you does and does notwant in a community — a helpful first step.A scenario like this could have several out-
comes:
1. The vision of the original group members
remains constant and the people who res-onate with it remain involved. Those whodon’t, leave the group.
2. Some people leave your group, disappointed
that more people didn’t share their vision.New people join your group, attracted by thevision articulated by the largest number ofremaining group members, or by the mostinfluential members.
3. Y our group disbands. T oo many people
wanted too many different things.
4. Y our group splits into two or more smaller
groups.
What’s typical? Smaller groups of long-time
friends, especially those who have alreadyworked together on visionary, spiritually orient-ed, or activist projects tend to align to a commonvision. Larger groups, especially those whoseparticipants don’t know each other well (such aspeople responding to public announcementsabout forming a community), tend to experiencehigh attrition and/or splinter into smallergroups. This is fine. One or more of the smallergroups may go on to form a community.
If a group is small and based primarily on
deep connections or shared friendships, mostmembers will tend to stay in the group and alterany expression of community vision to fit every-one’s interests and desires. The founders ofSowing Circle/OAEC in northern Californiawere long-time friends and environmentalactivists, some of whom had been housemateson and off for 15 years. They wanted a commu-nity that would operate an educational centerand demonstration site based on ecological prin-ciples. One artist member supported this vision,CREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 43

yet wanted to continue painting and teaching
painting. So the when the community estab-lished its non-profit center, they included artsand called it the Occidental Arts and EcologyCenter, offering workshops on landscape paint-ing along with those on organic gardening andpermaculture design.
This kind of coalescing of interests usually
works best if a founding group is fairly small.Most of the seven founders of Abundant Dawncommunity in rural Virginia had previously livedin large income-sharing communes. Some want-ed an income-sharing community; others want-ed independent finances. Since friendship andconnection was their major draw, they formedsmaller subcommunity “pods” within AbundantDawn. Founders favoring income-sharingbecame the T ekiah pod, those favoring inde-pendent incomes became the Dayspring Circlepod, and they all still got to live in communitytogether.
However, if a forming community is not
based on existing friendships but on an idea thatit would be nice to live in community, then theoriginal founders will probably hold to their par-ticular visions and others will drop out, especial-ly if the initial forming group is large, or if itsmembers were attracted through flyers or otherpublic means. Such a group tends to have multi-ple values, aspirations, and expectations, makingthe visioning process more complex. Some com-munities, particularly cohousing communities,begin with this challenge.
When your group is diverse, do you adopt a
vision that will cause some people to stay andothers to leave, or do you try to mold the visionto meet everyone’s different values and interests?
Don’t try to create a one-size-fits-all vision.
“ All too often there’s the temptation to accom-modate or shape the vision to suit the needs ofeach person, either because the group needs to
recruit new members or because they have a mis-guided sense of wanting to take care of everyoneor be ‘all things to all people,’” says StephenBrown.“T o be successful, a forming community,like a business, needs to hold a relatively narrowfocus and sharply defined objectives. If the com-munity tries to do too much, by attempting tomeet the needs of all who come along, it willspread itself too thin and either not get off theground or run out of steam fairly early on. Thevision therefore also defines what the projectdoes not intend to accomplish. If your vision istoo broad or comprehensive, and tries to pleaseall of the people all of the time, it will fall of itsown awkward expansiveness, trying to be in toomany places at once.”
How do you handle it if, after weeks or
months of visioning sessions, you discover youare really two potential communities? What ifmany people leave, or the group splits in two?This can feel chaotic and disorienting — andnewly bonded group members or long-timefriends can feel loss knowing their friends won’tbe joining them in the same community future.If this happens it’s perfectly OK; it’s part of theprocess.
“ A key challenge for the group at this time is
to help everyone discover his or her own vision,and, in so doing, allow everyone to see whichvisions are sufficiently aligned to serve as thebasis for the group vision and which visions needto find expression elsewhere,” observe Diane andRobert Gilman in Eco-Villages and Sustainable
Communities . “It is important to avoid the expec-
tation that every initial member of the groupshould continue with the group, since for some
that could mean either suppressing their ownvision or attempting to force a vision on othersthat the others do not truly share. Honor each
44CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

person’s contribution anddon’t be afraid to sort
out who will and who won’t continue with thegroup.”
Finding out that you have multiple directions
and diverse ideas, and that you may in fact betwo different potential communities is not a signof failure but a step along the way. Even with thebest of intentions, if your group discovers thatyou’re not all on the same page, you can still wisheach other well and form two communities.(And you don’t have to lose each other asfriends.)
A Sacred Time
Y our visioning process is one of the single mostimportant tasks you’ll undertake as a formingcommunity. This is where you’ll speak form theheart about what really matters to you. It’s asacred time. Y our voices may become suddenlysoft, or tight with emotion. Y ou may get tears inyour eyes. Y ou’ll be unearthing — birthing —something here. Listen for that deep sense ofpurpose, that group entity that wants to be born.And listen equally, for what seems “off,” or unre-alistic, or something only personal growth ortherapy could provide. This is the time to askyourselves: “ Are these expectations realistic? Dothey make sense?”
Visioning seems to involve both the process
of exploring and that of revealing, much likeMichelangelo finding the sculpture hidden with-in the marble. Something new emerges, sparkedby the potent brew of individual values, ideals,aspirations, and expectations.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s important
to decide now who is and is not a committed,decision-making member of your group. Y oumay have some less committed members, peoplewho attend meetings only occasionally or whohave only recently joined, or people who feelmore tentative about the idea of community or
about your group specifically. Y ou may want toconsider asking these people not to participate inthe visioning process. Or, you might want toinclude them in the processes but (with every-one’s knowledge and consent ahead of time) giveless weight to their interests and suggestionsthan you do those of the more committed mem-bers. This can be a difficult issue to bring up fordiscussion, as some people believe “it’s not com-munity” if you consider excluding or limitinganyone’s participation. But consider it practically.If six of you meet regularly and have similarinterests, and a seventh person comes occasional-ly, or is present for some but not all of your meet-ings, or has substantially different ideas aboutcommunity than the rest of you, should that per-son’s values and desires be part of your sharedcommunity future? Maybe they should, andmaybe not, but I believe you’ll be better off dis-cussing and deciding this with everyone involvedahead of time.
“That’s Not Community!” — Hidden
Expectations and Structural Conflict
Most people drawn to community have expecta-
tions or assumptions about what “community”means. They believe they know why they wantto live in community, and what they’ll expect tofind there. Some expectations or assumptionsfocus on activities — we’ll share some resources,we’ll share some meals, we’ll cooperate on deci-sions. Others arise from painful experiencesfrom the past and focus on emotional states theperson hopes to feel in community — connec-tion, inclusion, acceptan ce. Past emotional pain
can motivate people toward community becauseat some level they believe community will pro-vide what’s missing from their lives. “Missing”factors that propel people toward communityCREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 45

can include affection, acceptance, inclusion, and
emotional safety. This can involve conscious lossand known expectations — “It’s going to be likea warm and loving family” — as well as unfeltpain and unconscious expectations (“…and I willbe totally loved and accepted, finally!”).
Hidden expectations about community usual-
ly aren’t realistic. They often take on a golden, nos-talgic quality, like looking back on a paradise lost.Here’s what one member of a forming communi-ty wrote about her personal vision of community:
Like a warm embrace, a gathering of friends,
laughter on sunny days, caring and offeringsupport in times of need, like coming home.W arm, homey, spiritually rooted, peaceful, joy-ous, celebratory, connected, close, respectful,emotionally honest, trusting. Home!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this
vision. It’s probably what we all want. The ques-tion is — can we expect community to provide it?
“The fantasy of creating an ‘ideal’ communi-
ty tends to transform a simple discussion into amagical blend of fact and fiction,” writes ZevPaiss in Cohousing magazine. “Visions of com-
munity are fertile grounds for the expression andgrowth of long-suppressed dreams. And theopportunity to express these feelings can have anurgent quality in the early discussion stages.”
Suppressed pain and hidden expectations or
assumptions about community can be a primesource of structural conflict “time bombs” thaterupt weeks, months, or years later. This hap-pens for two reasons.
First, living in community cannot erase
buried emotional pain. When people find thatafter living in community they’re stillyearning for
something valuable and elusive (although theymay not know what it is), they tend to feel angryand disappointed. Not knowing the source of
their discomfort, they tend to blame the commu-nity, or other members, for it.
Second, hidden expectations about commu-
nity differ widely from one group member toanother. This comes up when we each thinkwe’re behaving in good community fashion butsomeone else is aghast at how our behavior“betrays” community ideals. Someone willexpress frustration, even outrage, when we’ve justbreached an invisible rule in that person’s ownpersonal paradigm. “How can you saythat?
That’s not community!” Or, “How could you do
such a thing? That’s not community!”
The community visioning process can offer
your group an excellent opportunity to flushhidden expectations to the surface and examinethem rationally.
“Don’t go into all this psychology stuff,”
advised one experienced community friend. “Itsounds like therapy talk. Community isn’t aboutpsychology. It’s about neighbors learning a highlevel of functioning together so they can makedecisions and get the work done.”
I disagree. Community doesinvolve psycholo-
gy stuff — which, in my opinion, is why rough-ly 90 percent of new communities fail. Forminga community is deeply psychological. Emotionalpain and hidden expectations exert a powerfulpull on people, and community founders are noexception. Put a group of people in a communi-ty visioning session, and you have dozens of dif-ferent needs and expectations, known andunknown, ricocheting invisibly around the room.
I bring this up so your group can use the
visioning process to identify, if possible, any hid-den expectations and bring them in to the lightof day. Knowing what everyone wants (and really
wants), will help your group see where you maybe on the same page and where you may not be.
46CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

And the best time to examine this is now, in your
visioning meetings, before you go out and buyland together. Y ou don’t want to find wildly dif-fering pain-driven expectations later, wheneveryone’s financial investment, homes, and com-munity self-image are on the line. The more timeyou spend on this issue now, the less you’ll spendlater. The exercises below can help your groupwith the visioning process. See Exercise 7 forhelp with accessing hidden expectations.
Exploring the Territory
The following exercises are offered to help trig-ger insights and stimulate the process of sharing,discussing, unearthing, and revealing the compo-nents of your community vision. They’re offeredas a smorgasbord of options: you may beinspired to choose some or all of them, modifythem, use exercises from other sources, or makeup your own.
As mentioned earlier, this may take several
half-day or day-long sessions over several weeks.I suggest meeting in a cozy room with enoughtea, snacks, pillows, and childcare to be comfort-able and relaxed for many hours. Choose a facil-itator, or arrange for an outside facilitator. T oremind you of your goal, make the followingposter on a large sheet of easel paper and hang itwhere everyone can see it.
OUR COMMUNITY VISION
 Shared future we want to create
 Reveals & announces our core values Each of us can identify with it Helps unify our effort Reference point we can return to Keeps us all inspiredThe group will need lined paper for each per-
son (legal pads work well), pens or pencils, padsof extra-large (4” x 6”) yellow sticky notes, bothred and green paper stick-on dots, sheets of easelpaper and blue masking tape (it doesn’t pullpaint off walls), and large sheets of easel papercovering roughly a 4’ x 8’ area of wall space, or alarge whiteboard.
Exercise #1: Individual Values, Group
Values
The first exercise is designed to help people
become more aware of what they may want toexperience in community living.
Depending on the size of the group, it can
take from one long day and evening, to a week-end (or two different day-long sessions). Theexercise works in a large home or facility wherepeople can go off by themselves and concentrate.
The exercise begins by writing five different
two- or three-page recollections of experiences inwhich you felt especially fulfilled in a communi-ty-like setting or a shared group activity. Thesesettings can include:
your family
summer camp, as a child or as a campcounselor
hiking or camping trips with friends
a college dorm, fraternity or sorority, orstudent co-op
a shared group household or intentionalcommunity
an activist or service project, a sharedwork task
a therapy group, 12-step group, ritualgroup, or men’s or women’s group
a theatrical or musical presentationCREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 47

a team sports activity or shared athletic
event
your workplace
the military
Y ou’re looking for times when you felt pro-
foundly happy with other people, as if you wereblessed to be there, as if you had “come home” —when you not only enjoyed the experience, butfelt connected and bonded with the other peoplepresent.
If you can only think of positive times that
weren’t all that profound, that’s fine. Just writeabout some experiences you enjoyed with others.If you can’t think of five different times, that’sOK too. Just write as many as you can.
While writing these stories focus mostly on
what you felt and thought during these experi-ences, rather than going into detail about whathappened.
This is focused work that requires concentra-
tion. Some people can do it anywhere; otherswill need privacy and quiet. Make sure peopleget the quiet they need. If some people finishbefore others, ask them to go elsewhere if theywant to talk with others so they won’t disturbthose still working. Writing five little stories cantake several hours. T ake breaks as needed, andwhen everyone has finished, take a break.
Each person will end up with an overview of
activities they especially like to do and states ofbeing they especially like to feel in a community-like setting.
Next, form into groups of three. One person
at a time reads their stories and the other two lis-ten, taking notes if they like, and reflect back tothe speaker what the stories tell them about thatperson’s values, beliefs, and aspirations. The firstperson writes these insights down, adding anymore that come up.After everyone has had a turn, each person
selects five or six of the values, beliefs, or aspira-tions that are most personally significant, andwrites the essence of each in a phrase or shortsentence (not in a single word) on large yellowsticky notes.
Each person reads out their phrases and
hands them to the facilitator, who sticks them onthe wall of easel paper or a large whiteboard. Thegroup can ask clarifying questions but doesn’totherwise comment on the statements, or agreeor disagree with them.
After everyone has finished, the whole group,
or a few people from the group, clusters thesticky notes into whatever natural categoriesthey seem to fall into. These may include “inter-personal relations,” “shared meals,” “governanceand decision-making,” “celebration,” “sharedwork,” “children,” “ecological values,” “spiritualvalues,” and so on.
The facilitator gives each person half the
number of stick-on red dots as there are peopledoing the exercise (e.g., three dots if you are sixpeople; five if you are ten, etc.). Each personplaces a red dot next to the clusters that are mostimportant to him or her personally in a futurecommunity.
Now the facilitator gives each person the
same number of green stick-on dots as there arepeople in the room (in other words, twice thenumber of red dots). Within the clusters, eachperson places a green dot next to the individualphrases that are most important to him or herpersonally.
Sit back and look at where the dots are. This
is an indication of what’s most important to youas individuals and as a group, and how aligned ordivergent your values and interests may be.
T alk about what you see. Do most of you
share the same values and interests?
48CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

(T o keep this work for the writing-it-down
phase of your visioning process, ask someone tocopy the clusters, phrases, and red and green dotindicators onto one or more sheets of easel paperyou can hang in the room.)
Exercise #2: Individual Values, Group
Values
Here is a shorter and simpler exercise designed to
get at the same kind of information, although it’sfar less rich and revealing than the first exercise.
Pass out five or six extra-large yellow sticky
notes to each person. Everyone answers the ques-tions, “What values do you hold personally forcommunity?” and “What values do you think weshare in common?” on the sticky notes, with oneanswer per note. It works best if this is donesilently. At the end of five minutes, everyoneplaces their sticky notes on the wall of easelpaper or a large whiteboard. As in the aboveexercise, the whole group or a few people clusterthe sticky notes into categories of similar values.
Don’t be concerned if people don’t just write
values, but also write interests or ideals. Theexercise will still give you an idea of how alignedyou may be, individually and as a group.
Hand out the same proportions of red and
green sticky dots as in the above exercise, and askeach person to put red dots on the clusters andgreen dots on the individual sticky notes thatexpress the values they hold most dearly.
As in the above exercise, sit back and look at
where the dots are. (And to keep this work forthe future, ask someone to copy it down on oneor more sheets of easel paper you can hang up.)
Exercise #3: Brainstorming
This exercise is similar to the first two.Brainstorming offers a quick overview of yourwhole group’s many interests, values, and ideals.In this process you each call out words or phras-
es that embody what you’re seeking in communi-ty. The facilitator and a second person write thewords and phrases down on the large yellowsticky notes, which they stick onto the wall spacecovered with easel paper or a whiteboard. As youcall out your words and phrases, don’t hold back.Say anything and everything that comes tomind. Don’t criticize or comment on anyoneelse’s offerings — this is a time to let ideas popup like popcorn, without censoring.
Cluster the post-its into categories, and place
your red and green stick-on dots, as above.
Look at the clusters and dots, and talk about
what this shows you about yourselves. (And havesomeone copy it onto one or more easel papersyou can hang up, as above.)
Brainstorming is like a snapshot of your
group at a given point in time. If you do thisexercise in the early stages of the visioningprocess you’ll get a quick overview of what thegroup generally wants at that time. If you do itagain towards the end of the visioning sessions,you may get different results.
Exercise #4: Non-neogtiables
Each of you lists on a piece of paper those things,situations, and systems that must be or must not
be present before you will seriously considergoing forward with the community. Then every-one reads their lists and a scribe writes them ona large sheet of easel paper for everyone to see.This exercise will show you places where variousindividuals in the group may seem incompatible,but don’t worry; this is just a beginning step.“The exercise is amazingly revealing, because itforces us to examine what is really important tous,” says cohousing consultant Zev Paiss. I rec-ommend doing this exercise at least twice, oncein the middle of your visioning sessions andCREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 49

again at the end (which may be weeks later),
because what people consider “non-negotiables”can change so much over the course of visioningwork.
“Despite the apparent solidity of the term
‘non-negotiable,’” notes Zev, “as we learn aboutour personal priorities and experience workingwith others to develop a collective vision, thoseitems most important to us inevitably change.”
Exercise #5: Where do we Draw the Line?
Process consultant Rob Sandelin uses this exer-cise to help groups disagreeing over differentchoices or strategies. It shows that a group canagree on a common value, but not agree on thelengths to which each person would go toexpress that value.
Let’s say everyone in your group assumes
you’re all on the same page about what you meanby “ecological living.” But some of you want thecommunity to grow most of its own organic foodand everyone eat vegetarian, and others wanteach household to make its own decisions aboutthis, and offer a choice of omnivore or vegetarianfood at common meals.
On a large sheet of easel paper that every-
one can see, create a list, and, in increasingorder of effort, time, or “strictness,” outline thedifferent actions people can take to express thevalue or principle you’re discussing. Items atthe top of a list on “ecological values,” for exam-ple, might include: “Buy organic produce,”“Recycle trash,” and “Compost kitchen scraps.”Farther down you’d find actions that take moreeffort or commitment, such as: “Eat vegetari-an;” or “Flush the toilet rarely.” The bottom,listing the most “radical” actions, might say“Use only off-grid power,” “Build only withrecycled lumber,” and “Don’t use a car unlessyou’re car-pooling.”When your list is complete, give everyone as
many red dots each as the number of items onthe list, and ask each person to put dots by theactions they are personally willing to actually doin their daily lives (not actions that they simplysupport theoretically). Some will have dots leftover, since probably everyone won’t be willing todo everything on the list.
This exercise presumes that people aren’t sim-
ply “for” or “against” various values but differ inthe matter of degree, which show up in what theyare willing to actually do. It can help your groupsee, immediately and visually, where you fall asindividuals in terms of specific actions you will orwill not take regarding seemingly shared values.Doing this process with a variety of these sharedvalues — “honesty,” “love of nature,” “spirituality,”and so on — can help you see whether most ofyou, in fact, are aligned in vision, and if any of youdiffer radically. (Better to find this out now.)
Exercise #6: The Public/Private Scale
This exercise is used by Rob Sandelin to helpgroups get a sense of how strongly their membersfeel about a sensitive issue that some membersmay not want to speak about openly. Let’s sayyou’re discussing an aspect of your future commu-nity life that seems to bring up discomfort andapprehension, but no one is coming out and say-ing what’s bothering them. If you suspect thatsome people do or don’t want something but don’twant to say so publicly, you can use this exercise.
On a sheet of easel pad paper, write a hori-
zontal line numbered from one to nine, with thenumbers one, five, and nine larger than the oth-ers. Below is an example of what your paper willlook like:50CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
_____________________________
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Opposed to it So-so Advocate it

Give everyone a blank slip of paper and ask
them to write the number that corresponds totheir level of support for the principle, activity, orsituation you’ve been talking about. A nine meansyou wholeheartedly support it; a one means you’readamantly opposed to it; a five means you couldgo either way. The other numbers are graduationsof support or lack of support for the subject.Collect the slips of paper and make check marksat every number the people have written. Y ou mayhave one mark at 9, three marks at 3, and three at2, for example. Now you’ll have an immediate andvisual way to see how the group as a whole reallyfeels about the subject. It can be a real eye-open-er. Y ou may find that only one or two peoplestrongly support something, and most othersd o n ’ t c a r e o r a c t i v e l y o p p o s e i t . D e p e n d i n g o nwhat your scale tells you, there may be no need todiscuss the subject further. Without having toembarrass anyone publicly, you now have a realis-tic indicator of the spread of opinion in yourgroup about a particular value or ideal.
“This technique is a quick and powerful way
for an individual to see where they fit in with therest of the group,” says Rob. “If the scale showseverybody is at the 7-9 range and I am the onlyperson that is at a 2, that is very valuable to meto know. Conversely, it is very helpful for thegroup to know that one of its members is notaligned with everybody else.”
Exercise #7: Hidden Expectations
This exercise, derived from art therapy, operateson the principal that you can bypass your think-ing process and access your unconscious mind. Itinvolves answering questions, but this time,answer them as fast as you can with your pen orpencil in your non-dominant hand. (If you’reright-handed, use your left hand; if you’re left-handed, use your right.) Writing as fast as possible with the non-
dominant hand is what makes the exercise work.Y our writing (or printing, if that’s what comesout) will tend to be large and scrawling, evenprimitive. It may reveal expectations about com-munity that you know very well, as well as expec-tations that may be important to you but aboutwhich you may be barely aware. Y ou may havestrong feelings as you write.
Prepare the questions in advance, in ques-
tionnaire form, with a copy for each person.Leave at least half a page of blank space for eachanswer. It should take about eight double-sidedpages.
The exercise takes about 20-30 minutes, and
seems to work best when everyone in the roomdoes it at the same time. The exercise doesn’tnecessarily trigger deep insights in everyone, andit doesn’t do it every single time. But it can offera powerful source of insight for some.
Y ou don’t have to share your answers with
anyone, so be as candid and uninhibited as youlike. Don’t think when you’re writing. Just write as
fast as you can and let your non-dominant handdo the work.
1. What do you want more than anything? For
yourself.
2. What do you want more than anything? For
the world.
3. What do you want more than anything? For
your children.
4. What do other people do that hurts you?5. What do you fear?6. What makes you mad?7. What makes you cry?8. If you could go back in your childhood and
change your mother (or primary female care-taker), what would you change?
9. If you could go back in your childhood andCREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 51

change your father (or primary male care-
taker), what would you change?
10. What didn’t you get as a child?11. If you could make something in your child-
hood better, what would it be?
12. If you could make something in your child-
hood go away, what would it be?
13. What do you need to feel safe?14. What do you need to feel loved?15. What do you need to feel happy?16. What kind of community do you want?
When everyone is finished, take a break.
When you return, gather in groups of three andinvite anyone who wishes to share what theylearned to do so within the small groups.Speaking is optional. Some people will speak,some won’t; hearing some people describe theirinsights can motivate others to share their own.
When each small group is finished, return to
your whole group, and again invite people toshare what they’ve learned. Don’t write anythingdown at this point, but just listen, and then talkabout any expectations — known or hidden —that anyone may want to talk about. This processcan be very revealing, and it can also help you feelcloser and more bonded as a group.
The point of this exercise, however, is not
necessarily for you to share any conscious and
hidden expectations with the group, but simplyto uncover them. It’s an opportunity to look them
in the face, so to speak, and ask whether or notthey are realistic, or if they serve you. If you dis-cover that you expect companionship and play-fulness in community, for example, which mightbe a fairly conscious expectation arising fromgrowing up in group of active brothers and sis-ters, that’s fine. This seems like an expectationthat serves you: being more aware of this expec-tation can motivate you to consciously createcongenial, playful aspects of your community’s
social life.
However, discovering that you might have
hidden expectations that in community you’llalways be included and never be left out, or thatyou’ll always be fully accepted and never criti-cized, or that you’ll always be totally emotionallysafe and never experience conflict — watch out.Expectations like these can be time bombs. Y oucan take the space now to defuse them by nam-ing them, sharing them (if you wish), examiningthem more closely, asking yourself if they seemrealistic, and becoming willing to laugh aboutthem and let go of them.
If everyone in your group is doing this, it can
have a profound effect on your shared vision forcommunity, which can be considerably morerealistic and grounded than it might otherwisehave been. Congratulations!
Sharing from the Heart
Y ou can certainly combine elements from thesevarious exercises and make up your own. Y ou canrepeat “Non-negotiables” and “Brainstorming” asmany times as you like, to see how the group’sideas are shifting or coalescing. Y ou can bring in“Public/Private Scale” and “Where Do W e Drawthe Line?” anytime to get a sense of how everyonein the group feels about something, not just themost outspoken ones. The whole idea is to stim-ulate awareness of what you each really want, andget a sense of your group’s shared or differingcomponents of vision. Ideally, the ideas from pre-vious discussions and exercises will be capturedon large sheets of easel paper on the walls.
Really get into this with each other, as you
share what you aspire to, deeply yearn for,expect, hope, and fear about living in communi-ty. These conversations can be tense, they can bedeep. And they’re often funny. It’s a good time for52CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

a sense of humor, as you might find out that the
two most inspired “burning souls” in your grouphave opposite hidden expectations. Considerthese revelations to be part of the process.
At this stage you’re not creating strategy —
how you’ll get there — but simply working atidentifying and visualizing the various aspects ofyour shared future. Have a note-taker writedown the main points of your discussions, typethem up, and save them for the more compre-hensive writing process to come.
Y ou may discover aspects of your future
community that some of you want and some ofyou are indifferent about or don’t want. Y ou cannegotiate, trying to meet everyone’s interestswhile not limiting anyone’s opportunities. If thatisn’t possible, you can see if some people are will-ing to let go of some part of their personaldesires so the group may gain alignment on awider part of the vision. Y ou may want our com-munity to raise horses because you love them; forexample, and I may want us to raise fields ofwheat because I secretly fear famine. Can eitherof us let go of these personal desires so we can alllive in our rural, self-reliant homestead? Y ou maywant us to operate a coffeehouse in our store-front space because you love the arts and intellec-tual pursuits; I may want us to run a soupkitchen because I yearn to serve the homeless.Can either of us let go of this so we can all createour vibrant urban community?
With differences like these, it’s a time for
deep and heartfelt sharing, of asking ourselves“Is this realistic?”“Will this work for me?”“Willthis work for all of us?”“What’s really importantto each of us?” “What can I live without; what’snot negotiable?” There is no real rule — you willneed to navigate this unfolding territory as youthink best.Writing it Down
T o help with the writing process, I suggest mak-ing the following posters on large sheets of easelpaper (see below), and hanging them up asreminders of you what you’re aiming for.
OUR VISION DOCUMENTS
 Can include Vision, Mission, sometimes
Goals
 Vision: Shared future we want to create Mission: What we’ll be doing to create it Goals: Shorter-term milestones we commit to
 Vision Statement: Vision articulated briefly CREATING VISION DOCUMENTS 53
DECISION-MAKING AND THE
VISIONING PROCESS
Many experienced communitarians believe that consen-
sus is the appropriate process for deciding an issue ascritical as the visioning process. “The consensus processitself fosters an attitude that can help forge a bond andbuild trust in your group,” observes consensus facilitatorBetty Didcoct. “When the input of everyone is honored,who knows what might surface — a strong single visionthat draws everyone, or multiple visions that suggest thepresence of more than one potential forming community.”
Other community activists, such as Rob Sandelin, sug-
gest not using consensus for your visioning process. Forconsensus to work well your group must have a commonpurpose, and when you’re still in the visioning process, itdoesn’t have it yet. A group needs a method, he says,such as, say, 75 percent voting, in which some peoplecan diverge radically from others about what they want inthe community without bringing the whole process to acrashing halt. I personally agree with this view, althoughthere are groups out there who employed consensus fortheir visioning process and it worked just fine.

OUR VISION STATEMENT
 Expresses vision and mission/purpose
 Clear, concise, compelling  Ideally short, 20-40 words Ideally memorized Helps awaken vision
 It’s what others see fi rst
One way to do this is for everyone to go home
and write their own idea of what the community’svision statement would be. At the next meetingread each person’s version, then get into groups ofthree and merge them. Then select a committeeof three or four people to write a rough draft ofvision documents and/or a vision statementbased on the groups’ merged statements. Includein this writing group, if possible, a visionarythinker, a systems thinker, and someone skilledwith words. It works best having a small groupwrite something to present to the group becauseit’s much easier to respond to something alreadywritten than it is for everyone to sit around andtry to write the whole thing as a group. At thenext meeting, the group reviews the first draft,decides what it likes and doesn’t, makes sugges-tions and refinements, and sends the amendeddraft back to the small group for more work. Thisround robin word-crafting process can occur asmany times as needed until the full group pro-nounces the vision documents complete.
/fl1lft
Next — power imbalances in communities,
and how your decision making and other self-governance methods can spread power equallyamong members.54CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
ASSESSING YOUR VISION DOCUMENTS
You may want to test your vision documents and vision
statement against the following criteria:
For you as an individual:
1. Do you feel good when you read the written expres-
sion of your vision?
2. Is it meaningful for you? If not, how would it need to
be changed to make it meaningful?
3. Does it resonate with your personal sense of identity?
Do you feel as if you can “own” it?
4. Does it inspire you?
For your group:
1. Is your vision document simple, clean, and authentic?
2. Does it reveal and announce your group’s core val-
ues?
3. Does it focus on the “who,” “what,” and “why” of your
project?
4. Is it fairly concrete and grounded (not vague or flowery)? 5. After you read it, can you remember it? Do you “see” it?6. Does it express your purpose?7. Does it inspire your group?8. Does it generate excitement?9. Does it show what your community will be like when
your vision is achieved?
10. Does it express passion, conviction, and commitment?11. Is it possible in the current zoning, building-code,
and lending environment?
Your Vision Statement:
1 Is it clear, concise, and compelling?
2. Does it express your vision and purpose?3. Does it also reveal and announce your core values?4. Is it fairly short? Can you memorize it?5. Can you identify with it?6. Does it inspire you?7. Do others “get it” right away?8. Does it seem reasonable? Is it unrealistic? Is it too
ambitious?

MOST INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES ,o t h e r
than those led by a single spiritual teacher
or leader, intend that power be shared equallyamong members. But certain members may stillhave considerably more power than others.Much of the conflict in a core group or commu-nity occurs over issues of unequal distribution ofpower.
Sometimes the power imbalance is caused by
one or more people dominating meetings andcommittees. These folks might have a dominat-ing communication style — interrupting, talkingloudly, “talking over” others, or speaking withsuch intensity and certainty that no one canoppose them. This means they end up having alot of the power in the group.
Or maybe they have fine communication
skills but unintentionally dominate meetingsand committees because they have more infor-mation about issues than others do. These peo-ple arrive with a briefcase, clipboard, pocket cal-culator, and a sheaf of documents about how it’sdone. Who could disagree?
Still others are fine communicators and don’t
know any more than anyone else, but they’ve gotsuch energy and force in their personality thatpeople instinctively look to them for leadership.Without meaning to, they’ve got a lot of powerin the group. Some appreciate them; others
resent them.
Sometimes the power imbalance involves
someone being more influential than othersbecause of his or her role in the community. Insome communities one person, often a founder,seems to have considerably more influence overdecisions than others, even if the communityuses democratic decision-making. The power-person might have established the original visionfor the community, put up all or most of themoney, and/or lived there the longest. Othercommunity members habitually defer to his orher opinion, even if the group officially believeseveryone has equal say.
Power — The Ability to Influence
People who have power and privilege in a groupusually aren’t aware of it. They usually exercise itinnocently and don’t notice that it’s not reciprocal.
Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad in The Guru
Papers define “power” as the ability of a person or
system to influence other persons or systems —and it’s neither good nor bad. They distinguishbetween plain and simple “power” and “theauthoritarian use of power.” (Italics mine.) When
people have authoritarian power, they enforce orperpetuate their power by punishing or ignoring
55/fl1lftChapter 6 /fl1rt
Power, Decision-making, and Governance

those who disagree with them. This distinction
helped me see that the authoritarian use ofpower is something most of us want to avoid, yet“power” — our ability to influence each other —is not only not negative, but something which, if
we encourage it equally in our group, can benefitall of us.
I see decision making as the main power-
point in a community — who makes decisionsand how they make them. Power imbalances canbe greatly reduced by using a fair, participatorydecision-making method that spreads powerequally and offers checks and balances againstpower abuses. (Everyone’s having good commu-nication skills certainly helps too.) Nothaving a
fair, participatory decision-making method earlyin your group will almost certainly generate con-
flict over power imbalances at some point. I con-sider this another kind of structural conflict,because putting this kind of decision-makingmethod in place at the beginning is a “structure”which can help protect against it.
(Of course, simply having a fair decision
making method doesn’t address power imbal-ances triggered by dominating, intimidating, ormanipulative behaviors outside of meetings, tak-ing unilateral actions that affect the communitywithout first checking with others, or breakingcommunity agreements. These issues will beaddressed in Chapters 17 and 18.)
Focused Power, Widespread Power
If a community chooses a single person or acommittee to make certain decisions, they’ve gotfocused power — which is good for decisionswhich must be made quickly or which requirespecial expertise.
With majority-rule voting, power is theoret-
ically spread widely, and everyone has it.However, in controversial issues, where the votemay be split 51-49 percent, half the group has allthe power, the other half has none.
Consensus decision-making is a group deci-
sion-making process in which all present mustagree before action is taken. It’s based on thebelief that everyone has a piece of the truth. Theintention is that each person in a meeting isgiven the time and space to speak their truth, andis listened to with respect. If done correctly, thismethod can help to spread power throughoutthe whole group, and is the method chosen mostoften by contemporary community founders.
How Consensus Works
While there are many styles of consensus, ingeneral it works like this: Members don’t vote Y es56CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
SOWING CIRCLE’S REASONS FOR
CHOOSING CONSENSUS
Sowing Circle/OAEC founders chose consensus for five
reasons. which they describe in one of their community
documents:
Consensus creates and strengthens a spirit of trust, coop-eration, and respect among the Partners (members):
 By incorporating the clearest thinking of all
Partners, consensus increases the likelihood ofnew, better, and more creative decisions.
 Because all have participated in its formation,
everyone has a stake in implementing decisions.
 Consensus significantly lessens the possibility that
a minority will feel that an unacceptable decisionhas been imposed on them.
 Consensus safeguards against ego/adversary atti-
tudes, uninformed decision-making, “rubberstamping” of decisions, coercion, self-interestedpositions, mistrust, and half-hearted agreements.

or No on motions. Rather, proposals are intro-
duced, discussed, and eventually decided upon.Proposals don’t necessarily remain as they wereintroduced, but are improved or modified tomeet people’s concerns as necessary. When it’stime to decide, people either give consent to theproposal, stand aside from it, or block it.
Giving consent doesn’t necessarily mean loving
every aspect of the final version of the proposal,but being able to live with it and being willing tosupport it.
Standing aside is an act of what’s sometimes
called “principled non-participation,” in whichsomeone can’t personally support the proposal,but doesn’t want to stop the rest of the groupfrom adopting it. People who stand aside arenoted in the minutes, and, depending on thegroup’s agreements, may not have to help imple-ment it (but they are still subject to it).
Blocking the proposal stops it from being
adopted, at least for the time being. It is not usedfor personal reasons, or because someone doesn’tlike how the decision may affect them personal-ly. “Blocking is a serious matter,” writes consen-sus teacher Bea Briggs, “to be done only whenone truly believes that the pending proposal, ifadopted, would violate the morals, ethics, orsafety of the whole group.” Caroline Estes,another well-known consensus teacher, oftensays that people who understand consensus wellwill only block a proposal three or four times intheir lifetime — and in 50 years of consensuspractice, she’s never blocked once. (Caroline fur-ther notes that people who often want to block agroup’s proposals are probably operating on adifferent set of values than other members andmay be in the wrong group.)
A proposal is passed when everyone in the
meeting gives consent, even if one or more peo-ple stand aside. It is not passed if at least one per-son blocks it. (Some groups don’t proceed if
more than one person stands aside, believingthat the group doesn’t have enough unity to goforward with the proposal.)
When a group uses consensus to make a
decision, they can only ch ange that decision by
reaching another consensus. It may take longerto make decisions using consensus than it doeswhen using majority-rule voting, especially atfirst. However, implementing a proposal once it’sagreed upon usually takes far less time. Majority-rule voting, in which up to half the people can beunhappy with a decision, often generates foot-dragging and other forms of unconscious sabo-tage when it comes to implementing the propos-al. With consensus, a decision often takes longerto decide, but far less time to implement sinceeveryone’s behind it.
A consensus meeting is not “run” by a chair-
person, but served by agenda planners and afacilitator. For each meeting, the agenda plannerscreate an agenda which will help the groupaddress relevant topics in a certain order andwithin certain time frames for a well-paced,effective meeting. The facilitator’s job is to con-sider the needs of the group as a whole, create anatmosphere of trust and safety, help those whowant to do so to participate in the discussion(and not let anyone dominate), help the groupstick to its agenda contract, keep the groupfocused and on task, and assess how well thegroup is agreeing, before testing for consensus.
Consensus is essentially a conservative
approach to decision making — if everyone inyour group cannot support the proposal, youdon’t adopt the proposal, or you change the pro-posal. While in the consensus process theoretical-ly one person can stop a group from moving for-ward on a proposal, this is a rare event in a well-trained group. People objecting to a proposal
POWER, DECISION-MAKING, AND GOVERNANCE 57

voice their concerns openly from the beginning,
and the group attempts to modify and refine theproposal to meet these concerns. If, after muchdiscussion, there isn’t much support for themodified proposal, the facilitator doesn’t call fora decision, but lays aside the proposal for afuture meeting, or calls for a committee to sug-gest new solutions at a later meeting.
Consensus generates an entirely different
dynamic among meeting participants thanmajority-rule voting. With the latter, competingfactions usually try to win converts to their posi-tion by criticizing the other position and creat-ing an “us versus them” atmosphere. But consen-sus creates an incentive for supporters of a pro-posal to seek out those who disagree with themand really try to understand their objections —and to reform the proposal to incorporate theother members’ concerns. Conflicts and differ-ences can arise using consensus as often as theydo when using other forms of decision making,but in consensus conflicts are seen as a catalyst tocreating more innovative solutions and craftingan agreement out of all the different concernsthat people raise. So consensus is not compro-mise, which weakens everyone’s interests, but acreative meta-solution, which, ideally, strength-ens everyone’s interests.
Because the consensus facilitator draws out
the ideas and concerns of each member anddoesn’t let the more articulate or energetic mem-bers dominate, consensus empowers a group as a
group. Majority-rule voting usually rewards the
most aggressive members but disempowers thegroup as a whole.
Done well, consensus can transform meet-
ings from overlong, frustrating, draining ses-sions that go nowhere and elicit people’s worstbehaviors, to spirited, stimulating events whereeveryone’s ideas are valued and the group comesup with surprisingly creative and workable
solutions.
In a well-trained group with good facilita-
tion, using consensus can elevate the conscious-ness of a group. It’s not just a decision-makingtechnique, but a philosophy of inclusion, draw-ing out the ideas, insights, and wisdom of every-one’s “piece of the truth.”
But it’s not a panacea and it won’t work in
every situation. T o get the full power and impactof this process, certain elements must be present.
What You Need to Make Consensus
Work
Willingness to learn the process. Consensus
needs to be taught thoroughly, and its basic prin-ciples periodically reviewed. I can’t emphasizestrongly enough the need for training: the morepeople in your group who understand consen-sus, the better it will work. T raining often takesplace in one or more weekends or multi-dayworkshops, with plenty of opportunity to prac-tice. Fortunately there’s a wealth of consensustrainers who can help, and articles and books toget you started.(See resources for more information on consensustrainers, see www.CreatingALifeT ogether.org).
Common purpose. Without a shared vision and
common purpose to focus and unify your efforts,your group can bounce around endlesslybetween confusion, frustration, and grim battlesfor control. In the times when you find your-selves yelling at each other or your momentumhalted by apathy or de spair, you need a common
touchstone to return to. Y ou need to rememberwhere you’re going and why you’re going there —one of the reasons you spend so much time andenergy creating your community vision.58CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Willingness to share power. For many, consensus
requires a kind of paradigm shift — from animpatient “I know best” attitude to a simpleacceptance of and respect for other human beings.Folks who are used to being in charge — alphamales and females, articulate dynamos, and peoplewho usually think they know better than others— can have an especially hard time with consen-sus at first. If your group is top-heavy with suchfolks you might want to think twice about usingthis method, and ask if they are willing to give upsuch roles and innate assumptions. And relatedto this:
Willingness to let go of personal attachments
in the best interests of the group. If your main
concern is what the decision will be and whetherit’ll be the one you want, it’s unlikely you’re prac-ticing deep listening, holistic thinking, and let-ting go of your preconceived ideas, say consensustrainers Betty Didcoct and Paul DeLapa.
T rusting in the process, and trusting each other.
This means believing that by continuing to shareideas and concerns about a proposal with eachother, you will come up with a much better solu-tion than any one of you could have thought ofalone. It’s believing that there is a solution, andthat together you’ll reach it. It’s assuming thateveryone is doing his or her best to listen to oneanother’s point of view. It takes willingness just tosit patiently through the ongoing discussion, eventhough you don’t yet know how it will turn out orhow the issue will get solved.
Humility. “I have come to believe that one of the
foundations of successful consensus process ispersonal humility,” says consensus facilitator RobSandelin. “When you can consider that yourbeliefs about a community issue may be wrong,then you are ready to fully engage in consensus.
For example, I may not like the boy my daughteris dating and think he isn’t a good companion forher, but I realize I might be wrong, that I mighthave misjudged him, and that the situation issafe enough that I can give my permission for herto date him knowing she will learn from theexperience. Consensus is often about giving per-mission to go ahead, even if you are concernedabout the outcome. Y ou give permission in orderto have experiences to learn from.”
Equal access to power. Consensus requires a
level playing field. It doesn’t work well when oneperson in a group is the employer, who couldtheoretically fire or demote the others; or whenone member is the land owner, who could theo-retically sell the land or evict the others.
Physical participation, and the right people
present. In consensus no one decides by proxy.
(although in well-trained groups, the interests ofabsent members are taken into account).Participation requires that people be therebecause agreements are built on what comes outof the discussion. And good decisions requiregood information to start with. Group memberswho might implement a decision, or have infor-mation or perspectives relative to a topic, need toattend the meeting.
The right topics. Not all topics require that the
whole group be present to decide. Some thingscan be decided by area managers or committees,based on the whole group’s input.
W ell-crafted agendas. When a few designated
people plan an agenda ahead of time, and whenthe whole group reviews, revises, and approves itat the beginning of a meeting, the group has just
POWER, DECISION-MAKING, AND GOVERNANCE 59

made a contract with itself for how they’ll spend
time in that meeting. Making such a contractand sticking to it goes a long way towards havingeffective, satisfying, upbeat meetings. Having noagenda, or an agenda controlled only by certainpeople, or a poorly crafted agenda, can diminishthe group’s trust and subject them to confused,dragging, time-wasting meetings.
Skilled facilitation. The facilitator is not the
group’s leader or chairperson, but its servant,charged with the job of helping the group makethe best decisions possible. The facilitator isempowered to help the group keep its processand agenda contract with itself, move forward inits discussion and decision-making tasks, andintervene when necessary. The facilitator doesn’tparticipate in the discussion. (In many commu-nities several members learn facilitation so theycan rotate the role. Some communities tradefacilitation with other nearby communities, soeveryone can take part in the discussion.) Thefacilitator is neutral about the topics being dis-cussed, and treats everyone equally, showing nofavorites. He or she helps spread the powerthroughout the group by asking,“Have we heardfrom everyone?” “Does anyone have anything toadd?” The facilitator seeks solutions, asking,“ Arethere any other ideas?” The facilitator helps thegroup focus on where it is in the discussion bysummarizing what’s been said so far, by drawingout and clarifying decisions, and by asking, “ Arewe ready to move on?” With a skilled facilitator,community meetings which used to be irritatingor unproductive can move more swiftly, whichmeans its members tend to remain alert andenergized, enjoy themselves, and get more done.
I used to think consensus wouldn’t work in a
group with an aggressive member who’d steam-roller over others; or an angry, suspicious personwho might block a decision out of sheer con-
trariness. But I’ve learned that a good facilitator,like a kind of aikido master, can redirect theoverly verbal, draw out shy folks, diffuse aggres-sive behavior, stop cross-talk, and repeatedlybring a group back to its task of making gooddecisions. “ A good facilitator can save you up to50 percent of the group’s time,” notes Bea Briggs.“ A poor one can easily cost the group as much.”
Enough time. Making good decisions takes
time, especially when people are first learningnew procedures. Arrange enough time in yourmeetings so that you won’t feel rushed; as yourgroup builds trust and experience together, you’llget more efficient at making decisions with thismethod.
“Pseudoconsensus” and Structural
Conflict
“Many groups aren’t trained in how to use con-
sensus,” says Caroline Estes. “When I get calledin to help, it’s usually because the group doesn’tunderstand the process.”
When a group thinks it knows how to use
consensus, but doesn’t, it’s a set-up for structuralconflict. They proceed in ignorance, sowing seedsof frustration and resentment that can fester foryears to come. Many political activists in the1960s and ’70s assumed they were using consen-sus, but were often just guessing at it. This iswhat I call “pseudoconsensus,” and it’s widespreadin communities. Here are some of its forms:
Big League Complex. The main problem in
many forming community groups, saysCaroline Estes, is when people are used tohaving their own way, or they believe theyknow better than others. I call this the “BigLeague Complex.” It seems particularly60CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

prevalent when the group has a high per-
centage of business executives or peoplein the helping professions, as is the casewith many cohousing communities.“Participants in a consensus group mustbe willing to give up hierarchical roles andprivileges and to function as equals,”writes Bea Briggs. “The contributions ofexperts, professionals, and elders are, ofcourse, welcome, but they must not beallowed to silence the voices of the othermembers.”
Decision by endurance. Another pseudo-
consensus notion is the belief that peopleneed to stay in the room until they makea decision, no matter how long it takes(even if that means until four in themorning, as many ’60s-era politicalactivists well recall.) If people believe theymust keep talking about something forhours and hours until they all agree, theirmeeting is not well-facilitated and/ortheir agenda wasn’t well planned. A goodfacilitator keeps to the agenda’s plannedschedule and suggests unconcluded itemsbe tabled for future meetings and/orsends items to committee.
Everyone decides everything. Some groups
flounder in frustration and burnoutbecause they believe everyone in thegroup must be involved in every decision,no matter how small. Not true. Thewhole group is usually needed for decid-ing major policy issues; smaller issues canoften be decided by committees, operat-ing with general guidelines from or over-sight by the whole group.
“I block, I block!” Pseudoconsensus seems
especially prevalent in cohousing com-munities, whose members often seem to
misunderstand blocking. I’ve heard ofcohousing core groups in which peoplesometimes blocked proposals because, forexample, someone wanted this kind of
front door and no other, saying,“I’m sorrybut that just doesn’t work for me.” This isnot consensus; it’s self-indulgence. Thenthere was the forming cohousing groupwhere a member living in another state,reading about a particular proposal onthe agenda of the next meeting, sent wordthat he disagreed with the proposal andwas blocking in advance, so there’d be noneed to discuss it. This poor fellow didn’thave a clue that you don’t do this withconsensus — but the group hadn’t a clueeither, since they let him do it! A trainedgroup knows blocking is used only whensomeone’s “piece of the truth” shows themsomething important the rest of thegroup hasn’t seen. One uses this privilegeafter a time of earnest, objective, soul-searching. Not understanding the block-ing privilege is what can make pseudo-consensus dangerous. A whole group canbe held hostage to such tyranny. (C.T.Butler’s Formal Consensus process has afurther safeguard, which some consensusfacilitators call the “principled objection”— a block can only stand if it is consis-tent with the group’s stated purpose. Ifthe group believes it’s not consistent withtheir purpose, the block is not valid.)
Consensus is like a chain saw. It can chop a lot
of wood, but it can also chop your leg! The point— you have to be trained to use consensus, or itsimproper use can hurt you. Notgetting trained in
consensus is another form of structural conflict.
POWER, DECISION-MAKING, AND GOVERNANCE 61

Rob Sandelin says, “If even one person in your
group doesn’t fully understand consensus —don’t use it.”
Agreement-Seeking — When You Don’t
Want to use Full Consensus
Agreement-seeking methods fall in between
majority-rule voting and consensus and caninclude elements of both.
Super-majority voting. As in consensus, people
try to build agreement for a proposal and modi-fy the proposal as needed, but they vote for oragainst it. The proposal must receive many more“Y es” votes than a simple majority to pass.Depending on what the group has decided inadvance, the required majority can be anywherefrom 55 to, say, 95 percent.
V oting fallback. The group attempts to come to
consensus once, or twice, and if they don’t reachconsensus, they fall back to a percentage of vot-ing the group has previously decided on, any-where from majority-rule (51 percent) to, say, a95 percent vote.
Consensus-minus-one or consensus-minus-two.
In consensus-minus-one, a proposal still passeseven if someone blocks it (it takes two to blockthe proposal for it not to pass). In consensus-minus-two, a proposal still passes even if two peo-ple block (it takes three people to block the pro-posal for it not to pass). Consensus trainerLysbeth Borie believes these terms are misnomers,since neither is actually “consensus,” and suggeststhese methods might be more accurately termedagreement-minus-one or unity-minus-one.
The sunset clause. In consensus, once a decision
is made, it requires a consensus of the whole tochange it. With a sunset clause, the group agrees
on a proposal for a certain period of time; say amonth, six months, a year, etc., at which time thedecision is automatically discontinued and thesituation reverts to what it was before. The deci-sion can be continued (or continued and modi-fied) only by a consensus of the whole.
A sunset clause is a way for people who aren’t
fully supportive of a proposal to allow the wholegroup to try it for a while without requiring theagreement of the whole group to rescind or mod-ify it later if it doesn’t work out.
Consensus teacher T ree Bressen points out
that in order for sunset clauses to work well, thegroup must have a well-functioning agenda listand tracking mechanism for decisions so that theitem will be brought up again later. Otherwisethose group members who went along with thedecision reluctantly may not be so willing thenext time someone proposes a sunset clause.
Multi-winner Voting
Another decision-making method that spreadspower equally in a group involves finding a wayfor the greatest number of members to get themost of what they want. Multi-winner voting isa system adopted from European parliamentaryelections in which each person gets a certainnumber of votes to spread across a range ofchoices.
Sharingwood Cohousing in W ashington
State uses multi-winner voting as a proportion-al spending method for its annual discretionaryfunding allocation. Once a year Sharingwoodmembers hold a “budget party” to decide whatprojects they’ll fund the following year. Theydress up in fancy clothes for wine and cheese intheir Common House. Each member receivesan envelope of play money as they enter, whichrepresents his or her real power in the decision62CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

making. This is the amount of money in the dis-
cretionary budget fund for the following year,divided by the number of community members— “voters” — who attend the budget party.
V arious members or committees sponsor
projects they’d like to see funded the followingyear, and set up displays in the room, which theguests visit during the evening. A “New RetainingW all” display, for example, might have a shortsample rock wall and a member-advocate of theproject who explains the benefits of the project.
Party guests spend various amounts of their
play money on one or more of the proposed proj-ects they like best. As soon as a project gets whol-ly funded its sponsors ring a bell and announce it— “The retaining wall is funded!” — to every-one’s cheers. Since more projects are proposed forthe next year than Sharingwood has money for,not all projects get enough play-money funding.At the end of the budget party sponsors of theleast-funded projects donate their contributionsto the almost-funded projects. This way thegreatest number of people fund the greatest num-ber of their favorite projects.
Community Governance — Spreading
Power Widely
In communities, as well as in core groups, every-
one needn’t decide everything — it’s toounwieldy. So how does a group manage decisionsso that power is balanced and everyone has inputinto decisions, yet meetings don’t take too long,and people aren’t driven crazy with details? The“ten percent” communities profiled in this bookall govern themselves with whole-group-meet-ings and a series of smaller committees.
Let’s consider the method used by Earthaven
Ecovillage in North Carolina. Full group meet-ings, called Council, are held over two days, oneweekend a month. In Council, significant andwide-ranging community and policy issues are
decided upon. Day-to-day work is accomplishedby smaller committees overseeing finance, physi-cal infrastructure, membership issues, and so on.Committees are set up by the Council, andreport to it. The committees decide on issuesand distribute a record of their minutes and alldecisions to members by email and by postingthem in the kitchen and Council Hall. Afterposting, the community has three weeks inwhich to offer concerns regarding a decision. Inthat event, the proposal goes back to the discus-sion stage for further refinement and revision,which is also posted for three weeks for every-one’s OK. If a committee decision is not chal-lenged in the three-week period, it stands. Thisway, every community member who reads thecommittee minutes can keep track of each com-mittee’s activity, and oversee all community deci-sions. Additionally, committees may bring pro-posals about more significant issues to Councilfor discussion and decision by the group.
More than One Form of Decision
Making?
As we’ve seen, although consensus often takes
longer than other methods, its decisions are usu-ally implemented faster. However, because form-ing-community groups must sometimes decidethings quickly, particularly when a land-purchasemay be involved, some community veterans rec-ommend having an alternate, faster process inplace.
And some groups might have more than one
decision-making method, using different meth-ods for different kinds of decisions. If some com-munity members own the property and othersare tenants, for example, the group might useconsensus for most decisions, and a super-majority method solely for decisions affectingPOWER, DECISION-MAKING, AND GOVERNANCE 63

property value; or have a decision-making body
(that uses consensus) comprised only of proper-ty owners who make decisions affecting proper-ty value. (However, doing so will probably bringup power issues, unless all members understandwho makes which decisions, and agree to thiswhen they enter the community.) It’s important
to be flexible, and know when it’s appropriate tobe inclusive and when to be more directive indecision-making. Y ou must agree in advance onwhich method you’re using before starting ameeting.64CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
STYLES OF CONSENSUS
Quaker style. Consensus was developed by Quakers
in seventeenth century England as an extension oftheir beliefs in equality, nonviolence, and everydayaccessibility to divine guidance. In Quaker meetingspeople sit silently, seek a place of inner tranquility andguidance, and don’t offer their opinions unless theybelieve they’re divinely inspired to do so.
Native American style. Certain Native American
tribes have traditionally made decisions in the contextof being moved by Spirit before speaking, respectful-ly listening to one another, and giving particularweight to the voice of community elders.
“Community” style. Derived from these traditions
and by the contemporary communities movement,what I call “community” style considers emotions thatcome up in meetings as potentially relevant input fordecisions. If someone is angry or tearful in a meeting,for example, a community-style facilitator would usethe person’s upset as an opportunity to find out what“pieces of truth” about a proposal or a group dynam-ic those feelings may contain.
Consensus by individual guidance. Developed by
various community activists in the early ’80s (includingBetty Didcoct, and members of Sirius community),this method involves meditating and seeking spiritualguidance before beginning the meeting, so that anydecisions may be informed by intuition and spiritualguidance. It’s very similar to the practices of Quakers and Native Americans, but without a specifically reli-
gious or cultural context.
Formal Consensus. Facilitator C.T. Butler devel-
oped this as a step-by-step (hence “formal”) processto address the typical problems of consensus as usedby members of political activist groups. The first step,once a proposal is made, is to ask only clarifyingquestions. In the next step, people state only objec-tions and concerns, which are written on a large easelpad and grouped according to topic. In the thirdstep these groups of concerns are addressed, one ata time, with discussion and suggestions for refining ormodifying the proposal. The last step is calling forconsensus. The steps can occur sequentially in onemeeting, but for more complex or controversial top-ics are usually spread across several different meet-ings. Proposals can be blocked only when the groupagrees that the person’s reasons for the block arebased in the group’s vision and values, called the“principled objection.” If not, the block is consideredinvalid and the proposal passes anyway. This stepprevents a group from being covertly disrupted bysomeone not aligned with the group’s vision and val-ues, as is often found in non-profit organizations andcohousing communities He finds that this way oftreating blocking allows non-profits and cohousers toinclude these people without being held hostage totheir ability to block the group from moving towardsits intended purpose.

Other community activists caution against
using a so-called “fallback” decision-makingmethod in addition to consensus, for two rea-s o n s .F i r s t ,i fs o m e o n e b l o c k s a p r o p o s a l ,t h epeople who want the proposal to pass can just sitback and say, “No matter, we’ll just switch to 75percent voting now and pass it anyway.” Thegroup won’t try to keep re-crafting and honingthe proposal to meet that one person’s concerns.I n c o n s e n s u s , t h e i d e a i s t h a t w h e n c o n c e r n sabout a proposal are met, it makes a better decision .
A “fallback” method is likely to result in lower-quality decisions. (And as consensus trainerPatricia Allison points out, willingness to stopthe consensus process and simply vote becausesomeone has blocking concerns means theygroup’s not really using consensus.) Second,many facilitators point out that consensus is notjust a method but a philosophy of inclusion.When individuals are less able to influence thegroup’s decisions because it has switched to afaster method, they see it as breaking down thetrust and cohesion of the group. If there’s pres-sure on the group to decide something quickly,people won’t feel the time or space to get in touchwith and express their concerns. They could feelpressured into deciding something they don’treally want, and end up leaving the group as aresult.
I believe this issue hinges on whether you
want to start a new community primarily tobuild its physical infrastructure and see who’lljoin you over time, or to create a place where youcan enjoy connection and friendship with yourexisting group. If your reason is mostly to createa community and live with whomever resonateswith its vision, you may want to use a faster deci-sion-making method than consensus (such assuper-majority voting), in these circumstances,regardless of the current members you may lose.If your reason is to create a community with
your current group of friends, you may want amore inclusive method like consensus thatbuilds support and connection, regardless of thegreat land deals you might have to pass up.
What Decision-making Method Should
You Use?
If you want to spread power widely, help bond
the group more deeply, and evoke the shared wis-dom of the group for decisions, consider usingconsensus or an agreement-seeking method (orboth). For spreading resources across a range ofchoices, try multi-winner voting.
And for accomplishing many tasks without
taking the whole group’s time, consider settingup systems like Earthaven’s Council and com-mittee structure.
If you’ve chosen consensus, here are some
ways to get trained in it:
Read Bea Briggs’ Introduction to Consensus
for an excellent overview of the processitself, and especially how to facilitate aconsensus meeting. I suggest studying it,section by section, as a group.
Study the Formal Consensus process in
C.T. Butler’s book, On Consensus and
Conflict. I recommend Formal Consensus
for inexperienced groups, as I think itsstep-by-step process is easier to learn andeasier for beginners to facilitate.
Visit other community groups or politi-
cal activist groups, and as a guest, observetheir consensus process.
Hire a consensus trainer to come out and
train your group.
Offer support to any group members
who want to learn facilitation (includingfinancial help for additional training), soPOWER, DECISION-MAKING, AND GOVERNANCE 65

you’ll end up with a team of people who
can rotate the job of facilitating yourmeetings.
Some core groups and communities go all
out to understand and practice consensus well,and their meetings show it. Sharingwoodcohousing gives whatever approval and financialsupport necessary for the ongoing training of itsprocess team. Members of Earthaven’s coregroup arranged trainings by both Caroline Estesand C.T. Butler.
/fl1lftIn Part T wo we’ll look at some of the techni-
cal tips and tools for growing a community —from making agreements and setting up legalentities to finding, financing, and developingyour community property — and how you’llraise enough money internally to pay propertyloans and operating expenses.66CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Part Two:
Sprouting New Community:
Techniques & Tools

“You’ll be hearing from our lawyers!” said
Steve and Sandy, faces grim, as they left
the porch and strode to their car. Stunned,Darren and Maria stood in their doorway andwatched the couple disappear down the longgravel road. Steve and Sandy had left a commu-nity I’ll call Cottonwood Springs a few days ear-lier, saying they no longer wanted to be part of it.They’d just returned to demand their $22,000membership and site-lease fees back.
“But, but … you know we’ve spent all the
money,” Darren replied, not believing his ears.“On the balloon payment, the new roof, thepump repair.”
The lawyers showed up the next day with the
papers for a lawsuit. Steve and Sandy wanted notonly the return of their $22,000 for membershipand site-lease fees, but $15,000 more for legalfees and damages, and $4,200 for “back wages” —a retroactive $10 for every hour they had workedin the new community since they’d joined twomonths before.
This was a nightmare for Darren and Maria.
After meeting for three years with other commu-nity-interested folks, they had found their idealland, an owner-financed 83-acre ranch in ruralMontana, but no one else in the group was quite
ready to make the jump yet. Gambling on thepower of their vision, the couple put most oftheir life’s savings into the down payment andmoved to the ranch, bringing their home-basedpottery business with them.
For two years they hosted a series of visitors,
but no one became a member.
“That’s why we didn’t finish our bylaws,” says
Maria, “since we didn’t want to make unilateraldecisions about the community without know-ing the wishes of any future members. W e want-ed everyone to create it together.”
Steve and Sandy were the first visitors who
really seemed “right.” They loved the land andthe vision of a self-reliant homesteading com-munity, and had great skills — he was abuilder, she was a gardener. They had enoughmoney for membership and site-lease fees, andwere even able to move to the property and livein their RV . Best of all, they’d arrived in timeto avert a looming financial crisis, since thefirst $13,000 balloon payment for the proper-ty was due in a few weeks. The newcomersseemed like the answer to Darren and Maria’sprayers.
68/fl1lftChapter 7 /fl1rt
Agreements & Policies: “Good Documents
Make Good Friends”

AGREEMENTS & POLICIES: “GOOD DOCUMENTS MAKE GOOD FRIENDS” 69
The first month everyone was elated.
Enjoying each other’s company, they put in longhours of hard, rewarding work reroofing thebarn that would become their kitchen/diningroom, replacing the well-pump, and upgradingthe irrigation system.
“It was fine with us that we hadn’t worked on
the bylaws any further,” recalls Maria, “becausewe were working so hard to finish the roof andirrigation system while the weather was stillgood. W e knew we’d get to it later.”
The second month Sandy began to point out
aspects of Cottonwood Spring’s site plan thatshe didn’t like. Could she and Steve put theirhouse over there, rather than where the planindicated houses should be? Could they buildtheir house with standard construction materialsrather than the more labor-intensive alternativematerials Darren and Maria wanted for commu-nity homes?
Sandy and Maria began to get on each other’s
nerves. Maria wanted Sandy to stop trying tochange Cottonwood Springs into something itwasn’t. She hadn’t counted on new people want-ing thismuch change. Sandy was frustrated, feel-
ing unable to co-create the kind of communityshe and Steve had envisioned. Maria assumedthat initial power struggles were normal, giventhat community living brings up people’s issues.Also, as a long-time veteran of group processissues, Maria saw conflict not as a problem butas an opportunity to ultimately get more con-nected, once the conflict was resolved throughdeep personal sharing and coming to commonagreement. But such ideas were foreign to Sandy,who took the increasing tension as a sign thatthings weren’t working out. Relations betweenthe founders and newcomers deteriorated untilDarren and Maria proposed they have a seriousprocess meeting. But this was too weird for Steveand Sandy, who thought, “That’s not communi-
ty!” They felt that they had no choice but toleave.
And that’s when the newcomers found out
that there was no provision for departing mem-bers to get their money back.
All Darren and Maria had shown them were
written descriptions of their ideas and visions,and a half-finished set of bylaws, “which,” Mariarecalls, “they saidthey agreed with.” But with no
signed contracts or legal documents, there wereno agreements about what either party could orcould not do. The newcomers were under no obli-gation to stick with the founder’s visions andplans; the founders were under no obligation topay anyone anything. Everyone was unhappy; butfor a scrap of signed paper, there hangs the tale.
They settled out of court. By refinancing the
property (made possible by the balloon paymentand recent property improvements), Darren andMaria returned Steve and Sandy’s $22,000 mem-bership and site fees, but no additional claims.Although the founders didn’t lose their property,they lost a great deal — a new friendship, theexcitement of creating a real community at last,and a good deal of their own energy and heartfor community. Steve and Sandy got their moneyback, but not their injured pride or dignity, andcertainly not their community dreams.Disgusted and embittered, they never wanted tosee another intentional community again.
Remembering Things Differently
T rue stories just like this one happen all toooften.
Some forming communities have made ver-
bal agreements — but … what was it we saidagain? Imay remember that, according to our
work-equity agreement, if we were to disbandour community and sell the property. I’d be

compensated in actual earned wages, in real dol-
lar amounts. But youmay remember agreeing
that I’d be compensated only as a percentage ofthe sale price. This would never become a prob-lem — unless we decide to disband and sell ourproperty. Why wouldn’t normally savvy folkslike us write it all down?
Heartbreaking though it is — because it’s so
simple to prevent — many forming communi-ties flounder or sink because its founders don’twrite down their agreements at the outset.Months or years later, when they try to conjureup what they thought they agreed on, theyremember things differently. Unfortunately, evenpeople with the greatest goodwill can recall aconversation or an agreement in such divergentways that each may wonder if the other is tryingto cheat or abuse or manipulate them. This isone of the most common and most devastatingstructural-conflict time bombs.
Why do so many would-be communitarians
not put agreements in writing? Why does thiskind of structural conflict happen so often?
I believe many idealistic, visionary people
think the only reason to sign an agreement orcontract would be to prevent someone else fromcheating them. And who wants to suggest thattheir community colleagues might do that?! It’stoo embarrassing to bring up; it’s not polite; it’sin poor taste. “If I suggested we write this downand sign it, what kind of rude person might theythink I am?”
Then there’s the anguish of people who’d like
the world to be a better place — want to help itbecome a better place — and can’t bring them-
selves to agree to such documents because onsome level, wouldn’t that just be inducing distrust
and suspicion? Couldn’t we keep distrust andpotential cheating away from us by simply notever thinking about it?W ell-meaning folks such as these can keep
their scruples if they keep in mind these threetendencies of the recollection process:1. Jack remembers vividly what he meant —
what he believed and mentally picturedvividly — but not what he actually said.
(People often don’t say what they mean: notin an attempt to deceive, but because of poorcommunication skills. ) Not knowing whatJack meant, Jill recalls only his actual words.But that’s not what he remembers at all.
2. Jill is sure she remembers what Jack said —
but she didn’t actually pay close attention tohis words at the time. Rather, she was uncon-sciously so focused on what she herselfbelieved about the subject, that she thoughtJack had said what she believed. But it’s notwhat he said at all. He remembers what hesaid — but not what Jill was thinking while he
said it!
3. Jack says something and, seeing Jill nodding in
agreement, he assumes that the communica-tion that he intended in his mind was the com-
munication that was received in her mind. But
it wasn’t. Jill interpreted what she heard himsay as something else entirely. Once again,they’re not remembering the same thing.
Giving Yourselves Every Chance of
Success
Communication can get so fouled up, and so
fast — it makes no sense notto just check it out
by having a group member write down whateveryone thinks they’re agreeing to and thenread it back, or have everyone read it. Now is the
time to say, “W ait a minute; this isn’t what wejust said,” rather than dredging up remembereddifferences months or years later, when people’slife savings or their major life decisions may beat stake.70CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Obviously, you’ll improve how well everyone
remembers an agreement if you not only write itdown, but also ask everyone to sign it. While notappropriate for every kind of agreement or writ-ten document, pretending you’re the BenFranklins and John Hancocks of your ownDeclarations can be rewarding, especially if doc-uments are signed ceremonially. Of course, it’salso a good idea to keep your agreements in asafe place (or in two different safe places), andrefer to them as needed.
“But just having written documents, or having
them with our signatures, doesn’t guarantee any-thing,” you might say. “ Anyone can break thoseagreements anytime. What’s a piece of paper?”
Formal written contracts between people,
and documents for legal structures such asbylaws are only binding when someone not abid-ing by them is taken to court and forced to com-ply on pain of fines or jail. And while this is cer-tainly not something you’ll want to see happen,this potential consequence does serve as a kindof deterrent.
A more powerful deterrent is social pressure.
Legal documents and formal contracts as well asother kinds of written agreements, such as meet-ing minutes, decision logs, behavioral norms, andso on, can easily be breached, but not withouteveryone in the community knowing they werebreached and by whom. Social pressure and thepossibility of group displeasure can be a strongmotivator for keeping agreements, even amongpeople who believe that they wouldn’t need suchpressure to keep agreements. Social pressureworks most of the time, and it’s certainly betterthan what happened to the folks at CottonwoodSprings.
“Good documents make good friends,” notes
Vinnie McKenny, founder of Elixir Farm, a suc-cessful herb farm and small intentional commu-nity in Missouri. Vinnie knows whereof she
speaks. She not only has created a successfulbusiness and several non-profit projects with var-ious friends, but also has a strong background inthe administration side of philanthropic givingand has worked with significant donors. Vinnieknows how the world works, in my opinion, andknows the value of making everything agreedupon between even the best of friends crystalclear and unambiguous — and written down.
Your Community’s Agreements and
Policies
Y ou’ll have agreements, often called “policies” or
“guidelines,” both in the forming-communitystage and later, when you’re living on your prop-erty. The forming-stage documents couldinclude vision documents and policies aboutyour group’s membership and decision-makingprocesses, communication norms, finances, andthe land-search process. These are often record-ed in meeting minutes, decision logs, covenants,and informal contracts.
As you establish a legal entity, purchase
property, and move to the community, you’llprobably make additional agreements for the fol-lowing kinds of community issues:
Community labor and one-time or peri-
odic fees owed.
Land-use and ecological guidelines.
How ongoing or periodic community
expenses will be paid; what happens inthe event of cost overruns.
Policies for dogs and other pets, children,
noise, tool use, conserving water or elec-tric power, or the use of drugs , alcohol,tobacco, or firearms.
The processes by which new members
join the community.AGREEMENTS & POLICIES: “GOOD DOCUMENTS MAKE GOOD FRIENDS” 71

New members’ expected financial contri-
butions and labor requirements.
The processes by which members may
leave the community, including how, or if,they will be reimbursed any of theirmembership fees or other expenses.
Behavioral norms, including how the
community will handle people violatingthose norms, and the consequences fordoing so.
Grounds for, and the process of, asking
someone to leave the community.
Some of these agreements will be recorded in
the formal documents associated with the legalentity you’ll form to purchase land together, or toconduct any non-profit activities or operate acommunity-owned business. These can includeArticles of Incorporation and Bylaws (corpora-tions), Partnership Agreements (partnerships),or operating agreements (Limited LiabilityCompanies), for example, depending on whichlegal structure(s) you choose. (These will beexamined more closely in Chapters 15 and 16.)Other agreements may be recorded in docu-ments such as leases, promissory notes, realestate deeds, and contracts, and still others maybe in simple policies your group drafts, approves,and implements.
Many forming communities are so over-
whelmed with organizational or constructiontasks in their early years — or simply don’t antic-ipate what they might need — that they createcertain policies and agreements only when a cri-sis reveals the need for them.
That’s what happened to the Community
Alternatives Society in V ancouver. While theyhad agreements about financial and laborrequirements, and guidelines about how they’duse and maintain their common facilities, theyhad no policy about people’s behavior, since they
all seemed to behave reasonably well. The nor-mal conflicts were handled by their communica-tion processes, and their differences of opinionwere addressed in consensus meetings. But afterliving together in relative harmony for 11 years,they discovered that a member had done some-thing so unacceptable it forced the issue. Theyrealized they needed rules about behavior, andmore importantly, an agreement about what todo if anyone breached them. The group came upwith one of the wisest and most humane com-munity behavioral policies I’ve seen, with notonly a clear description of members’ rights andresponsibilities, but also a graduated series ofconsequences when someone violated them.
Other communities anticipate the kinds of
agreements they’ll need over time and begin creat-ing them early on, as did the founders ofAbundant Dawn community in Virginia (most ofwhom had previously lived in other communities).They began working on their policies and agree-ments in 1994, three years before they found andmoved to their land. Some of these were a collec-tion of different agreements they made over time,that they later compiled as a policy on a given sub-ject. In other cases they just sat down and createda policy step by step. As of this writing, eight yearslater, some agreements are completed; others areapproved by the whole group but need more work;still others are in draft form and not yet approved.They’ve saved the actual writing of some formalcontracts and leases until they’ve agreed on thepolicies which those contracts will contain.
Their agreements, some of which are listed
below, illustrate the kinds of issues most formingcommunities address sooner or later, dependingon their living arrangements and the degree ofshared resources. These are the kinds of issuesyour group will need to consider. I suggest you
72CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

use Abundant Dawn’s list to stimulate your own
thinking on which agreements your group wantsto make, and when.
Creating agreements like these is serious
business and requires a lot of time and care.(Abundant Dawn’s founders estimate that thenumber of person-hours they’ve spent creatingtheir agreements, both in committees and com-munity meetings, to be in the thousands.) Somepeople might consider the number and complex-ity of Abundant Dawn’s agreements excessive,but I think it’s smart. This is a communityfounded by experienced communitarians — andit’s one of the ten percent.
Abundant Dawn’s Agreements
Vision Statement. The who, what, and why of
Abundant Dawn community.
Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. Part of
Abundant Dawn’s documents as a non-exemptnon-profit.
Membership Policy. Rights and responsibilities
for different kinds of membership, commit-ments, sabbaticals, part-time members, howmembership ends.
Community Structure Overview. Sections on
community legal structure, community culture,decision-making and governance, pod structure,forming pods, pod joining fee. (A “pod” is asmaller subcommunity within AbundantDawn.) This document addresses balancingmembers’ desire for freedom with their desirenot to be negatively impacted by the choicesmade by their neighbors (with regard to noise,nudity, etc.).
Food Policy. Description of bulk food purchaseand distribution, use of the community garden,
and how food resources are shared.
Conflict Resolution Document. More of an
evolving plan than a policy, this documentdescribes methods for resolving conflicts,including but not limited to full-group processmeetings.
Financial Policy. The Financial Overview
encompasses all agreements about money,including all community income sources andexpenses, members’ financial obligations, whatthe community does and doesn’t pay for, andwhat happens in a financial emergency. TheFormula Agreement describes their formula fordetermining the monthly fees owed by each podor subcommunity within Abundant Dawn,based on the pod’s current number of people andcars, and each pod member’s annual income.
Visitor Policy. Guidelines for how to host visi-
tors seeking a community to join.
On-Land Business Policy. How members own
and operate businesses in the community,including financial relationships, communitycontrol, non-members as co-owners or employ-ees, permission, and contracts.
Land Planning. Overall site plan for communi-
ty land.
Environmental Guidelines for Building.
Description of the various sustainability factorsto consider in building a home.
Forestry Policy. Guidelines for use and care of
forest, including when and how trees can be cut,how firewood can be gathered, etc.AGREEMENTS & POLICIES: “GOOD DOCUMENTS MAKE GOOD FRIENDS” 73

Pet Policy . How many dogs and cats each pod
may have, and how to minimize the animals’impact (especially the impact of outdoor catsand dogs) on both the wildlife that was alreadythere, as well as on other community members.
Expulsion Policy. What may be an expellable
offense, and how a member would be asked toleave, financial resolution, etc.
End of Abundant Dawn Community as W e
Know It. If the group could not continue as a
community, this agreement shows how theywould dissolve the legal entity, sell their proper-
ty to a land trust or become a land trust, contin-ue to live in the homes they’ve built, and disburseany assets. This was an extremely difficult agree-ment to create, and few communities ever thinkabout this in advance. (But it’s good planning.)
/fl1lft
One of your group’s most significant set of
agreements will be those embedded in the docu-ments of the legal entity through which you’llown property together. W e’ll look at those next.74CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
YOUR PET POLICY
Once you move to your property your community will
definitely need a pet policy, since pets, especiallydogs, create some of the thorniest conflicts faced bycommunities. In the early 1980s, for example, a groupof city dwellers moved to the rural Midwest to begintheir new spiritual community. While they had noagreements at all, (believing that spiritual folks likethemselves didn’t need any), they forgot that dogs nolonger contained in yards naturally become that baneof communities—a hunting pack. Their now-liberateddogs exuberantly followed their instincts and killed anumber of small mammals, including kittens and catsbelonging to other members. The community eruptedin gut-wrenching conflict. Some members were furi-ous over the loss of their pets and feared the dogsmight kill other cats or even attack their children. Thedog owners were furious and defensive, since theirown beloved family dog couldn’t be guilty — it was
other members’ dogs. It got so ugly that some fathers
threatened to shoot the dogs on sight. Stunned by theuproar, the community finally decided they mightneed rules after all, and agreed that all communitydogs would be fenced.Dog packs, dogs barking, dog droppings, dogs with
fleas, dogs digging up gardens, and dogs scaring offwildlife are some of the issues that arise over man’sbest friend in community. Cats too, can be an issue incommunities, as some experts estimate that one catkills roughly 100 small animals and birds over thecourse of a year. And yet, sometimes communitieswant dogs to deter deer who eat gardens, or cats toeliminate the rodents that get into food supplies. Sowhile Fido and Fluffy may indeed be welcome, theyneed to be managed. Some communities have agree-ments that dogs and cats must wear small neck bellsto warn wildlife of their approach, or that dogs befenced and leashed.
Recognizing that pets could be important mem-
bers of the family, Earthaven’s founders allowed peo-ple to keep their dogs when they moved to the land(although no more than five or six total on the proper-ty), but not get new pets when their pets died.Abundant Dawn crafted a unique plan that regulatesthe number of dogs and cats per neighborhood,based on neighborhood population. (See “Pet Policy,Abundant Dawn.” Appendix 2, pg. 235.)

“NO— I DON ’T W ANT US TO have any
legal entities or form a corporation!
Corporations and lawyers are what’s wrong withthis country!” So declared a cofounder of a start-up community I was once involved with. She waswilling to create community agreements andpolicies, but not a legal corporation. While Iknew our group needed a legal entity to ownproperty together, I certainly saw her point.Corporations are entities which under the law aretreated as if they had the rights of actual people,but allow the real people who run them to incurdebts, violate the environment, or harm otherswith no consequence to them personally. Andwhen most people think “corporation,” they thinkbig, multinational corporations. Armed with mil-lions of dollars and fleets of lawyers, large corpo-rations can deny, evade, and delay prosecution for
environmental and other crimes for which anindividual person would be swiftly thrown in jail.No wonder many of the people most interestedin creating a more cooperative, alternative cultureare averse to “corporations” and “legal entities.”
Y et form them we must, if we are to protect
ourselves from potentially ruinous lawsuits,exorbitant taxes, or sudden responsibility forpaying debts we didn’t agree to. Legal entities arethemselves neutral. (And only some legal entitiesare literally corporations.) It’s when people use
these structures to harm others and avoidresponsibility that they become objectionable.W e can use these structures to create a more sus-tainable, cooperative way of life and, by demon-stration, influence our culture for the better.
Why You Need a Legal Entity — Before
Buying Your Property
Why does your community need to form a legal
entity? First, you’ll need one to purchase yourproperty, and to own it together over the years.(T echnically you can purchase property as agroup with no legal entity, but your default choic-es — T enancy in Common and Joint T enancy —are not recommended. See Chapter 15.) Second,you’ll need a legal entity (which could be a sepa-rate one) to own and manage any community-owned businesses or to manage any non-profitactivities — especially if you want to receive tax-deductible donations for those activities.
Consider the consequences if you don’t have
a legal entity. Serious, potentially community-killing conflicts can arise regarding:
property rights and responsibilities of
members
vulnerability to creditors and lawsuits
75/fl1lftChapter 8 /fl1rt
Making It Real: Establishing Your Legal Entity

with regard to members’ personal assets
financial compensation for departing
members
issues about who-all holds title to proper-
ty and what happens if the group dis-bands and sells its assets
Not to mention that without choosing a par-
ticular entity you might end up paying exorbi-tant, unnecessary taxes. Not having a legal entityfor your community is definitely a structural-conflict time bomb that could someday blowyour group apart.Thus the criteria for choosing your commu-
nity’s legal entity for property ownership usuallydepends on how well it can (1) protect yourmembers from potential lawsuits or other finan-cial liability, (2) prevent unnecessary taxation,(3) allow your community to hold title to landand structure land use and decision-makingrights the way you like, (4) allow your communi-ty to accomplish its purpose, and (5) reflect yourvalues. (See Chapter 15.)
Some communities have different legal enti-
ties for each kind of activity; others conduct var-ious activities under one legal structure. Andsince no legal entities are designed specifically forintentional communities (except 501(d) non-profits created for the Shakers) we must borrowfrom the various legal structures designed foroperating businesses, pooling money for invest-ments, or holding land in common, and shapethese structures to fit our community’s particu-lar needs.
“W ait a minute, ourcommunity won’t be like
that,” you might say. “W e’re going to create some-thing beautiful and noble — not some business.”
Ah, but your financial dealings need to be con-ducted in a businesslike way. After all, you’ll prob-ably be dealing with hundreds of thousands ofdollars and you’ll need clear, fair agreements. And,when you get right down to it, your community is
a business, since it involves your putting thismoney together and agreeing how you’ll spend it,how you’ll raise more of it when needed, and howyou’ll deal fairly with any surplus or deficit.
Using a Lawyer
Y es, you should definitely have a real estatelawyer when you buy your property, and a lawyerwith tax-law experience to help you set up thelegal entity with which you’ll own your property.W ait until you’ve learned as much as possible76CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
WHY FORM A LEGAL ENTITY?
1. Having a legal entity will make the process of buying
land easier. A seller or lending institution will take alegal entity with tens of thousands in the bank and abrief credit history more seriously than a collection ofindividuals trying to buy property together.
2. Any agreements the group makes as part of the doc-
uments of its legal entity (such as operating agree-ments or bylaws), will be compatible with state law,and thus legally enforceable. If a member violatesone of these agreements, the other members willhave the force of law behind them to induce theerrant member to comply.
3. Some legal entities are more compatible than others
for the various ways you can own property together,such as: (a) everyone owns the property in common;(b) each household own its own individual plot; or(c) each household owns its own individual plot andeveryone together owns the rest of the property incommon.
4. Since the IRS and the state will tax your community
according to whichever legal entity you have chosen,you might as well pick one that saves the most taxesrelative to your community’s particular circumstances.

about your community’s most likely legal
options before you hire one, though. For onething, you will be empowered, because informa-tion is power. Y ou will also avoid paying a lawyerto spend several expensive sessions demystifyingthe realm of business legalities before evenbeginning to draw up a document. Y ou will notfeel like supplicants or amateurs. Y ou won’t beoverwhelmed or intimidated.
I also recommend hiring an experienced tax
accountant or CPA. The point, after all, is tochoose a legal entity which not only reflects yourvalues, but also saves you the most tax money.T ax accountants and CPAs often know moreabout the nuances of these financial issues thanlawyers.
Few lawyers or accountants know anything
about intentional communities — another rea-son for learning as much as you can about possi-ble legal entities and picking several likely onesbefore you see the lawyer. At an hourly fee thatcould be several hundred dollars, you don’t wantto have to paythe lawyer or accountant to edu-
cate him or her as to what an intentional com-munity is before naively asking for a suggestedlegal structure. Y ou’ll want to have written aclear, concise definition of your planned inten-tional community, along with several possiblelegal options for accomplishing, it before youwalk in the door.
Most lawyers don’t know an extensive
amount about the entire range of business andinvestment entities, but tend to specialize, andwill likely steer you towards the entities theyknow most about. This can work to your disad-vantage, as your community can end up wearingthe wrong legal structure like an ill-fitting shoe.Know which structures seem the best matchbefore you seek legal help, then pick specialists inthe structures youwant.But before any of this, your whole communi-
ty needs to be absolutely aligned and clear onwhat it is you’re trying to do.
“Remember,” says Dave Henson, of Sowing
Circle/OAEC, “your lawyer (or your CPA)works for you. Their advice on organizational
questions is only as good as your community’sclarity about your economic and organizationalgoals.”
Once you and the lawyer (or you and your
tax accountant) have picked a legal entity, youcan save far more in lawyer’s fees if you draft yourstart-up and operating documents yourselves,and have the lawyer or tax advisor review themfor any specific provisions applicable to yourstate or province. Lay people can draft their ownlegal documents, with the right help. Nolo Press,a publisher of self-help legal books, offers step-by-step books and software on how to form yourown partnerships, LLCs, corporations (for cer-tain states), and non-profit corporations in theUS, and Self-Counsel Press does the same inCanada. Nolo Press, and CommunityAssociations Institute (CAI), an organizationeducating and representing homeowners andcondominium associations in the US, will bothsoon publish books on how to create your owncommunity associations.
Beware, however. At least one lawyer told me
that doing it this way can cost a communitygroup more money, but only if people change
their minds several times and request multiplerevisions, which increases the lawyer’s billablehours.
If you’re applying for non-profit tax status,
you might want your lawyer or tax advisor toreview your federal (and if applicable, state) taxexemption application form too. Arrange it sothat your lawyer will answer your specific ques-tions and review — not rewrite — the forms
MAKING IT REAL: ESTABLISHING YOUR LEGAL ENTITY 77

you have prepared. (Y ou can file your applica-
tions with the state yourselves as well.)
Why not just do everything yourselves and
skip the legal fees? An experienced lawyer canspot potential problems and suggest solutions.He or she might be familiar with other, similarcases, and will make sure that any problems thatbefell one group won’t happen to you. A good
lawyer is well worth the money, but if your groupis as informed as possible at the outset, you’llneed far less of his or her time.
I suggest using Chapters 15 and 16 as an
overview of the range of legal entities commonlyused by intentional communities. Y our groupcan then follow up with in-depth exploration ofthe legal entities that appeal most. Y ou can dothis with specific books and software, certainservice organizations, and a consultation with alocal tax accountant. (See author’s website forresources.) Once you know more, choose two ormore legal structure(s) for owning land thatseem most likely for your group. Then choose alawyer to help you make your final choice. T osave more money, draft your documents your-selves and have your lawyer review them.
How many people in your group should
become familiar with legal issues? Can one per-son do it? Theoretically, yes. Dave Henson didthe legal legwork for Sowing Circle/OAEC, asdid V elma Kahn for Abundant Dawn. Y et Davesuggests that you don’t leave it up to a single indi-vidual, but form a small committee. After doingthe basic research, he says, the committee shouldpresent to the whole group the best options forthe community’s legal entities. Encourage exten-sive discussion. If there are still questions or con-cerns, let the committee go back and do moreresearch and report back to the group.
Whichever legal entity (or entities) you end
up choosing, I recommend that allcommunitymembers — not just those experienced in busi-
ness and finance — be as informed as possibleabout these matters. Community-wide knowl-edge and understanding helps the group func-tion more intelligently and, more importantly,helps equalize power relationships within thecommunity. It can prevent the common dilemmaof power being concentrated in thebusiness/finance intelligentsia, with all theattendant resentment and potential conflict thatthis can engender.
Finding the Right Lawyer
Y ou’ll want someone experienced, yet open-minded and flexible enough to understand whatyou’re trying to do. Y our lawyer must be willingand able to help you shape the legal entity, wher-ever possible, to fit your community’s values andneeds. The best choice would be a lawyer youpersonally know and trust, who is experienced intax and real estate law, particularly as it relates tothe legal structures you’re exploring. This may bea tall order! The next best choice would be to findintentional communities in your area that areusing one or more of the legal structures you’reconsidering, and ask if they’d recommend thelawyer(s) they used. In your wider community,you could ask the same of business people whoare using the legal structures you’re considering.
If you’re using a local legal referral service, I
recommend using only those run by the local barassociation or a local non-profit association,rather than private, commercial referral services.And use only those that refer lawyers experi-enced in this kind of law who offer a free or dis-counted consultation as part of the referral pro-gram. Avoid those that simply refer lawyers on astrictly rotating basis. And what about low-costlaw clinics? They usually bill for services at ahigher rate than their initial consultation rate,78CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

their staff turnover is usually high, and their
experience with the legal and tax issues of theentities you’re exploring may be low. I suggestusing a low-cost clinic only for general informa-tion, and use a more specialized lawyer for youractual legal work.
When choosing a lawyer, it’s best to contact
several lawyers, interview them and get refer-ences, and after choosing one, create a writtenagreement about all fees and contracted services.
Sometimes the right choice will be obvious.
When she explored potential legal entities forAbundant Dawn, V elma Kahn spent severaldays in a law library researching case law relevantto her forming community’s tax issues. She final-ly found a case that seemed to set the right prece-dent, and called several tax attorneys to feel themout. But none seemed to understand what shewanted, or get it that a non-lawyer like herselfcould have discovered something new.Except one. “What’s the case number?” he
asked, interested.“I’d like to look that up myself.
“ Ah,” she said.“W e’ve found our lawyer.”As mentioned earlier, you should set up your
legal entity before buying property. However, it
will be easier to visualize and compare variouskinds of legal entities if we use examples of com-munities you’ve become familiar with. So let’sfirst meet those communities and learn how theybought, financed, and developed their land.(Later, we’ll examine the legal entities they usedto accomplish this.)
/fl1lft
For many founders this next step is the “juiciest”part of starting a new community — the greatland-buying adventure.MAKING IT REAL: ESTABLISHING YOUR LEGAL ENTITY 79

IN1995, WHEN THE SIX cofounders of
Dancing Rabbit set out to find property for
their ecovillage, they ran into the typical chal-lenges core groups often face at this point. (Inthis book, the words “property” and “land” areused interchangeably to mean the property yourcommunity will buy, whether it’s raw land, devel-oped or partially developed property, or a houseor apartment building.)
Dancing Rabbit had begun in 1993, when a
dozen friends and environmental activists atStanford University in California decided to cre-ate an ecovillage to learn about, demonstrate, andteach others what they called “radical environ-mental sustainability.” They envisioned a small,locally self-reliant settlement of 500 to 1000,with subcommunities of smaller income-sharinggroups, cohousing communities, and individualhouseholds.
Many of the activists lived in a student hous-
ing co-op at Stanford, and had already had ataste of shared living and consensus decision-making. Fueled by community living experienceand environmental goals, they launched DancingRabbit as an incorporated association. Throughmonthly potlucks, a newsletter, and an e-mailbulletin board, they eventually became a groupof nearly 20 at their monthly potlucks, and of
about 100 on their e-mail network, primarily innorthern California’s university towns of PaloAlto, Berkeley, and Davis. By 1995, when manyof the group had graduated from Stanford, six ofthem moved into a shared household in Berkeleyand began researching what it takes to create anecovillage.
One of their group, Cecil Scheib, had gradu-
ated earlier and had spent the last year or so trav-eling around the county to learn more aboutintentional communities, visit possible commu-nities to join, and gather information about nat-ural building and possible regions for their ecov-illage. Another Dancing Rabbit activist did thesame, focusing mostly on desirable areas innorthern California.
The first hard realities the Dancing Rabbit
founders encountered were county zoning regula-tions, building codes, and health department regu-lations that didn’t allow sustainable developments.
Legal Barriers to Sustainable
Development
They learned, for example, that just owning
property doesn’t mean you can do whatever youwant with it.
80/fl1lftChapter 9 /fl1rt
The Great Land-Buying Adventure

In many cities, towns and counties, zoning
regulations regarding population density prohib-it building more than a certain number ofdwellings per acre or clustering houses togetherand leaving much of the property open space,requiring instead that each house sits on its ownsame-sized lot. In the Southwest and parts of theGreat Plains, where rain is scarce and the level ofsnow melt or underwater aquifers determinesdensity, zoning regulations often permit no morethan one house per 35 acres. Areas on the W estCoast with no summer rainfall often allow nomore than one house per five acres, while manytownships in the Northeast allow no more thanone house per 50 feet of road frontage. (The issuein the Northeast isn’t water, but money. A town-ship’s revenues come largely from property taxes,and budgets for municipal services are usuallyestimated as one household per lot. While allow-ing higher density on one lot wouldn’t break thebudget, if such density allowed many propertyowners to increase their populations, it couldoverwhelm the township’s school, fire, police, orother services.) T o increase population densityon a property or to cluster houses usuallyrequires petitioning the city council or countyboard of supervisors for a zoning variance or spe-cial use permit, which generally means holding apublic hearing with potential neighbors. Asmany forming cohousing groups have learned,neighbors’ opinions can make or break a project.
Most towns and cities — and an increasing
number of rural counties — have adopted theUniform Building Code (or the SouthernBuilding Code), or have their own local buildingcode which mandates which construction meth-ods and materials can be used. This is an attemptto protect local governments from lawsuitsbrought by people injured because of faulty con-struction or to prevent homes from deterioratingtoo quickly, which could adversely affect banks
and other local lending institutions with mort-gages on those homes. Thus, time-tested naturalbuilding techniques such as rubble-trench foun-dations or load-bearing strawbale or cob con-struction, straw-clay infill, earth-based floors,living roofs, or earth-plastered walls, are oftenillegal because few engineering specifications areavailable for the load-bearing capacities, durabil-ity, or moisture-repelling aspects of these tech-niques. Most counties that allow this kind ofconstruction do so by default because they aresparsely populated; either they have little or nozoning, or they lack sufficient property tax rev-enue to pay inspectors to monitor or enforcebuilding codes. And while increasing numbers ofcounties have been allowing natural buildingmethods under “experimental” permits (usuallyrequiring an engineer’s sign-off, protecting localgovernment from liability), not many countiesallowed these when Dancing Rabbit’s founderswere conducting their search. As of this writing,it’s still often difficult to impossible to get suchbuildings approved.
Although it makes no logical sense, roof
water catchments are disallowed in many regionsin the W est, since any rain that falls over a givenlocale legally “belongs” to the water table beneathit, and shouldn’t be messed with by interferinghumans, even though such rainfall may only runthrough people’s sinks or vegetable gardensbefore joining the ground water below.
In most counties, graywater recycling or con-
structed wetlands are either illegal or, at the veryleast, illegal as the sole source of waste waterdrain-off. A county health department mayallow these methods but still insist on a septictank and leach field, regardless that these areconsidered unnecessary by graywater experts.Composting toilets are also rarely allowed by
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 81

county health departments. Sometimes counties
will allow only certain makes and models ofcomposting toilet, such as those with electricfans, and often, only with the full additionalback-up of a septic system and leach field — alsoconsidered superfluous by microbiologists famil-iar with the composting toilet process.
The Dancing Rabbit folks also learned that
counties with colleges or universities often per-mit no more than four or five unrelated adults
per house — an attempt to protect homeowners’property values from dropping in case rowdy col-lege students move in next door. Even thoughmost communities won’t be like “animal house,”rules like this can still greatly restrict a group’sability to form community in such counties.(Chapter 11 will examine ways communitieshave dealt with these challenges.)
Shopping for Counties — Zoning
Regulations, Building Codes, SustainableHomesteads, and Jobs
At first, Dancing Rabbit’s founders were drawn
to northern California’s beautiful Mendocinoand Humboldt counties. But no counties inCalifornia, except relatively unpopulated coun-ties on the eastern, desert side of the SierraNevadas, allowed the kind of population densitythey sought, not to mention clustered housing,strawbale buildings, composting toilets, and con-structed wetlands. This was true of most areas inthe country, especially those near progressiveuniversity towns or urban areas where commu-nity members could most likely find jobs. Theonly exceptions seemed to be various rural areaswith low populations in the Midwest andSoutheast. But although two members workedas software designers and could essentiallytelecommute from anywhere in the county, notevery community member could do that. Howcould they attract new members if they weren’tin an area with locally available jobs?
This was their second hard reality — the
trade-off between living sustainably and the abil-ity to make a living. Rural counties in which sus-tainable building might be possible (because thepopulation was so low they didn’t have zoninglimitations, traditional building codes, or certainhealth regulations), offered few potential jobs.82CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
I believe culture and laws will inevitably change. The
more often that local and state elected officials, planners,and zoning and building officials are exposed to suc-cessful, sustainable intentional communities, the soonerthey’ll realize such communities help them meet theirregion’s locally mandated environmental goals. I believethey will increasingly allow and even advocate specialuse permits, zoning variances, and more liberal zoninglaws and building codes. In the meantime, we can edu-cate officials. We can meet with and get to know localelected officials, planners, building department andhealth officials. We can tell them what we know, showthem studies, give them facts and anecdotes and infor-mation. We can solicit their advice, and make them part-ners in our visions for more cooperative sustainableplaces to live and work.
Sociologist Paul Ray, who researched values in our
population and co-authored the book
Cultural Creatives,
estimates that one-fourth of the US population, 50 millionpeople, have alternative, sustainable values and supportsuch practices. How many of these bankers, planners,and government officials might just be people like our-selves disguised in a suit? How many of them yearn tohelp create green, sustainable culture too, and simplyneed our citizen support to justify doing what they wantto do anyway?

And in more environmentally-aware areas, such
as counties near university towns or cosmopoli-tan cities on either coast, where potential jobswere more available (and where you’d think sus-tainable building would be valued), the higherpopulation put greater pressure on county offi-cials to adopt laws about density, housing con-struction, and sanitation issues, making buildingsustainable homesteads there impossible. In fact,the more “progressive” the area, from Eugene toBoulder to Ann Arbor, the higher the popula-tion and the more likely local regulations madeone-house/one-lot, stick-frame constructionwith flush toilets and a leach field the only kindof development possible.
For a while the group contemplated settling
in the same area as Ecovillage at Ithaca, in NewY ork state, a project of three planned cohousingcommunities with energy-efficient, passive solarhomes and an affiliated Community SupportedAgriculture farm. One of the first built-from-scratch ecovillage projects in the country,Ecovillage at Ithaca was a tempting model, and itwas near a progressive university town with pos-sible jobs. But back in 1995, composting toiletsand strawbale homes were out of the question inthat location as well.
The third hard reality the Dancing Rabbit
founders ran into was trying to find a physicallyinspiring location with access to alternative cul-ture that wasn’t exorbitantly expensive. Living innorthern California, they’d become accustomedto seaside cliffs and crashing surf, redwoodgroves and snow-capped mountains. The farthernorth they drove, the more ruggedly wild andbeautiful the land became. And every collegetown they stopped in offered familiar culture,from health food stores and vegan restaurants tocoffeehouse bookstores. Y et the more beautifulthe land and the closer its proximity to a desir-able town, the more expensive it was, not to
mention the fact that the towns were alreadythronged with more over-educated folks thanthere were available jobs.
By now the Midwest was sounding pretty
good in terms of land affordability and zoning,and building code freedom. But Mennonite fam-ilies, and aging soy, corn, or cattle farmers didn’tseem like they might offer a familiar and stimu-lating culture. And the Midwest certainly offeredno seaside cliffs or mountain vistas.
After a year of researching land costs and
zoning regulations, and impatient to get started,the six Dancing Rabbit founders took off acrossthe country to find rural counties with affordableland prices and few regulations. They looked atthe area around Carbondale, Illinois, whichoffered a beautiful setting and an appealing urbanarea, but they found land there to be relativelyexpensive. They checked out the area aroundKnoxville, T ennessee, which was attractive in itsown way but didn’t draw them. They also visiteda county in northeast Missouri with relativelylow land prices, which was also the home ofSandhill Farm, a long-established intentionalcommunity whose members had offered to help.
Camped at Sandhill Farm and wondering
what to do next, the six founders had long, pas-sionate meetings voicing every opinion — fromthose who wanted mountains to those willing totake the flats; from those committed to modelingevery aspect of sustainable living to those begin-ning to wonder whether such a project were evenpossible.
They realized it boiled down to three choices.
They could, if they found a way to afford it, buya small parcel of land in a beautiful, inspiring set-ting such as Northern California, and, as manycommunities had done before them, break allkinds of zoning, building, and health department
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 83

regulations in order to create the sustainable
systems they wanted, while remaining so smalland low-key that no one would notice.
Or they could work within the system, form-
ing their community in a progressive area likeIthaca, New Y ork, which was regulated by stan-dard zoning and other regulations, and workover the years to change those regulations bypersistently trying to educate local officials.
Third, they could form a community in a
place so unpopulated that zoning and buildingcodes hadn’t arrived yet, and build exactly thekind of model demonstration site they had inmind; to live just as they wanted, somehow find-ing enough local jobs to get by. (They also won-dered, if they chose this option, how rural to be.If they were too far off the beaten path wouldpeople want to join them? W ould they be too faraway for anyone to even visit them?) Burningwith a desire to “push the envelope” of environ-mental activism, and unwilling to either compro-mise their principles or break laws and remaintoo safely invisible to accomplish their mission,and realizing that they were willing to live deepin the country, they chose the third option. Theyplanted themselves right in the heart of theMidwest.
The Proactive Land Search
The Rabbits rented a double-wide mobile homenear Sandhill Farm. T wo members continuedtelecommuting to Silicon V alley, and two gotpart-time clerical jobs at the Fellowship forIntentional Community’s headquarters atSandhill Farm.
Continuing the meetings they’d begun in
Berkeley, they drafted documents and decidedpolicies, and kept in touch with the wider groupof Dancing Rabbit members via e-mail and theirwebsite. They created a 501(c)3 non-profitresearch and educational organization for
Dancing Rabbit. T o own the land as aCommunity Land T rust, they created a 501(c)2title-holding non-profit, with themselves com-prising one third of the T rustees and the othertwo-thirds drawn from Dancing Rabbit mem-bers elsewhere. They created a lease documentfor land-based residents.
But finding land was their highest priority.
They got a plat map from the county, copieddown the owners of almost every farm parcelwithin a three-mile radius of Sandhill, andlooked up their telephone numbers in the phonebook. They called elderly farmers, farmers’ wid-ows, and retired cattlemen, asking if they knewof any land for sale, and once into the conversa-tion, finding out if the landowners might be will-ing to sell a portion of their own property.
After six months of calling and driving
around to look, they ended up with severaloptions. The most promising was a 280-acre par-cel of tall-grass prairie with a meandering streamand five ponds. The stream and its branches werelower in elevation than the fields, and the slopingbanks were dotted with oaks, black walnut, hick-ory, and maple. The property also had a shortdirt road, a one-story barn with two open sides,a maintenance shed, and a few corrugated metalgrain silos. Of the property’s 280 acres, 200 hadbeen soybean fields, and were part of theDepartment of Agriculture’s ConservationReserve Program (CRP). The CRP programpaid property owners (in this case) $60 an acrenot to farm certain acres so the land could recov-er from a hundred years of topsoil erosion. Thelandowner was absentee, and the asking pricewas $190,000. The group could establish gar-dens, build passive sola r homes, and grow grain
in some of the fields not in the CRP program,and slowly restore the prairie ecology of the rest.84CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

They decided to go for it. This would be the
site of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. The onlyremaining hurdle was to finance it.
Friendly Loans from Friends and Family
They had the land appraised for $500 an acre, sothey made an offer of $140,000 to the absenteeowner. He countered, and they negotiated forawhile. Income from the CRP program had arti-ficially inflated the price; however, payments on200 acres represented a potential annual incomeof $12,000 a year. Spread out over the nextdecade, this income would make the price morelike $350 an acre — considerably less than theappraised value. So, they decided to offer $678an acre ($190,000), and the owner accepted.
With two members’ high-paying jobs in the
computer industry, the group could get a bankloan to buy the property, but only for $150,000.They wanted lower interest rates and friendlierterms than a bank could offer, to protect them-selves from repossession in the event of cash-flow problems. They also wanted to raise moremoney than the $190,000 purchase price, sothey’d have the funds to begin developing roads,utilities, and buildings.
The Rabbits got the first of their three
low-interest private mortgages from a long-time member in California — $90,000, to berepaid over 15 years at 5 percent interest, withno payments for the first three years. The sec-ond mortgage was $50,000 from one founder’sparents, also to be repaid over 15 years at 5percent interest. Their third mortgage was$50,000 for 10 years from the Federation ofEgalitarian Communities’ (FEC) health insur-ance fund, at 8.5 percent interest. (When thegroup had first arrived in Missouri theyformed Skyhouse, an income-sharing sub-community of Dancing Rabbit, which joinedFEC.) These loans totaled $190,000. Their
monthly mortgage payments would be $1,017a month for the first three years, and $1,730 amonth thereafter.
For their land development fund, they com-
bined Dancing Rabbit’s treasury, which hadaccumulated $2,000 in members’ dues, and afounder’s no-interest, 15-year loan of $33,000,to be paid back only after the first three loanswere paid off. Thus, the Dancing Rabbitfounders raised $225,000; enough to pay$190,000 cash for the land and establish a$35,000 development fund to begin buildinginfrastructure. They bought the land throughtheir 501(c)2 title-holding non-profit, andplaced the property in the Dancing RabbitCommunity Land T rust.
They didn’t want their primary loans to be
first, second, and third mortgages, but wantedtheir lenders to be repaid concurrently, with pro-rated amounts already determined in case it everbecame necessary to sell the property to pay backthe loans. So they placed three simultaneousliens on the deed, with their $90,000 lenderowed 9/19ths of the proceeds of any future saleand their two $50,000 lenders owed 5/19thseach. The member who made the $33,000 loandidn’t have any percentage of pay-back recordedon the deed. (Although the property was in aCommunity Land T rust, it wasn’t paid for yet.The trustees of a land trust property with anencumbered title like this can still sell the prop-erty to pay off the debt, if necessary.)
The six founders rented a mobile home
across the road from their new property, andbecause it had a kitchen and bathroom, desig-nated it the temporary community building.Their first tasks were to create a campground, acomposting toilet, and outdoor showers, andturn their two-sided barn into an outdoor
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 85

kitchen. They invited other Dancing Rabbit
members, friends, and supporters to visit andhelp them start their organic garden and buildtheir first strawbale cabins.
The Rabbits’ experience illustrates many
issues community founders must deal with whenthey look for and finance land. Most groups whowant sustainable development must make thesame kinds of difficult trade-offs when choosingtheir location. They often also learn to approachproperty owners directly, including owners ofland not currently for sale. And, with the excep-tion of cohousing communities, most choose notto get loans from banks or other mainstreamlending sources, but seek them instead fromfamily, friends, or organizations aligned withtheir values.Onerous Owner-financing (Better than
None at All)
In 1990 in Asheville, North Carolina, people
began meeting to discuss their common vision ofa sustainable ecovillage and begin their landsearch. T o create as self-reliant a village as possi-ble, they assumed they’d need at least 150 resi-dents to provide the range of skills and servicesrequired to feed and house themselves and createan active village economy and culture. Thesegoals determined their site criteria — at least 100acres within 45 minutes of Asheville, with adiverse landscape, abundant water (originating inits own watershed), areas suitable for agriculture,and enough south-facing slopes for at least 40 to60 home sites and other community buildings.Ideally, the property would be partially or mostly86CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Friend & Supporter $90,000 15 years to pay;
5% interest; no paymentsfor the first three years 9/19ths
A founder’s Parents $50,000 15 years, 5% interest 5/19thsFEC $50,000 10 years, 8.5 % interest 5/19thsD.R. Treasury $2,000 — —Another founder $33,000 15 years; no interest;
to be paid back after firstthree loans are paid off —
TOTAL $225,000TABLE 3: DANCING RABBIT’S LAND PURCHASE AND DEVELOPMENT FINANCING
Loan Source Amount Terms Percent of Lien on the Deed

cleared land with buildings and utilities, and
owner-financed.
Over the next four years the group’s land-search team visited hundreds of properties,
shooting video footage of the most promisingones and bringing the whole group out to seeTHE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 87
FINDING LAND, LOSING MEMBERS
It’s not at all uncommon for a forming community to
lose members just as it’s about to buy land.
Sometimes the exodus occurs because it’s just not
the right piece of property for some, or the right loca-tion. One of the most enthusiastic members ofDancing Rabbit’s original founding group, for exam-ple, had her heart set on forming an ecovillage inCalifornia. Try though she might to get used to theMidwest, she found she couldn’t bear to live in sucha place: a flat expanse, few trees, and neighbors whowere pleasant enough but mostly focused on ruralfarming matters. She tried several times to make itwork, and eventually realized that Dancing Rabbitmight be her tribe, although their new home wasn’thers. While she decided not to move to Missouri, shewill always have a second home there, and like manypeople in the Dancing Rabbit network, has foundother ways to contribute to and enjoy the communi-ty’s progress. Another founding member with many ofthe same concerns traveled back and forth betweenCalifornia and Missouri for several years, trying to rec-oncile the vision and values and people she lovedwith a location that didn’t draw her. The pull of loveand friendship eventually won, and now, committedto life at Dancing Rabbit, she is one of the many pio-neers helping it grow and thrive.
The stress of trying to place an option on, investi-
gate, and finance expensive property can also forceinterpersonal conflict to a head. Sowing Circle/OAEChad begun as about a dozen people, but when it wastime to put up money, the group dropped to seven.And just as they were about to nail down the lastdetails of buying the former Farallones Institute prop-erty, two couples in the group broke up, and one per-
son in each partnership left the group, and then at thelast minute another couple joined them. Besidesbeing devastating personally, this kind of last-minuteturnover can be nerve-wracking financially — wrench-ing people back and forth between different amountsof money they must contribute towards the downpayment.
In North Carolina a group met regularly to plan the
community that eventually became Earthaven. Aftersearching for property for four years, when somemembers wanted to buy a particular property andothers did not, some persistent personality conflictsand an essential difference in vision were forced tothe surface. The conflict was so strong that it broke upthe group. Earthaven came into being because fouroriginal members, along with some new people inter-ested in forming a community created a hybrid groupto purchase the property.
Sometimes people leave because the reality of
buying land makes the prospect of living in communi-ty all too real. They realize they can’t afford it after all,or it may not be the right time in their lives to spendthat much money, or they discover they’re not reallyready to change their lives that much.
If this happens in your group, it doesn’t mean the
end of your community dream. You may need to buythe property as a smaller group; however, others maycome along to join you before the purchase. And cer-tainly people will join you
after the purchase — there’s
nothing like a group with a beautiful vision and anappealing property to inspire new people to leap intothe adventure with you.

them. They eventually narrowed their search to
an area southeast of Asheville, near the town ofBlack Mountain. As mentioned earlier, one ofthe founders, V alerie Naiman, got real estatesales and broker’s licenses in order to learn moreabout real financing and local land values, andtook a job with a real estate agent in BlackMountain so the group would know about prop-erties as soon as they came on the market.
In 1993, they found a mountain property of
three converging stream valleys 45 minutessoutheast of Asheville. It had abundant water —two major streams, many smaller streams, and 16springs — and a quarter of the land was arable.Its slopes and bottom lands were covered in a rel-atively new forest of pines, locust, poplar, oak,maple, beech, and hemlock. A gravel road and anancient hunting cabin were its only human-madefeatures. The owners believed it was 368 acres,although they hadn’t surveyed it and weren’t cer-tain of this. They were asking $1,200 an acre, or$441,600 for 368 acres, with ten percent down.They were willing to owner-finance.
The group originally rejected the property
because its uncleared forest represented consid-erably more work to develop than the mostly-cleared land they’d envisioned. It also had poorsoil, depleted during decades of unsustainablefarming through the 1930s. While the landsearch continued, however, a few members of thegroup returned to reconsider the site. The prop-erty seemed to call them back.
“The land was attractive for a number of rea-
sons,” recalls cofounder Chuck Marsh. It sharedcommon boundaries with two older intentionalcommunities, Full Circle and Rosy Branch,whose members were supportive of the project.While the entrance to the property was in themore populated county that surroundedAsheville, thus offering good telephone, police,and ambulance service and well-funded schools,
most of the property lay within a considerablymore rural county. “That meant we would besubject to less stringent building and develop-ment ordinances,” recalls Chuck, “and the taxrates would be lower than they would be if wewere 100 yards farther north. Our developmentcosts would be significantly lower and we’d havegreater flexibility in meeting our ecologicalgoals.”
As happens with many forming community
groups at this point, the pressure to make a deci-sion about a particular property, and the need formembers to come up with significant funds tobuy it, forced the issue on long-standing person-ality conflicts and basic differences in communi-ty vision. Some wanted to live in a simple com-munity with friends; others wanted to create amodel ecovillage with an educational mission.The group couldn’t resolve these differences, andover the next year fell apart in conflict and disap-pointment.
V alerie broke the impasse by making an offer
on the land herself in September 1994, offering$100,000 down, with a clause in the contractallowing her to exit the deal if she couldn’t getother people to join in the purchase.
She invited the group members who favored
the ecovillage vision, and many new people inter-ested in community, to a “founders meeting” ather house. She handed pledge cards to eachguest, explaining that each person or householdwho pledged $10,000 towards the down paymentwould get a roughly quarter-acre home or busi-ness site in the new community. Those pledgingfirst would get first choice of sites, those pledgingsecond would get second choice, and so on.
That afternoon 11 people, four from the first
group and the rest new people, made seven$10,000 pledges for home sites and one for a
88CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

business site. A twelfth person pledged $20,000
for both a home and business site, and they hadtheir $100,000.
Now that they’d agreed on property and
financing, the heat was on. The hybrid group of12 cofounders settled on the name “Earthaven”and began meeting weekly. Between Septemberand December of 1994, they drafted agreements,membership procedures, and bylaws, and incor-porated as a non-profit HomeownersAssociation. Even though they had the moneyfor the down payment they continued raisingmoney. They increased the site fees to $11,000and let it be known that site fees would be$12,000 the following year. Through word ofmouth, they found friends and other interestedpeople to pledge for additional sites. Some con-tributed the full amount; others put half andagreed to pay $150 a month at 10 percent inter-est. By December 11, more people had joinedthem, and the 21 cofounders had raised a total of$150,000.
They decided to keep $22,000 aside for ini-
tial development costs, and so offered the owners$128,000 down, with seven payments towardsthe unpaid balance over the next seven years, at8.75 percent interest. The owners stipulated thatthey would release the property to the group
incrementally, upon payment of each of theannual payments. The down payment wouldguarantee Earthaven ownership of 80 acres, butonly 40 of them would be available for the groupto develop.
But the total number of acres wasn’t clear. If
the Earthaven group was willing to pay for a post-purchase survey to determine the actual amountof acreage, the owners were willing to reduce theprice commensurably, but no more than 40 acresless than the original asking price (or $48,000),no matter what the survey might show. Thus, ifthe Earthaven founders wanted this property,they had to agree to buy at least 328 acres, nomatter how much smaller the property mightactually be. (The later survey showed it was nineacres smaller — or 320 acres — so at $1,200 anacre they ended up paying an extra $10,800 as thecost of doing business.) The owners also stipulat-ed that, after the down payment, Earthavencouldn’t pay off much more than $100,000 a yearwithout incurring a ten percent penalty.
These weren’t great terms, but at least the
sale was owner-financed. Earthaven closed thedeal in December of 1994. The property, or partof it anyway, was theirs.
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 89
320 acres, $396,577 $150,000 $128,000 down; 7 annual
payments of principal & interest, at 8.75%. Releasing 40 acres witheach payment $22,000Actual No. Acres & Amount of Final Purchase Price Total Money Raised Down Payment & Terms Development FundTABLE 4: EARTHAVEN’S OWNER-FINANCING

Do-it-Yourself Refinancing with a “Shoe
Box Bank”
The founders knew they would need to raise
more than $72,000 the next year for the firstannual principal and interest payment, so theydecided to refinance as soon as possible. As we’veseen earlier, V alerie learned about small-scale,self-financing methods from the E. F .Schumacher Society in Massachusetts and pro-posed that the group create a private “shoe boxbank.” This they did, calling it the EarthSharesfund, and asking people to transfer money fromCDs and savings accounts into it, and encourag-ing those with other assets to turn them intocash to invest in the project. They offered 8.5percent interest, a slightly higher rate than manypeople were receiving in their banks and CDs atthe time. Contributors would be paid back inannual payments over the next seven years withmoney from the membership fees and site leasefees of incoming Earthaven members. The firstyear, 1995, would be an interest-only payment tothe EarthShares fund.
As a “shoe box bank,” the EarthShares fund
was a seven-year private loan agreement betweencommunity members and their own EarthavenAssociation, allowing them to raise enoughmoney to pay off the sellers as soon as possibleand gain control of their own property, so theycould develop more than just the first 40 acres.
By December 1995, when the first principal
and interest payment would have been due, 18Earthaven people had transferred money to theEarthShares fund, raising a total of $232,000.
They used a promissory note as the legal
instrument for the EarthShares fund, with thesignatures of all 18 investors as the Lenders, andthe Earthaven Association as the Borrower. TheEarthShares fund then placed a lien on the prop-erty deed. This meant that no future creditorscould force the sale of the property to collect any
outstanding debts unless the EarthSharesinvestors themselves, as the first creditors in line,agreed to it, which of course they wouldn’t. Thiscreated a layer of legal protection around theproperty.
The $232,000 in the EarthShares fund was
more than enough to pay off the rest of the prin-cipal and most of the interest for 1995 still owedto the owner-financers. But because of theowner-financers’ stipulated ten percent penaltyfor early pay-off, Earthaven paid them off overfour years instead.
By 1997, four Earthaven members invested
$61,000 more in the EarthShares fund, and withthese funds, as well as with income from sitelease fees from new members, they were able topay off the owner-financers that year. Because ofacreage adjustments from the survey, they endedup paying $396,577 to the former owners, alongwith $28,423 in interest, making their total pur-chase price $425,000. Of this, $128,000 camefrom funds raised during their founder’s meetingand in the last months of 1994, $24,000 camefrom membership and site-holding fees, and$293,000 from the EarthShares fund.
Establishing the EarthShares fund had ben-
efited the community in three ways. First, com-munity members themselves became thefinancers of the project. If for some reason theycouldn’t make an annual payment one year, therewould be no danger of foreclosure. Second, theyreduced their annual interest from 8.75 to 8.5percent, saving several thousand dollars. Andthird, once they had paid off the former owners,Earthaven members owned the property out-right and were free to develop all of it.
Although their land was now financially
secure, the community was not out of debt, sincethe Earthaven Association still owed principal
90CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

and interest payments to EarthShares investors.
Given the principal and interest paymentsrequired to pay off the EarthShares fund, theywill end up paying several hundred thousanddollars more than $425,000 for their property.
As we’ve seen with Lost V alley and Dancing
Rabbit, it’s not uncommon for some founders tohave considerably more money or more access tomoney than others. Sometimes it’s only this factthat allows the group to buy property at all.
When One Person Buys the Property
In early 1998, social justice activist HankObermeyer began looking for likely properties inOakland, California to create an intentionalcommunity focusing on activism and the arts,with some kind of limited equity for owners. Hewanted property with at least two houses andseveral housing units in a tree-lined neighbor-hood not far from public transportation, prefer-ably in north Oakland.
In November of that year, he and some
friends found three two-story houses with eightunits on a double lot in a neighborhood in north
Oakland with these features. The asking pricewas $505,000, a fairly reasonable price for theBay Area at the time.
Hank’s offer of $485,000 was accepted, but
only if he paid it in 30 days. Hank had to liqui-date many other investments to raise the$485,000 plus an estimated $100,000 for repairsand renovations. But 30 days wasn’t enough timeto accomplish this, so he got short-term person-al loans, which he paid off over eight months.
Hank and the first people who planned to
live long-term in the community, now namedMariposa Grove, began what ultimately becamea three-year renovation project. They repaired asagging foundation and replaced wood that haddry rot and termites in one house, and redidmuch of the wiring and plumbing in another.They tore out walls and rearranged living spaces,eventually creating six two- and three-bedroomapartments and a large apartment to serve as acommunity common area, containing a kitchen,dining area, large living room, and guest room.THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 91
Year
(month)Money
Raised in
1994 for
PaymentsTotal
Invested in
Earthshares
for payments Money
Owed
Owner-
FinancersPrincipal
Payments to
Owner-
FinancersInterest
Payments to
Owner-
FinancersRemaining
Balance
Owed to
Owner-
FinancersTABLE 5: HOW EARTHAVEN PAID OFF THEIR OWNER-FINANCERS
199419951996
1997 (May)
1997 (June)
1997 (July)
Totals$150,000
–0––0––0––0––0–
$150,000–0–
$232,000
–0–
$61,000
–0––0–
$293,000$396,577
$268,577$162,876
$63,205$13,003
$7,757
–––$128,000
$105,701
$99,671$50,202
$5,246$7,757
$396,577–0–
$22,299
$359
$5,765
–0––0–
$28,423$268,577
$162,876
$63,205$13,003
$7,757
–0–
$425,000

Other planned common areas include office
space, laundry facilities, and possibly art andmusic rooms. They dug up a concrete parking lotand planted a vegetable garden and fruit trees.
The property is in a mixed African-
American and white neighborhood, and fromthe beginning Hank wanted Mariposa Grove tooffer affordable housing and be socio-economi-cally and racially diverse. So as soon as apart-ments were ready he rented the first one to afriend, and they chose the third tenant, and thethree chose the fourth tenant, and so on, untilthey had eight members (while expecting 12-13eventually). They do in fact represent a diversegroup — people who attended Ivy Leagueschools, people who never went to college, andpeople who came from working-class back-grounds. Most are white; one is African-American.
At first, when the project had just a few
short-term members, it was really a one-manshow. But Hank didn’t make any importantdecisions or begin any major construction proj-ects until other long-term members becameinvolved. Although everyone made consensusdecisions together about long-range matters,Hank carried out their decisions, mostlybecause he knew how, and because ultimately hewas financially and legally responsible for every-thing. But the increasing load of responsibilitiesgrew so heavy that he finally burned out inexhaustion. He told the group he couldn’t con-tinue doing this work by himself. Others wouldhave to share the load. At that point leadershipshifted from Hank to the group as a whole, andeveryone began serving on one or more commit-tees — finance, construction, governance, new-member outreach, and so on — sharing moreequitably the responsibilities of establishing anew community.“ A crisis like this is pretty common in new com-
munities,” he says,“when leadership shifts from thefounder (or founders) to everyone involved.”
As of this writing, Mariposa Grove is in the
process of researching the legal and financialrequirements to become a limited equity housingco-op under California law. If they choose thisform of limited equity housing, it means Hankwill sell the property to the housing co-op forapproximately $750,000 (the $485,000 purchaseprice plus what will be more than $250,000 inrenovation costs, plus six percent interest). Whilehe could sell for twice that amount since the mar-ket value has more than doubled since he boughtthe property, it would no longer be affordablehousing. By the time the group buys the proper-ty, the accrued six percent interest will compen-sate Hank to some degree for his efforts and hisbusiness risk, yet keep the units affordable.
In a limited equity housing co-op, each mem-
ber owns shares in the co-op and is a member ofits board of directors, and has the right to livethere through a proprietary lease with the co-op.If Mariposa Grove chooses this form of owner-ship, each shareholder, including Hank, will paya down payment and monthly occupancy fees tothe co-op, which will pay the mortgage paymentto the bank, and any maintenance or other costs.
In Chapter 1 we saw how Lost V alley’s
founders acquired fully developed “turn-key”property for intentional community. Here’s howSowing Circle/OAEC faced similar challenges.
Acquiring Fully Developed “Turn-Key”
Property — Confidence, Persistence,and Negotiation
In the mid-1980s, a group of around 25 social jus-
tice and environmental activists and artists in theSan Francisco Bay Area met regularly to celebrate92CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Summer Solstice and New Y ear’s together in
beautiful rural settings. Many of them had livedtogether at various times in urban group house-holds. They enjoyed these experiments in com-munity so much that in the late 1980s and early90s a dozen of them began to periodically look forproperty near the Bay Area to form an intention-al community and activist and arts center.
By 1991, about a dozen members of the
group got more serious about creating whatwould eventually become Sowing Circle com-munity and Occidental Arts and EcologyCenter. They acquired the General Plans andcounty maps for several counties around SanFrancisco that interested them. Like DancingRabbit’s founders, they used the maps and coun-
ty tax records to contact the owners of likelyproperties, even if the properties weren’t for sale.They narrowed their search down to two coun-ties and mailed a form letter to every real estateagent in those counties.
They chose a couple of real estate agents in
these two counties from among the responses totheir letters, and visited more properties.
In 1993 they learned that an 80-acre parcel
fitting their description had just come on themarket near the town of Occidental in SonomaCounty. The site of the former FarallonesInstitute, it had been a living/teaching centerwhose staff had researched and taught classes on
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 93
Dear Realtor,
Greetings. We are a group of couples and individualslooking for rural or semi-rural land, with or withoutstructures, in Sonoma and southern Mendocinocounties.
We’re looking for property large enough for and
zoned for multiple homes, barns, and other outbuild-ings. We would ideally like land that could accommo-date our building a small retreat center there.
What we’re looking for: Between 20 and 300 acres
 Zoned to build four or more homes on the
property, plus outbuildings
 Within one to three hours’ drive of San
Francisco
 Less than $500,000 (we’d consider paying
more if the property were already a well-developed retreat center with homes).Ideal:
 Old church camps, summer camps, rural
schools, or retreat centers zoned for multipledwellings and multiple use
 A large parcel of undeveloped land or several
contiguous parcels zoned for multipledwellings (i.e., sub-dividable, perc-tested forseveral homes, etc. )
 An already-developed property with many
older structures needing a lot of work.
Pluses: Year-round river or creek and/or a pond Mix of forested land and open areas; hilltops
and valley or canyon
 At least two acres of arable land Privacy. SOWING CIRCLE’S FORM LETTER TO REAL ESTATE AGENTS

passive solar design, appropriate technology, and
organic gardening. When the FarallonesInstitute folded in 1990, a private environmentalfoundation acquired the property and used itsorganic gardens for a seed-saving project to pre-serve heirloom vegetables, fruits, and flowers.
When the group drove out to Occidental to
take a look, they found rolling hills, meadows,sweeping views, stands of oak, redwood groves, aswimming pond, and, on the north and southsides of a small hill, two of the most beautiful
and prolific gardens they’d ever seen. Around thetop of the hill were 16 redwood buildings,including a kitchen/dining building, an officecomplex, a workshop, classroom space, five smallvault-roofed passive solar cabins, and anotherhalf-dozen intern cabins. The property had a usepermit for up to 26 residents full time, with up to50 people allowed to live on the site for work-shops 60 days of the year. The foundation that94CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Number of
Members and their
ContributionsTotal Money
RaisedDown payment
and Terms$850,000
Purchase Price
Amount of
Owner-Financed
First MortgageAmount of
Development
FundTABLE 6: SOWING CIRCLE/OAEC’S LAND PURCHASE AND DEVELOPMENT FINANCING
Plan #1: 10 people
each contribute$20,000
Plan #2:
7 people raise$100,000
Last-Minute
Plan #3: 7 people eachcontribute $20,0000 $40,000 2ndMortgage (5% inter-est); interest onlypayments 1st fiveyears $25,000 3rdMortgage (sameterms)$200,000
$100,000
$205,000$50,000 down;
6.7% interest; inter-
est-only payments
for first 5 years
$50,000 down;
6.7% interest; inter-
est-only payments
for first 5 years
$150,000 down;
6.7% interest; inter-
est-only payments
for first 5 years$800,000 Owner-
Financed First
Mortgage
$800,000 Owner-
Financed First
Mortgage
$700,000 Owner-
Financed First
Mortgage$150,000
$50,000
$55,000

owned the land was not necessarily looking for
the highest bidder, but for a buyer with a similarvision and values to theirs. They were asking amillion-plus for the property, and were willing toowner-finance for five years. They offered a$200,000 discount for a buyer who would con-tinue their seed-saving work.
It was a community founder’s dream.It was clearly the ideal property for this
group, and they saw themselves as ideal stewardsfor the property, no matter that it had a million-dollar price tag and none of them had much inthe way of financial assets.
But now the pressure was on. The group
began meeting 15 hours a week, working onthree major tasks. One was organizing theirfuture community life — who would do whichtasks, who would live where, and so on. Anotherwas public relations — countering the potentialhostility of local residents towards whomevermight buy the old Farallones Institute property.They knew county residents would want toknow who it was that presumed to buy this veryspecial property, and what they intended to dowith it. So representatives of the group met withneighbors and other county residents andexplained, in person and through local reporters,how they intended to continue the seed-savingproject and initiate simi lar projects to those of
the Farallones Institute, through workshops andclasses in organic gardening, permaculturedesign, and other aspects of sustainable living.The third major project was the legal and finan-cial aspects of acquiring the property.
They realized that this third project would
take full-time work. So Dave Henson, a memberof the group with extensive experience fundrais-ing for non-profits, and who had gone to lawschool (although he was not a lawyer), quit hisenvironmental activist job to devote himself full-time for eight months to the project. The group
thanked him by giving him the best cabin. (Theyconsidered pooling funds to pay him a salary ifthe land purchase were to take any longer thaneight months.)
The first task in acquiring the property was
to find out if it was as ideal as it seemed, soDave looked into the usual issues of propertysuitability: whether there was enough waterand septic system capacity for the amount ofpeak use they envisioned; if the soil would perc-test well enough for any additional septic sys-tems; what potential hazards might be upwindor upstream of the property; how any futuredevelopments planned for the area might affecttheir use and enjoyment of the property; andthe amount of repairs or renovations the build-ings might need.
Most of these questions were answered to
their satisfaction, but they discovered thatalmost all the roofs needed repair and that mostof the septic systems and some of the founda-tions needed replacing. They figured out itwould take approximately $150,000 to makethese and other needed repairs, remodel andenlarge the cabins, and build new accommoda-tions for workshop participants and interns.Given the amount of work the property needed,they decided to offer $850,000 — a full$150,000 lower than the asking price of over amillion, even after the first $200,000 was dis-counted for buyers who’d continue the seed-sav-ing project.
If at First You Don’t Succeed …
For the many months leading up to the pur-chase, a dozen group members attended meet-ings, but when the time came to choose to be inthe community or out, only seven peoplestepped forward to commit to the purchase.THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 95

They sought three more cofounders, thinking
that if ten members could raise $20,000 each,they’d have $200,000. With this amount they’dpay $50,000 down, request an owner-financedmortgage of $800,000, and use $150,000 fordevelopment. But they didn’t find three morepeople with $20,000.
They next decided that the seven of them
would raise $100,000, pay $50,000 down,request an owner-financed mortgage of$800,000, and use just $50,000 for develop-ment, which would stretch out their plannedrenovations over a longer period. This was theoffer they submitted in May 1994. Theydescribed how the intended Occidental Artsand Ecology Center was aligned with the foun-dation’s own vision for the property’s best use,and agreed to continue the heirloom seed proj-ect. A business plan outlined how they’d raisethe down payment and make interest and prin-cipal payments. They proposed terms quitefavorable to themselves — 6.7 percent interest(at a time when banks were charging 8 percent)and relatively small interest-only payments forthe first five years — in exchange for signing acontract with the owner-financers that wouldbind the group to doing repairs and improve-ments to the buildings and infrastructure,thereby improving the value of the propertyover the first year of occupancy. They backedthis up by describing how they would repaireach building, a timetable for the improve-ments, and another business plan showing howmuch money they’d use for that purpose andwhere they’d get it.
“This is an important point for forming
communities to keep in mind,” advises Dave.“Many owner-financers are reluctant to sell togroups who say they can meet the down pay-ment and mortgage payments, but whom mightbe so financially strapped in the future that
they’d default on payments and the owner wouldhave to repossess the property. If the propertyhadn’t been properly maintained, the ownercould get back property that might then beworth less what it had sold for because its build-ings were rundown or falling apart. But if poten-tial buyers can demonstrate that they will main-tain and even improve the property, and can doc-ument the source of their funds for doing so andhow they will accomplish the upgrades, thelandowner may not only be willing to sell tothem, but also willing to reduce the down pay-ment, the interest rate, and/or the amount ofmonthly payment. If a group with this arrange-ment defaulted and the original landownerrepossessed and got the property back,” Davesays,“it would be worth considerably more thanwhen the owner first sold it, over and above anyincrease in land values.”
The foundation accepted their offer and
terms.
Because they were too overwhelmed by
financial stress at this point to establish a morecomplex legal entity to buy the property, theydrew up a simple partnership, called the “SowingCircle.”
They later learned that the foundation had
received over 200 other offers, some of themoffering more cash than they had. But their offerwas most likely chosen, they believe, because theirintended use was probably the most aligned withthe foundation’s goals for the property, and theyhad presented the most coherent financial modelof how they’d pay for the property and what theywould do with it. It also helped that Dave andothers in this group had credibility and good rep-utations nationally as environmental activists.
But at the 11th hour they had serious set-
backs. T wo of the couples broke up, and as a
96CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

result, two members left the group, leaving just
five people to raise the money. Fortunately a newcouple joined a few weeks before closing, bring-ing their number back to seven.
But that wasn’t the worst. Several days before
closing the sale, and after they’d all quit their jobsand given notices on their apartments, as theywere all relaxing and celebrating at a friend’scabin in the country, they got a phone call.
“The deal’s off,” the foundation director said,
“unless you pay $150,000 down. W e can’t go with$50,000 down, and we can’t offer you any extratime to raise it. W e’ll need it at closing, five daysfrom now.” The group was stunned. They laterlearned that the foundation’s New Y ork lawyerswere horrified to learn that this million dollarproperty was about to go for just $50,000 down,and put pressure on the foundation director tosomehow stop the sale. The group assumed theadditional $100,000 down was intended to be adeal-breaker, a demand they couldn’t possiblymeet on such short notice so the foundationcould get out of the sale.
Half packed, no longer employed, and about
to lose their homes to incoming tenants, thepartners decided all they could do was try toraise the additional $100,000. They created largefold-out brochures with color-photocopied pho-tos of the property and descriptions of theiragreements and goals. Some of them flew hometo their parents, and, using the brochures to helpexplain what they hoped to do, asked to borrowenough money to come up with $20,000 each.Meanwhile, Dave and some of the others calledseveral close friends and family members to askfor loans. In a few days they had each secured$20,000 for seven down payments totaling$140,000, and had arranged for two friendlyloans: a $40,000 second mortgage and a $25,000third mortgage, each at 5 percent interest withinterest-only payments for the first five years.
This $65,000 in additional mortgages, plus the$140,000, gave the group $150,000 for the downpayment and $55,000 in reserve for repairs, ren-ovations, and new construction. When one ofthe seven couldn’t come up with the whole$20,000, the group dipped into the $55,000development fund to give her a temporary loanof $5,000.
Five days after the phone call the founders
were able to hand the director of the foundationa certified check for $150,000. The oldFarallones Institute property was theirs.
For the first eight months after their August
1994 move-in, six of the partners worked dayand night repairing roofs, upgrading utilities,renovating the cabins, and building two yurtdormitories and a new bathhouse. The seventhperson, who had just begun a new job in the area,brought home enough pay to keep them in foodand other necessities during the renovation. ByMarch 1995 they’d completed enough to launchthe Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. (Theyhad arranged to operate OAEC first through thenon-profit Tides Foundation, planning to createtheir own 501(c)3 non-profit two years later.)They created a series of programs, promotedthem locally, and held their first OAEC work-shop that summer.
As you can see, the challenges and benefits of
buying a fully developed “turn-key” property arequite different to those of buying raw land.While the founders of communities like SowingCircle/OAEC and Lost V alley must usuallyjump through more hoops to investigate andfinance such properties than those who buy rawland, after about eight months of hard workboth Lost V alley and Sowing Circle/OAEC hadcomfortable living quarters for members and
THE GREAT LAND-BUYING ADVENTURE 97

offered their first workshops on sustainable liv-
ing. Primitive facilities didn’t stop eitherDancing Rabbit or Earthaven from creatinginternship programs and offering similar work-shops soon after land-purchase, but it will be along time before either has facilities like those ofLost V alley or Sowing Circle/OAEC.
Lost V alley and Sowing Circle/OAEC can
also show us what founders seeking turn-keyproperties can encounter. Both core groups foundproperties that had previously been used foralmost identical non-profit purposes to theirown. Both properties had not been lived in fortwo or three years, and both, especially LostV alley’s, required extensive repair and renovation.Both sets of founders acquired their proper-
ty by making offers far lower than the askingprice. Sowing Circle/OAEC’s offer was helpedby the fact that their intended use of the proper-ty was similar to the owner’s wishes, and theirdocumentation of how they’d raise the money tofinance the purchase was so thorough. LostV alley was helped enormously by the fact thatone founder could afford to offer two $100,000land-purchase and development loans.
/fl1lft
In Chapter 10 we’ll look at the step-by-stepprocess of finding community property.98CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

IN THE LAST CHAPTER WE SA W various com-
munities buy raw land, developed land with
buildings and utilities, and fully developed“turn-key” properties. Each of these communi-ties found property with pretty much everythingthey wanted, perhaps with the exception ofEarthaven, whose hybrid founders’ group didn’tchoose the developed land with open space envi-sioned by the original founders. There’s much wecan learn from these and other groups aboutfinding the right property — realistically deter-mining site criteria; how the land-search processworks; and the importance of researching prop-erties ahead of time.
Choosing Your Site Criteria
One of the keys to getting what you want is tohave clear, realistic expectations from the begin-ning about your chosen location and any limita-tions on property available there. Here are fivebasic questions to ask yourselves.
1. Which region or city would your group like
to live in, and why?
2. How much land are you looking for? 3. Do you want raw or developed land? 4. How much do you want to pay for property?
On development and construction?5. How much and what kind of financing is
available for your land purchase?
How Much Land Do You Want?
The amount of land you’re looking for will prob-ably depend on the purpose of your community,how many total members you plan to have, thepopulation density allowed by local zoning regu-lations, and, in the W est, the amount of availablewater.
Of course, everything can change once you
begin the land search. The amount of land orthe cost of available properties you find mightinduce you to change your plans. SowingCircle/OAEC originally planned to spend nomore than $500,000, but paid nearly twice thatbecause they found fully-developed property.An increase or decrease in the size and/or thecost of property could make you decide toincrease or decrease your planned number ofhouseholds. Many cohousing communities, forexample, have increased their number of unitsby ten or more because they underestimated thecost of land (or the cost of development or con-struction), so to keep their homes affordable,they spread the cost over a larger number ofpeople.
99/fl1lftChapter 10 /fl1rt
Finding the Right Property

Raw Land — Lower Initial Cost, Years of
Effort
Dancing Rabbit and Earthaven bought essen-
tially raw land, though each had one road andone or more outbuildings, and both faced thesame set of advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of Buying Raw Land
Within the limits of local zoning regula-
tions and building codes, with raw landyou can design your site to express yourcommunity’s values or sustainability
goals. For example, like Dancing Rabbitand Earthaven you could cluster yourbuildings and design your site to enhancecommunity interaction; use permaculturedesign to create mutually reinforcingshelter, energy, water, and vegetable gar-dens; or build passive solar homes. Rawland means you won’t have to try tocounter the effects of a poorly designedsite or bring poorly designed or shoddilyconstructed buildings up to speed.
Y ou can infuse your group’s particular
energy and “vibes” into the site andexpress your own aesthetic taste, insteadof working with a site that’s already “set”in its energy and aesthetics.
Y ou’ll pay less initially. If your group has
limited funds and enough time to devel-op infrastructure as you can afford it, rawland may be ideal. While you’ll needmuch more money than the land cost toturn the property into a place where all ofyou can live, at least you’ll have a start(and a place to show interested potentialnew members).
Disadvantages of Buying Raw Land
Developing the property — roads, off-
grid power or bringing in power lines,wells or piped water, septic tanks andleach fields or sewer hook-ups, and build-ing homes and community buildings fromscratch, takes much more money (twice asmuch? three times?) than if you’d boughtfully developed property with all the samefacilities, because everything costs morenow than when properties were developedeven just a few years ago.100 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Location is a critical factor for many reasons. For example,
do zoning regulations there allow the kinds of activitiesyou envision (farming, market gardening, light industry,animal husbandry?), or the degree of density you plan(apartment living, single-family dwellings on separatelots)? If not, how likely would it be, and what might itcost, to get a zoning variance?
Unless you’re bringing already successful community
businesses to the land, or most or all of you will telecom-mute, does the area offer potential jobs? What are wagesand salaries like there? Consider commute times to jobs,gasoline and other transportation expenses, and whether thedistance to jobs resonates with your community’s values.
Consider your needs for proximity to towns or cities,
an airport, and health care facilities. If you’ll have commu-nity-owned or individually owned businesses, whatabout local markets for your products or services oraccess to trucking or other delivery services or a postoffice; if some of you will telecommute, what aboutaccess to phone lines and the quality of local phoneservice? What about access to farmers markets, CSAfarms, food co-ops, or health food stores? What aboutproximity to schools, high schools, continuing educationfacilities, and recreational opportunities; or to art, music,and culture?

Development and construction usually
means full-time work for several people— paid professionals or communitymembers. If you plan to do it yourselves,can several of you afford to take leaves ofabsence from (or quit) your jobs for sixmonths to a year? Does your develop-ment fund include money for labor?
Developing and building on the property
can take far more time (three timeslonger?) than you anticipated. Y ou mayhave to wait a year, or several years to sim-ply live in community. If your communi-ty has an educational, service or otherpurpose, it may take years to actually startfulfilling that purpose.
Earthaven’s founders, for example, bought
land in December 1994. By the end of the nextyear they’d cleared an area and built an open-sided pavilion for workshops and meetings, andthree small huts for interns, none with electrici-ty or running water. By the third year they hadcleared more land and built a second road, akitchen-dining room with solar electricity andrunning water, a composting toilet, and morehuts for interns. By the fourth year they hadbuilt more roads, more huts, and increased theiramount of off-grid power, but only interns and afew members lived on the land. By the sixth yearthey’d built more roads and a community build-ing that was usable but not finished. More mem-bers had moved to the property, living in hutsand temporary shelters. By the end of 2002, fullyseven years after land-purchase, while severalpermanent homes were under construction, onlyone was finished. It’ll be years before Earthaven’sfounders live in the thriving village of 150 theyenvisioned in the early 1990s.The development and construction phase
can be exhausting and can lead toburnout, conflict, relationship break-ups,and even loss of members. Consider thestatistics regarding couples breaking upwhile building a new house — and mul-tiply it!
Developed Land — Electricity, Toilets,
and Showers
Abundant Dawn in Virginia, Zendik Arts
Community in North Carolina, New Viewcohousing in Massachusetts, and HigherGround cohousing in Oregon all bought oldfarms. Eden Ranch in Colorado bought a former“flying ranch” and airport runway (turning anairplane hangar into their community building).A community I’ll call Pueblo Encantada (seeChapter 18) acquired the former servants quar-ters and surrounding acreage of a former estate.
Urban cohousing communities have done it
too — Doyle Street in the California Bay Areabought an urban warehouse; MontereyCohousing in Minneapolis purchased a Georgianmansion; Old Oakland Cohousing chose a his-toric downtown market building; Southside Parkin Sacramento and T emescal in Oakland boughtVictorian homes; T erra Firma in Ottawaacquired six 19th-century row houses; andT rillium Hollow in Portland got an upscale exec-utive’s home built in the 1980s. There are as manyways to buy and remodel community buildings asthere are existing buildings out there.
Abundant Dawn’s founders considered
undeveloped land at first, but later were aghastthat they thought they might form a communitythat way. “W e thought we were going to buyproperty without buildings?” recalls V elma Kahn
of Abundant Dawn. “Without showers and aflush toilet? What were we thinking?”FINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 101

I’ve been involved in two small-group devel-
opment projects on about ten acres each: onestarting with raw land and the other with anexisting house and utilities. In the first instancewe paid $10,000 for a pipeline to the local waterco-op and thousands more to bring in electrici-ty and build a road. W e spent the first sevenmonths dealing with permits, inspectors, roads,utilities, and hooking up an ancient single-widemobile home, which four of us then crowdedinto for three years (with me sleeping in a tent)while we very slowly built our house. In the sec-ond instance we moved right in, and by about 18months had dug a second well, installed a solarsystem, enlarged the garden, and built two stor-age buildings and a second, four-bedroomhouse.
Advantages of Buying Developed Land
With buildings, running water, and elec-
tricity you’ll have a “base-camp” on theproperty. One or more people or house-holds can live there as early caretakers.People can have a place to eat and sleep asthey build their homes. A house (orgarage, or barn) can be turned into a com-munity building with a common kitchen,bathroom, meeting room, and laundryfacilities for everyone.
Y ou can save money in the long run, since
the property will probably cost less thanif you built the same improvements fromscratch.
Because you will probably add more
buildings, you have many of the sameadvantages as buying raw land — you candesign some of your site and buildingswith your group’s energy, values, and aes-thetics.Disadvantages of Buying Developed Land
Y ou have to raise more money initially.
Because you’ll mostly like do additional
construction, you’ll have many of thesame disadvantages as buying raw land— expense, time, and potential burnout.
Fully Developed Turn-key Property —
Move Right In (With a Big Financial Bite)
Let’s say that you set out to buy fully developed
turn-key property which will already have mostof the infrastructure you’ll need for an intention-al community.
Y ou could look for old YMCA camps,
church camps, Boy or Girl Scout camps, confer-ence centers, schools, or church complexes.“Often you can get a good deal on properties likethese,” says Dave Henson of SowingCircle/OAEC. “Especially if the property isdevalued because the buildings are funky orsmall, or the property consists of one or moresmall or odd-sized lots, or if there’s no view.”
Many forming communities have bought
and remodeled properties like these. As we’veseen, Sowing Circle/OAEC bought and reno-vated a live-in teaching center, and Lost V alleydid the same with property that had once been alarge intentional community. Shenoa Retreatand Conference Center in Mendocino County,California bought a former children’s camp.Hank Obermeyer bought eight apartments inthree existing buildings for Mariposa Grove.
Advantages of Buying a Turn-key Property
It will cost you less in total expenditures
than if you developed the property fromscratch.
After whatever degree of repairs or
remodeling may be necessary, you can102 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

move right in and begin your lives in
community; if you have an educational,service, or other mission, you can begin itright away.
Disadvantages of Buying a Turn-key
Property
Y ou can create a cash-flow problem for
your first few years of operation, as it willcost far more at the outset.
In some instances, the cost of renovating
damaged buildings and remodelingwould be so prohibitive it would becheaper to build from scratch, unless, likeLost V alley’s founders, you bought prop-erty with huge potential for a fraction ofits current market value.
Y ou may inherit a site which is poorly
designed for social interaction and commu-nity glue; for example, the buildings are toospread out, or are not facing each other, orare not contributing to any kind of centralcommons. It can be poorly designed forsustainability; for instance, the flattest andmost arable land is used for buildings orparking lots, the gardens are far from theliving areas, or the homes are on top of aridge instead of part-way down the slope.
Y ou may inherit poorly designed build-
ings with energy-hog appliances, low tono solar access (built on a north slope), orthin to no insulation with poor heatretention in winter and too much solargain in the summer. Lost V alley, forexample, bought property with a counter-intuitively planned septic system, whichbroke down every time it rained, anduninsulated steep-roofed wooden cabinsin a forest which, though storybookcharming, grew mold and mildew in the
wet season.
If the property hasn’t been lived in for
awhile you can find termites, rodentinfestation, frozen or otherwise damagedwater pipes, leaking roofs, or water-dam-aged interiors.
Y ou must live with someone else’s infu-
sion of energy and “vibes,” or aesthetictaste.
Y ou can get yourselves in debt to the hilt,
dividing enormous mortgage paymentsamong too few people, and being eatenalive by interest payments while barelychipping away at the principal. This cancause you become so desperate for reliefthat you consider new community mem-bers not for shared vision and values, butwith a financial gleam in your eye, assess-ing how much their monthly paymentscould lift the financial burden you’veburied yourselves under.
Buying Property like the Professionals Do
As you’ve already seen, no matter what kind ofproperty you seek, the process of finding landand shopping for financing can be a full-time jobfor someone. It’s a good idea to elect one or twoof your members to do this, since commercialdevelopers — your competition — spend fulltime seeking properties just like those you’relooking for. The property that would make agreat site for a community would also make agreat site for a subdivision, from a developer’spoint of view. So if you can afford it, do asDancing Rabbit, Earthaven, and SowingCircle/OAEC did and arrange for one or moremembers to make this work their sole occupa-tion for awhile.FINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 103

Commercial developers and real estate pro-
fessionals use the following tools and strategiesto get the best value for their money; there’sabsolutely no reason you can’t use the same ones.
Find out how much money your group
can borrow. Whether you’ll be seeking
owner financing, private loans, or a mort-gage from a local bank or lending institu-tion, knowing your borrowing powerahead of time can help you determine yourprice range, and whether you’ll want to addmore people to your group to raise moremoney (and more borrowing power).Master current property values and “the
market” in your chosen area, so you’ll
recognize a high price and a low pricewhen you see one — whether or not youp l a n t o w o r k w i t h a r e a l e s t a t e a g e n t t ofind property.
Armed with this knowledge begin the
search — and consider all properties that
meet your criteria, whether or not they’recurrently on the market.
Assessing Your Potential Borrowing Power
Experienced real estate brokers recommend get-ting preliminary information from local banksand lending institutions about how much youcan borrow before conducting your search (eventhough you may not borrow from these sources).
T o do this, each group member or household
adds up four sets of figures:
1. T otal monthly income
2. T otal assets3. T otal amount of debt owed 4. T otal monthly payments for these debts
With this information in hand, make intro-
ductory information-gathering visits to the sen-ior officers of banks and lending institutions inyour chosen area. Ask for information on rates,loan alternatives, and if they would considerloaning money to a group like yours (since not alllenders make all types of loans). Be sure to referto yourselves as “a group of families” or a “groupof households” — not as a “community” or an“ecovillage.” There’s no point conjuring up imagesof “hippie commie cult” in the minds of the(probably conservative) bankers.
Here are two do-it-yourself methods for
making rough estimates of your potential bor-rowing power.104 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
RAW LAND AND “PAPER LOTS”
Why do some parcels of raw land cost three or four times
more that other parcels of similar size? The price of unde-veloped property is affected not only by its size, but byhow it could potentially be developed.
First, if it’s in an area the city or county has zoned for
intensive development it will be worth more than if itwere in an area zoned for more restrictive development.Second, if the owner has already secured approval forsubdivision and development — with approvals forstreets, utilities, or other infrastructure, and an approved“tentative map” showing the boundaries of the new lotsto be created — while the land physically looks thesame, it’s now in the “paper lots” stage and worth con-siderably more to potential developers because thetime-consuming and expensive process of getting theseapprovals has been completed.
If your group finds desirable land like this but you
don’t want to subdivide or develop it as it’s currentlyapproved, keep looking. There’s no point paying two orthree times the price for approvals that won’t benefityour future development.

Add up the total annual gross income of
everyone in the group who might cosign on aloan, then double this amount. This is roughlyhow much a bank would loan you. One percentof that amount would be the approximateamount of your monthly mortgage payment.Let’s say you’re a group of six people, and every-one’s total gross annual income adds up to$250,000. Using this formula, you could (rough-ly) borrow $500,000 as a group. Y our monthlymortgage payment would be roughly $5,000, or$833 a month each.
Let’s say you found desirable property with
an asking price of $460,000. Knowing in advancethat you have this amount of borrowing power,and if you had at least $45,000 in cash already,you could offer $445,000, with 10 percent($44,500) down, seek a $400,000 mortgage, andset aside $100,000 of the loan for repairs, renova-tion, and new construction.
The second method is based on monthly
income. Add up everyone’s total monthly grossincome. T wenty-nine percent of this amountrepresents the maximum monthly land paymentyou’d be able to maintain (including principal,interest, property tax, and insurance). Now addup everyone’s total monthly debt payments.Most commercial lenders consider ten percent ofyour monthly gross income to be the maximumyou should be paying out to maintain otherdebts. If your monthly debt payments add up tomore than ten percent of your total monthlyincome, the amount you’d have available formonthly land payments would be reduced pro-portionately. For example, if your group’s grossmonthly income is $20,000, that allows for a landpayment of $5800 per month, and $2000 forother debts. If your group’s other debts amountto, for example, $2500, then your land paymentamount will drop accordingly, to $5300.It’s a good idea at this point, before starting
the search, to find out the credit rating of eachgroup member that may be co-signing on a loan,or otherwise contributing to monthly land pay-ments. Y ou can do this by getting credit reportson each member and reviewing them as a group.If one of you has bad credit, you might ask thatperson to bring his or her credit into good stand-ing now, before your group begins trying toobtain a loan.
Method A: Working with Real Estate
Agents
When it comes to finding land for new commu-
nities, there are three possible routes to take. Y oucould work with one or more real estate agents,you could work on your own, or you could worko n y o u r o w n w i t h h e l p f r o m a n a g e n t s o m e o fthe time.
Let’s look at how realty companies work.Real estate agents enter into contracts with
property owners for three to twelve months tofind a buyer (called “listing” a property). The realestate agent markets the property with For Salesigns, ads in the newspaper and local real estatepublications, a description in the local MultipleListing Service, and by driving potential buyersout to visit the property. If the property sells dur-ing the contract period, the agent who listed theproperty gets the amount of commission agreedupon with the buyer, usually four to ten percentof the final sales price. The commission is paid tothe agent whether the agent actually sells theproperty, or the owner sells it directly to buyerswho just happened by, such as your group.Therefore, if you approach a property ownerdirectly whose property is currently under con-tract with an agent (or, in most cases, was undercontract within the previous six months to ayear), the agent’s commission will still be a factorFINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 105

in any sales price you and the seller may agree on.
Of course, you can still negotiate with both ofthem about the commission.
Let’s say your group decides to work with one
or more real estate agents because they know themarket and available properties far better thanyou do, and you don’t have the time or energy todevote to mastering the local market as is sug-gested below. The first thing you should know isthat, since agents list properties for the propertyowners, they are contractually obligated to gethighest price and the most favorable terms forthe sellers, rather than the lowest price and mostfavorable terms for the potential buyers.
One option, however, is to sign a “buyer’s
agent” contract with one agent for one to threemonths or longer. This means the agent nowworks for you, not the seller, and will try to findyou property at the lowest price and best terms,for either a flat fee or a percentage of the finalsales price, depending on what you and the agentnegotiate. Look at the contract to see whether itcontains a clause which says the fee goes to theagent even if you find and buy property on yourown after the contract expires. If so, you maywant to strike that clause. All clauses and fees inany contract with a real estate agent are nego-tiable. Experienced real estate buyers (and manycommunity founders), strongly recommend pay-ing a real estate attorney to look over any con-tracts before signing.
While some agents will work with your
group as buyer’s agents without any proof ofyour ability to buy property, other agents will notunless they, or a local lending institution, havepre-qualified you financially, and your group hasa preliminary commitment for a mortgage froma lender. The agent may also want to first see thenet-worth statements and credit reports of eachindividual in the group before working with you.The kind of service you get from a real
estate agent and the fee you pay for it candepend on what you and the agent agree uponahead of time. Y ou might agree on a full servicepackage in which the agent takes you out onhalf-day or full-day property tours, or on a sim-pler service, in which the agent gives you rele-vant printouts from their Multiple ListingService database and a map, and sends you onyour way.
Y ou’ll need to find the right agent for your
group, and one who specializes in the kind ofproperty you’re seeking. If you’re looking for arural location, start with agents who specialize infarm and ranch properties; if it’s an urban loca-tion you’re after, look for agents who specialize incommercial or multi-family properties.
Y ou may want to do as Sowing Circle/
OAEC did, and write a form letter to all theagents affiliated with the local Board of Realtorsor Multiple Listing Service, as well as any otherlocal agents listed in the phone book. DaveHenson of Sowing Circle recommends addingin bold letters at the bottom of the letter:“Pleasedo not contact us unless you have property thatfits this description.” Sowing Circle/OAEC did-n’t do this, and got calls about three-bedroomhomes in suburbia. He also suggests that youintroduce yourselves as “a group of families” or “agroup of families and individuals,” rather than asan “intentional community” or an “ecovillage.”Y oudon’t want to confuse, prejudice, or scare them.(See Chapter 9, “Sowing Circle’s Letter to RealEstate Agents.”)
Whether you shop for an agent by sending
letters or by visiting many realty offices, whenyou find one you like and trust, and who res-onates with your values, tell the agent enough ofwhat you want and why you want it, so he or shecan truly help you.
106 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Mastering the Local Real Estate Market on
Your Own
Bob W atzke, a real estate dealer and developer in
Milwaukee who has long been involved in inten-tional communities, encourages communityfounders to do it on their own; however, follow-ing his advice below can also empower yourgroup and make you more savvy property buyersif you areworking with real estate agents. He
advises thoroughly learning property values inyour desired area so you’ll recognize a good dealwhen you see one, and acquiring and studyingthe following kinds of local marketing data.
1. Market value reports on recent sales in the
area. Prepared by a realty company, a market
value report demonstrates that the askingprice of the particular property the realtycompany has listed for sale is in line withlocal market values, through a comparison ofthe prices and features of other similar prop-erties recently sold in the area.
2. Comparable sales books. Compiled by the
local Multiple Listing Service, these booksitemize properties in similar or “comparable”categories, showing their prices and features.(Because market value reports and compara-ble sales books are prepared by real estateagents, you may need to pay a realty compa-ny for them, unless you’re working with anagent who provides them.)
3. Record of all realty properties recently sold.
This information is usually available in theoffice of the County Registrar of Deeds.
4. Databases of recently sold properties and
their sales prices, and current properties forsale and their asking prices. Compiled and
owned by local real estate appraisers for theirown use, these can be made available for aprice.5. Comparable Sales Study. This is a descrip-
tion, including sale price, of all the propertiessimilar to the kind you’re seeking that havebeen sold in the recent past (usually the lastsix months) in your chosen area. This is pre-pared especially for your group by a profes-sional real estate appraiser, for a fee.(Appraisers are real estate evaluation expertswho determine the current market value ofproperties by comparing the features andfinal sale price of other similar propertiessold in the same area.) A comparable salesstudy will probably cost more than the usualFINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 107
WORKING WITH A REAL ESTATE LAWYER
“Real estate lawyers can be invaluable — use them!” says
experienced real estate dealer Bob Watzke. Your attorneycan prepare and review your sales offer and any subse-quent contracts prior to submittal, advise you on negoti-ations, prepare loan and deed documents, order titlework from a title company, and advise you at the closing.“Pay your lawyer 30 to 50 percent in advance and he orshe will give you even better service,” Bob adds. “But fol-low up with him or her frequently, since ‘squeaky wheels’still get the best service.”
In some states, closings are handled by a lawyer who
represents both buyer and seller in place of a title com-pany, and the closing is held in their office. In otherstates, attorneys can act as brokers.
Bob suggests keeping your attorney in the back-
ground unless the seller has one too. “Ask your attorneyto review everything you’re supposed to sign
before you
sign it, not after,” he cautions. If you find yourself in aposition where you must sign a contract by a certain timeand your attorney hasn’t seen it, Bob suggests you insiston inserting the clause: “This contract is subject to my/ourattorney’s review and written approval within forty-eight(48) hours after acceptance or this contract shall becomenull and void, at the buyer’s option.”

kind of appraisal (which determines the cur-
rent market value of a specific property), butif you can afford it, this analysis will offervaluable insight into current property valuesin the area.
Most counties and municipalities have a zon-
ing map of the county or municipality whichshows how each area is zoned (meaning whatkinds of development can take place withinthose areas), whether such zoning might bechanged, and how to go about doing so. Y ou canalso look up tax maps, which show the bound-aries of every property in the county or city.Through the tax numbers of each property, youcan also get the names and contact informationfor each property owner.
Study your marketing data. By examining the
tax records and zoning designations for variousareas, and by driving around and looking at prop-erties, you’ll learn promising areas to considerwithin your chosen location. Y ou’ll also get anidea of the average cost per acre or per square footin these areas, and which factors in these areasmay be most significant in determining price —for example, the size of the property, location andzoning, views, access to water, type of soil, trees,and proximity to major roads. Y ou’ll learn whichare the most desirable properties for your pur-poses, how they’re zoned, and who owns them.
By continuing to add information to your com-
parable sales study, Bob says, you will eventuallycome to know more than the local professionalsthemselves about what’s going on in the area duringthe time of your search. (Y ou’ll also have back-upmaterial to support your proposal to lenders,appraisers, and sellers when you make an offer.)
“ A well-informed negotiator — knowing
whether any given piece of property is priced toohigh, too low, or at the going market rate — cansave you thousands, even tens of thousands of
dollars when you buy at the low end of the valuerange,” Bob says. “Not to mention that you cansave more when you are informed enough tonegotiate your price and an owner-financed loanunder your terms.”
Conducting the Search — On Your Own
or with a Real Estate Agent
Besides the obvious places to look for properties
such as local newspapers, free real estate publica-tions, “For Sale” signs, and any local for-sale-by-owner organizations, be sure to do what develop-ers and real estate agents do —scour every road inyour desired location by car. Correlate the mapwith addresses you see on mailboxes. Get out ofthe car, climb on top of it if need be, or bring a lad-der to stand on so you can see better or get a senseof a property’s view. Ask neighbors about variousproperties that seem interesting. “Do you knowhow large it is?” “Does it go all the way to thatfence over there?”“Do you know who owns it?”
At city hall or the county courthouse, check
on various properties; find out when they lastsold, and how much they sold for. This is time-consuming work, but it does give you expertiseon property in that area, and puts you on a near-equal footing with developers, who know theland as well or better.
Like Dancing Rabbit and Sowing
Circle/OAEC, you might write letters or callowners of properties that interest you, or theowners of properties next door to those thatinterest you, if you can’t find the current owner.Y ou might say something like,“May I speak withyou? Y ou have a beautiful farm/homestead/pieceof property here. W e’re seeking something likethis for our group of families to farm/groworganic vegetables/build passive-solar houses (orwhatever it is you’d like to do). Do you know of108 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

any other farms/homesteads/properties like this
in the (whatever general area you’re looking in),where the owners might consider selling to agroup like us?” This kind of approach can openthe door for property owners to invite you in,show you around, and possibly consider sellingto you themselves. But maybe not. While you’llmeet some nice people this way, and learn a lotmore about the county, also be prepared to expe-rience some cool or angry dismissals. Don’t bediscouraged; just keep going.
Like Dancing Rabbit, you may find property
with an absentee owner. “Say, do you know whotakes care of that property over there?” you mightask some neighbors. Or, “Do you happen toknow how I might be able to contact the owner?”
Once you’ve found a few likely properties,
it’s time to start researching them a bit morethoroughly.
Investigating Likely Properties
With or without the help of real estate agents,let’s say you’ve found several likely propertiesthat meet most of your criteria. Just because aproperty looks good doesn’t mean it will be suit-able over the long run, so you must do furtherresearch, primarily involving water issues (if it’srural land), potential dangers to the land fromnatural causes or other people’s plans, zoningand land-use issues, neighbor issues, and financ-ing options for that particular property.
For properties you’re seriously considering,
make sure you get an Owner’s DisclosureStatement (now required by many states), or asimilar list, showing any problems with appli-ances, wiring systems, structural aspects, envi-ronmental factors, or legal issues that couldaffect the property.
Most experienced real estate buyers do a pre-
liminary feasibility study like this on every prop-erty that fits their criteria, narrow them down to
the most promising properties, and pick one thatseems like the best choice, given the informationthey uncover. I suggest you do the same. Hereare some issues to look into in order to narrowyour search. Gathering this information can alsohelp you negotiate a price with the seller.
Zoning. What activities, and what population
density, are allowed on this property by localzoning regulations? What is the likelihood ofgetting a zoning variance, special use permit, orother kind of exception, and what might it cost?This is such a significant issue we take it up morethoroughly in Chapter 11.
Wa t e r. If it’s rural property, is there enough
water for your purposes? What are county regu-lations regarding the amount of available waterrelative to the number of houses you plan to haveand the number of people who will live there?Are any springs, streams, or ponds year-round?What’s their water quality? Have weather pat-terns been changing in the area? Have creeksbeen drying up? Have wells been running dry?Y ou could talk to neighbors in the area and localwell drillers, or pay a local well driller or a dows-er to assess in a general way where they thinkground water would most likely be, in case you’llneed to dig any future wells. Does your develop-m e n t f u n d h a v e m o n e y f o r d r i l l i n g w e l l s a n dinstalling pumps? Are roof water catchmentsallowed in this area? Does the county healthdepartment have rules about it? What would itcost to bring in piped water?
Roads. If it’s rural property and you’ll need to
build your own roads, are there likely places forroads, or does it have too many steep slopes? Whatwould be the likely costs for building gravel roadsFINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 109

(which must be redone every five to seven years),
or much more expensive asphalt roads?
Utilities. If it’s rural property, do telephone lines
or power come that far? If not, what would itcost to bring them to your property? Whatwould it cost to dig a well? How much powerwould you need to operate a pump? Is the siteappropriate for generating your own powerthrough micro-hydro, wind, or sun (or somecombination)? If it’s semi-rural or suburbanproperty, what would be the cost to hook up to
power, gas, and sewer lines? Having utilitiesreadily available to a site or having to extend linesto your property or create them yourselves canmake an enormous difference in the amount ofmoney you must put aside for land development.
Septic systems. If it’s rural property, what are
county health department requirements aboutseptic systems and the amount of people living onthe land (usually based on your expected number110 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
ZONING AND THE GENERAL PLAN
Contrary to popular belief about individual property
rights, county, town, and city governments have broadlegal powers to regulate the use of all land within theirboundaries in order to protect local residents frompotential health and safety impacts of new develop-ments. Local governments regulate land use primarilythrough a General Plan and through zoning regulations.
A General Plan is a document which creates an
image of what the local area will be like in the foresee-able future. It describes policies and goals, and des-ignates what land uses, population densities, andpublic facilities will be permitted or encouraged ineach area.
Zoning regulations enforce the General Plan’s land-
use policies and goals by dividing the county ormunicipality into various use districts, such as rural,rural-residential, residential, commercial, industrial,and agricultural. Zoning primarily regulates density(the number of residents allowed per acre), buildingmass, setback from property boundaries, and parking.
Subdivision ordinances of the state, county, or city
are a separate set of codes from the normal zoningregulations. Property owners wanting to subdivideproperty into smaller parcels and sell some or all ofthem must meet the conditions of the subdivisionordinances, which usually require specific setbacks, building size and dimension restrictions, density, and
specific kinds of improvements such as roads, utilities,and so on.
Many local governments offer various levels and
types of exceptions or changes to zoning regulations.These include rezoning, zoning variances, conditionaluse permits or special use permits, non-conforminguse permits, and other kinds of exceptions. Thesemust be specially applied for and approved by plan-ning departments, city councils, planning commis-sions or county boards of supervisors. Exceptions aregranted if the new development meets certain specialrequirements, helps the county or municipality meetthe goals of its General Plan, or offers certain benefitsto the area such as additional parking, preserved openspace, a protected wildlife corridor, and so on.
Sometimes exceptions to zoning regulations are
granted directly by local officials, but they usuallyinvolve a public hearing, where potential neighbors tothe proposed development are invited to expresstheir support for or concerns about it. Since the offi-cials making the decision are elected, the neighbors,as potential voters, have a great deal of clout. They canmake or break a community’s proposed developmentproject and affect whether or not the founders willpursue buying a particular parcel.

of bedrooms)? How well does any current septic
system work? Does the soil perc well enough foradditional leach fields if you’ll need them? Y oucould pay a soils consultant to walk the propertyand give a visual assessment of likely percability,and likely places for leach fields, and estimatedcosts. Or you could pay for perc testing beforebuying the property to find this out.
State of existing buildings. Most professional
inspections take place during the closing period.However, if you’re seriously considering a prop-erty with buildings, you can always arrange foran earlier inspection, to find out if there are anypotential repair costs that would be so prohibi-tive as to lower your offer, or change your mindabout the property entirely. What would it costto repair or replace any foundations, roofs, orwood damaged by termites or dry rot? Does anyplumbing need to be replaced? Do any buildingsneed rewiring? Are there problems with radon?(And while we’re at it, do dowsers find any prob-lems with geopathic zones? Can they be mitigat-ed? And, going further out on a limb, is the placehaunted? And if so, can you get it cleansed?)
Building codes. What kinds of building con-
struction is allowed in this county or city? Couldyou build the kinds of buildings you want on theproperty? (See Chapter 13.)
Possible future problems. What might be any
potential dangers in the area? Have there beenfloods? Where would flood waters flow on thisproperty, and what might be damaged? W ouldfloodwaters flow where you’d ideally like to build?Are there fire hazards, such as dry brush down-hill and downwind from structures? Are thereany ponds that would be dangerous for smallchildren? Any marshy areas or ponds that breedmosquitoes? What has the property been used
for in the past? Have hazardous waste materialsbeen dumped there? Should it be tested for envi-ronmental contaminants? What would be thecost? Does the property have sensitive wetlands,or is it home to an endangered species that mustbe protected at the buyer’s expense? Is the prop-erty downwind or downstream from cattle ranch-es, pig farms, or poultry operations with manurepolluting the watershed, or from manufacturingplants or commercial agriculture fields with toxicoutputs? What future development is plannedfor the area, or for next door? If it’s rural proper-ty in a western, open-range state, how muchwould you need to spend to fence your neighbors’livestock out? (And if it’s property in a wildernessarea traditionally used by hunters, will you con-tinue to let them hunt on your property? If youdon’t want hunting, is there any safe way to pre-vent it? Could you afford to fence hunters out?)
Possible legal issues. Must any legal hurdles be
cleared before the property can be purchased? Forexample, is it owned in trust by a family, where allmembers must agree to sell it? Is it owned by anon-profit with internal agreements that it canonly be sold to another non-profit? Is it part of alarger development project whose owners areplacing design or other constraints on whomeverdevelops it? Will any of this require negotiationwith lawyers, and if so, what will it cost?
Neighbors. What would your neighbors be like?
Are they progressive, “alternative,” politically orreligiously conservative? W ould they welcome agroup of families or households moving next door?If they heard the term “intentional community,”would they feel apprehensive? W ould they assume“hippie commie cult?” What is their lifestyle? Arethey into loud parties, drinking, or drugs, and if it’s
FINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 111

a rural area, noisy trucks, barking dogs, hunting, or
shotguns? What structures or activities can yousee and hear from your property, and what struc-tures or activities of yours would they be able tosee and hear from theirs? (See Chapter 11.)
Amount of offer. What’s a realistic offer to make
on this property? Once they’ve found a promis-ing property, some groups pay for an appraisal ofthat property to get a realistic sense of its currentmarket value. If you’ve done your homework,with all the marketing data you’ve collected thismay not be necessary.
Financing. If you’re not paying the full sale price
with the group’s assets, can you arrange privatefinancing, owner-financing, or bank financingfor this property? (See Chapter 12 for more onfinancing.)
Taking Property Off the Market While
You Do Further Research
After researching the most promising properties
and comparing the results, experienced realestate buyers pick one that seems to be the bestchoice. The prospective buyer takes the propertyoff the market in one of two ways; either by mak-ing an “offer to purchase” with contingencies inthe sales contract allowing one to three months(or more) to conduct a more detailed feasibilitystudy, or by offering to purchase the propertyusing an “option to purchase.”
If the prospective buyer chooses an “offer to
purchase” and during the contingency time dis-covers that the property doesn’t satisfy the con-tingencies, the contract can be voided and the saledoesn’t go through. The prospective buyer losesno money, and tries again with the next mostpromising property, if it’s still on the market.Making an Offer with Contingencies
Let’s say your group chooses a likely property andyou decide to make an offer with contingencies.How much to offer depends on what you learnedfrom your research of current local property val-ues, how desirable this property is to you, thecondition of the property, your guess as to needsand circumstances of the seller, and how muchmoney you have to spend on this property to doany repairs, renovations, or further development.
Y our offer proposes your sales price, amount
of down payment and other financing terms, thedate of closing, and all terms of the contract andcontingencies of the sale. It may be accompaniedby a check for a certain amount of “earnestmoney,” usually a nominal amount that is negoti-ated between you and the seller, usually rangingfrom a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.“Never give more than you are willing to walkaway from and write off,” advises Bob W atzke.
The contract states that your group will buy the
property dependant on your finding out and/oraccomplishing certain things during the contin-gency period. This permits you, the buyer, to makesure the property is appropriate for your needs.
The seller may accept or reject your group’s
offer or make a counter offer. Y ou can agree tobuy the property at this new price, or make a sec-ond offer. After you and the buyer have negotiat-ed the price and terms, you sign a sales contract,which (unless the seller doesn’t agree) takes theproperty off the market for the agreed-upon con-tingency period.
Although contingencies are specific to a
particular buyer and a specific property, a typi-cal printed sales contract form (depending onthe state) offers check boxes for many of the fol-lowing items. Whichever items the buyerchecks off (or writes into the contract) must be112 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

accomplished or learned to the buyer’s satisfac-
tion in order for the deal to go through:
1. The buyer’s ability to secure financing.
2. A property inspection, if called for by the
buyer, who pays for it.
3. A boundary survey, which, if the seller
doesn’t already have, the buyer pays for.
4. Determining any easements, liens or unpaid
taxes that exsist, usually taken care of by thetitle company or real estate lawyer.
5. T ests for radon and hazardous wastes, if
called for by the buyer, who pays for it.
6. The status of any mineral leases previously
placed on the land, which the seller must divulge,as these constitute an encumbrance on the title(a limitation of rights to use the property).
7. Additional pieces of information or concerns
which the buyer must know and be satisfiedabout in order to buy the property. For exam-ple, if you’re subdividing the property intosmaller, separate units that members willown individually, one of these write-in con-tingencies should be having your subdivisionmap approved by local planning officials. Ifthis involves having a request for a zoningvariance approved, that must be a writtencontingency as well.
Assuming all your contingencies are met, the sale
closes. (If contingencies are met but you changeyour minds about buying the property and refuseto close, you may either forfeit the earnest moneyand/or face additional claims for damages.)
Offering an Option
Let’s say you plan a large community with manymembers living on a large or otherwise expensiveproperty, and so much money is at stake you’dlike a longer time to research it. Or let’s say you’llneed a special use permit or zoning variance tobuild what you want on a particular property,and/or you plan to subdivide your land so that
members will have deeds to their own lots, andyou need more time to learn whether you can getthe use permit or the variance or if your pro-posed plat map will be accepted. Either becauseso much money is potentially at stake, or it’s notcertain that you’ll get the use permit or the vari-ance, you may decide to take the property off themarket for a longer period so you can researchthese issues by making an offer in the form of an“option to purchase.” This means you pay anegotiated amount of option money for theexclusive right to purchase the property at anagreed-upon price during an agreed-upon periodof time, such as six months to a year or more.This gives you additional time to conduct yourfeasibility study. If your group decides the prop-erty won’t work for your purposes, you forfeit theoption money. If you decide to buy it, or “exercisethe option,” the option money may or may not beapplied to the purchase price, depending onwhat you or the seller negotiated.
The money you pay to learn whether a prop-
erty is right for you — the option fee and anycosts for permits, fees, and professional surveysor reports — is high risk. If you don’t buy thatparticular property you won’t recover it. Y ou’llneed to consider these funds part of the cost ofconducting a property search and be willing towalk away from the fee if necessary.
Y ou, your attorney, or a real estate broker
may draft an option. There are standard printedforms for them too.
/fl1lft
T wo of the most crucial challenges for commu-nity founders are resolving any zoning issues andsecuring financing. W e’ll examine these inChapters 11 and 12.FINDING THE RIGHT PROPERTY 113

IN1998, DOZENS OF PEOPLE from around the
county began meeting on the Internet in
response to Luc Reid’s call for cofounders of anincome-sharing community in rural NewEngland. After figuring out a way to do theFormal Consensus process online, and meetingevery few months to get to know each other andmake more significant decisions in person, thegroup deputized two of their members to findproperty in V ermont. They wanted at least 125acres near a town with attractive culture and ahealthy economy. The property needed goodsouthern exposure for passive solar buildings,accessibility to roads and utilities, possiblyenough water for micro-hydro power, woods toramble in, and areas where they could keep live-stock, do some organic farming, and operatecommunity businesses. They decided to calltheir community “Meadowdance.”
How Zoning Issues can Impact
Community Plans
In 1999, the Meadowdance group found 165
acres of raw land with almost everything theywanted, just outside a progressive college town inV ermont. The property had woods, an old appleorchard and plenty of berry bushes, a large standof maple trees for making maple syrup, lovely
meadows, and a hill with south-facing slopes,and best of all, a jaw-dropping view.
They had intended to have about 20 group
members before they bought property, but atthis point only eight were willing to commit, sothey forged ahead with a much smaller group,spending the next year in the land-purchaseprocess.
The asking price was $250,000. They raised
$130,000 from their own contributions (in$5,000 and $10,000 increments, with one familyputting in the lion’s share), and knew they’d needto get a bank loan as well, using their combinedborrowing power. With the loan and their cash,they would make a down payment, bring in util-ities, build their community building, buymobile homes as temporary housing, and starttheir software testing business, keeping enoughcash in reserve to make mortgage payments untiltheir business took off.
They created a Limited Liability Partnership
to own the property, and put down a $10,000option to take it off the market for a year. Theyspent another $10,000 researching the property,getting surveys and various soil, water, and othertests, and acquiring a state septic system permit
114/fl1lftChapter 11 /fl1rt
Neighbors and Zoning

and an Act 250 permit (a V ermont requirement
that addresses a new development’s potentialeconomic, ecological, and social impacts). Theirnext step was to apply for a conditional use per-mit for a Planned Residential Development(PRD).
They had also spent some time designing
their large three-story community building —which they considered central to their function-ing as an income-sharing community — withapartments, office and other business space,recreational space, a large kitchen and diningroom for community meals, and rooms for learn-ing, the arts, and music.
And, since Meadowdance wasn’t hiding their
plans, when a local newspaper approached themto do a series of articles, they agreed. They laterwished they hadn’t though, since each of thethree articles contained serious inaccuracies, andrepeatedly referred to the group as a “commune.”
At their first public hearing some neighbors
didn’t want them to get a conditional use permit,saying that the group’s large community buildingwould negatively impact their view. One of theplanning commissioners also objected to thebuilding’s high profile on the hill. Concerns werealso expressed about the amount of traffic thattheir project might generate. So over the nextfew months group members visited with andheard the concerns and ideas of as many poten-tial neighbors as possible, and shared their visionfor Meadowdance. They redesigned their com-munity building to have a lower profile and sitlower down on the slope, and showed theirredesigned plan to neighbors and the planningdepartment, as well as giving specific assurancesof their anticipated impact on local traffic. By thetime of the second public hearing they had gar-nered so much public support that the chairmanof the planning department commissiondeclared his enthusiasm for the project, and
prominent local citizens stood up to speak infavor of it.
But another member of the planning com-
mission now raised objections to the building’smultiple functions. “T o approve the conditionaluse permit,” Luc says,“she required us to hack upour community building into three separatebuildings, and accept stringent limitations onwhat could go on in any given building.” Thegroup was stunned; these requirements wereunusual. T raditionally, the planning commissioncould either grant a conditional use permit ornot, but they didn’t actually have jurisdictionabout what activities might take place in itsbuildings.
Over the next few weeks the Meadowdance
group considered their options. By this timethey really liked the location and had fallen inlove with this particular property. They hadconducted an enormous amount of research onit, invested $20,000 in the option and permittingprocess, and figured out how they could swingthe purchase and create temporary housing forthemselves.
It came down to having three choices. First,
they could agree to the restrictions, and chop uptheir community building. Not only would thiscost significantly more, it would disrupt the flowof social and economic connections and commu-nity “glue,” which, because they understood therelationship between architecture and humaninteraction, they had painstakingly designed intothe building. Second, they could appeal, andwould probably win, given that this commission-er offered the only opposition, and she didn’thave a substantial case. Third, they could justwalk away from the property.
After much discussion, they decided on the
third option.“W e didn’t want to fight the town,”
NEIGHBORS AND ZONING 115

said Luc. While the commissioner was alone in
her objection, the other commissioners weren’tparticularly outraged by it, and seemed to accepther new conditions. It was as if the town,through one if its officials, had said “No.” Even ifthe founders could win an appeal, they didn’twant to begin their community life on such anegative basis. So they walked away, leaving theirinvestment of money and time, and their heart-felt connection to the property.
As an interim measure they bought a large
house in another V ermont town, moved in, andkicked off their community businesses there.(“W e later realized how hard it would have beento develop the property andstart new commu-
nity businesses,” says Luc.) At this writing, sev-eral years later, Meadowdance has found andbought an even better property, and are willingto try again.
Zoning Issues and Your Property
The General Plan and zoning regulations of acounty or municipality are aimed at regulatingnew development, and most intentional commu-nities fall into that category. Therefore, the sameregulations designed to limit the excesses of largecommercial developers also limit what commu-nity founders can do. Zoning regulations cancover building size and impact on the landscape,as we’ve seen with Meadowdance, but most affectcommunities in terms of density and house clus-tering. And while increasing numbers of coun-ties and municipalities now allow clustereddevelopment, the total number of houses usual-ly must not exceed density requirements. If acore group of 20, for example, wanted to buy 200acres in an area that allowed clustered develop-ment but was zoned for one house per 40 acres,the group could cluster no more than five hous-es on the property. Building more would requiregetting a zoning variance, a conditional use per-
mit, or some other kind of zoning exception.
Density is usually the central zoning chal-
lenge for community founders, since the greaterthe number of members they can spread theircosts between, the more likely they’ll be able toafford to buy their property and develop theircommunity. (Communities founded in the1970s and ’80s didn’t jump through these hoopsbecause many more counties had few or no zon-ing regulations then. Ma and Pa counterculturecould just buy an old farm and move in.)
As mentioned earlier, in the progressive areas
where you’d think it would be easier to buy landfor a community, it’s often worse. Many cityplanners in environmentally aware areas such asBoulder or Amherst are already advocates of sus-tainable development, and would love to seemore clustered development with open space,shared housing, passive solar design, pedestrianpathways, and so on. Appalled by the urbansprawl and acres of parking lots, environmental-ly oriented citizens in such areas often elect offi-cials who promise to enact and enforce stringent“no growth” or “slow growth” policies. Whilesuch policies effectively restrict commercialdevelopers from churning out more housing sub-divisions or strip malls, the same policies alsostop community founders from creating the verykinds of sustainable developments local plannersand officials would most like to see.
One practical way to deal with zoning regu-
lations is to do as Dancing Rabbit did and shopfor counties that have little to no zoning andbypass the issue altogether. But, as we’ve seen,this can decrease the likelihood of members’finding local jobs, setting up the new challenge ofhow members in such a low-population areamight make a living. Another way is to buy prop-erty that’s already zoned for your planned use
116 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

and density. While some cohousing groups and
urban communities like Mariposa Grove havedone this, it’s not a likely scenario for your com-munity if you’re seeking rural or semi-rural land,since you’re probably planning a higher densitythan such properties are normally zoned for. It’smore than likely your group will be dealing withnon-ideal zoning. Some things to keep in mind:
1. Often the goals and policies of a General Plan
don’t match the current zoning map. Newlyenacted zoning regulations may not be dis-tributed, understood, or implemented yet, orlocal officials may not agree on them.Experienced real estate investors advise buyers
not to believe anything they read in a GeneralPlan or see on a zoning map, but get an officialopinion about a property’s zoning from localplanning or elected officials before buying the
property. Keep in mind too, that differentpublic officials can interpret their documentsdifferently, and in all sincerity may tell youcompletely different things. T o protect your-selves later, get their opinions in writing.
2. Y ou can research the history of a property at
the County Courthouse or City Hall to see ifit had a previous use permit that allowedmore density than is currently allowed.NEIGHBORS AND ZONING 117
In the 1990s a group of seven founders planning a spir-
itual community I’ll call Ponderosa Village bought 210acres in the high desert of Colorado. They tried to getapproval for higher density than five houses, since theirparticular parcel had enough water for 15 houses. Afterbeing refused, the founders considered subdividingtheir property into six 35-acre triangular parcels that allmet in the center like the slices of a pie, then buildinga large house on each parcel around the center wherethe parcels met. They would use one as a commonhouse, and, after the building inspectors went home,they’d remodel five of the houses into triplexes. Whilethey toyed with this idea for awhile, they didn’t end updoing it, since they really didn’t want to break the law.They eventually disbanded as a forming-communitygroup and subdivided the parcel into six rectangularlots which they sold to others.
What happens when a property owner violates zon-
ing regulations or building codes? Nothing —unlesstheir violations are visible from the road, or if a neighbor turns them in. Counties and municipalities don’t have the manpower to scour every back road and drive onto
every property to enforce zoning and building codecompliance. But they’re duty-bound to respond to aneighbor’s complaint, since the person lodging thecomplaint is most likely a voter and public officials mustrespond if they want to be re-elected. If PonderosaVillage had gone ahead with their idea they would havebeen vulnerable to any neighbor over the years blowingthe whistle on the secret triplexes in each house.
A well-known story in the communities movement
concerns Morningstar Ranch, a famous communenorth of San Francisco in the 1970s, where a hundredor so residents lived in tents, tipis, and tar-papershanties. Their over-the-top density and substandardhousing worked for awhile, but after a neighbor com-plained the county gave notice that the buildings mustbe dismantled and the excessive population mustdisperse. When Morningstar Ranch refused, early onemorning county workers rumbled out to the propertyin bulldozers, and as everyone watched, smashedinto rubble every one of their illegal homes.
WHAT IGNORING ZONING CAN COST YOU

Sometimes a prior use carries weight with
current officials. W ould it have more densityif it were an educational center? W as permis-sion ever given for a subdivision? W as it everzoned agricultural, and hence now be per-mitted additional people if they were agricul-tural workers? (And would organic gardenersqualify as agricultural workers?)
3. Y ou can sometimes buy property with an
expired conditional use permit, or one thecounty decided to discontinue, and work toget it reinstated.
Gambling with Former Use Permits
In the more liberal zoning atmosphere of the1970s, the Farallones Institute secured an educa-tional use permit allowing up to 50 permanentresidents and up to 150 at a time for workshopsand classes. When Sowing Circle/OAECfounders researched the property local officialssaid the permit would remain in effect for onlythree more years to give the county time to decidewhether or not the new owners’ use would war-rant continuing the permit. The founders thoughtthis was a reasonable gamble because theyplanned on hosting the same kinds of educationalevents the previous owners had, and they boughtthe property without knowing the outcome.Three years later the officials lowered the densityto 26 permanent residents, with up to 50 allowedfor courses and workshops, but granted the usepermanently as what’s called a “nonconforminguse.” (A nonconforming use is one the county orcity allows as an exception to the rest of the zon-ing in an area, because it was established beforecurrent zoning use for that area took effect.)
Sometimes, hiring professionals such as a
private land-use planner and/or real estatelawyer can make all the difference in keeping orrestoring a use permit that’s in question.One of the first things Kenneth Mahaffey
and Dianne Brause did before buying the LostV alley property was to research the status of itsformer conditional use permit (called a “specialuse permit” in their county) to see if it could bere-established as a nonconforming use. Theyintended Lost V alley to be a community of 20 orso, with hundreds of conference and workshopparticipants yearly. They had learned that in theearly 1970s, the previous owners received anextremely liberal conditional use permit forhosting public events — up to 50 full-time resi-dents and up to 3,000 visitors over a year’s peri-od, as well as permission to build 25 buildings.While conditional use permits are usuallyattached to the property deed and follow fromowner to owner, in this case its was discontinuedbecause the former owners lost title when theproperty was seized by the IRS. The county hadcertain requirements for use permits to remainvalid, including that there should be no gapbetween owners for longer than 12 months, andthe property’s density had reverted to the countystandard — one household on a parcel that size,or up to five unrelated adults if they were doingreforestation.
Kenneth and Dianne learned that everyone
who had wanted to buy the property beforethem had failed to secure the continuation ofthe conditional use permit. But as an experi-enced real estate investor, Kenneth knew youcould sometimes challenge a county in zoningmatters, and prove that a permit should be rein-stated. So, even though buying the propertywith no certainty about the use permit was anenormous gamble, they did it anyway.(Experienced founders do notrecommend this,
since your group could be stuck with an expen-sive property you can’t use. Kenneth andDianne’s back-up plan, in case they didn’t get
118 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

the permit, was for Kenneth to use the property
as a family home.)
The two hired as their advocates a private
land-use planner who’d formerly been employedby the county planning department, and a realestate lawyer familiar with the property. Neitherhad ever lost a case, and said they weren’t plan-ning to lose this one. The advocates said that,probably in three of four months, the countywould cite them for having too many people. T oprepare for it, they offered the following advice:
1. Don’t ask the county directly if they’re aware
of the expired use permit, but test theirknowledge of it by requesting somethingsmall and innocuous instead. This they did,asking if they could put a mobile home onthe land, and learned that the county wasindeed aware of the issue.
2. Don’t approach the county asking for a non-
conforming use, since the burden of proofwould then be on Lost V alley to demonstratethat the county’s ordinance about therequired year of continuous use was invalid.
3. W ait for the county to approach the commu-
nity, which meant the county would have theburden of proof to demonstrate that no sim-ilar-use activities had occurred during the 13months between owners.
4. Lost V alley must gather documents to
demonstrate to the county that the commu-nity’s intended educational uses of the prop-erty would be similar enough to the previousowners’ to match the terms of the formerconditional use permit, and that those samekinds of uses had occurred on the property inthe 13-month period between their owner-ship and the former owners’. Fortunately, theproperty’s caretakers had hosted a Greensmeeting, a men’s sweat lodge, and severalother minor events on the land which could
be construed as public events.
5. Be as open and public as possible about their
conference center plans and activities, since,after all, this demonstrated they were contin-uing to host events that benefited others andinvolved guests on the land, just as the previ-ous owners had.
This is just what they did, holding large pub-
lic conferences, workshops, and classes, as well asopening a youth hostel. They always made sureto collect and pay the county’s required room taxon overnight guests. The county accepted theirtax payments — a tacit implication of approvalthe group could use in their documentation. Ayear after they’d arrived there was wave of localmedia coverage of their activities, which alsoserved to publicly document their use of theproperty for educational and public activities.Finally, two years after the land purchase, thecounty contacted them, and nine months later,after reviewing Lost V alley’s excellent records ofthe former caretakers’ public events and theirown public events, the county granted themnonconforming use status. Up to 35 families or160 people total could live there year-round,with up to 3,000 total visitors over a year, andthey could build more buildings. The gamblehad paid off.
Seeking a Zoning Exception
If your group finds property that looks promis-ing but doesn’t allow as much density as youwant, you’ll need to apply for a zoning varianceor conditional use permit (depending on theterms used in the area). If your community plansinclude a retreat center, guest facilities, a healingcenter, or other type of service facility, you’ll needto apply for a conditional use permit, unless theNEIGHBORS AND ZONING 119

property you’re considering already has one. And
if you’re planning to buy land and subdivide it sothat members will hold title to their individuallots or housing units, you’ll need to comply withthe state, county, or city’s subdivision ordinances,including approval of a plat map for your pro-posed development, and assurance that you’llbuild all the required roads, etc. Depending onthe location, any of these will most likely requirea year-long process costing $10,000 to $20,000or more in permit fees, tests, surveys, and con-sultants (and probably far more for a subdivi-sion), and involve at least one public hearing.And you won’t know until the end of the processwhether your application will be approved. LikeMeadowdance founders, you may want to con-sider funds like this “the cost of doing business,”and be willing to walk away from it if the prop-erty doesn’t work out.
Depending on the state and the area, apply-
ing for a conditional use or noncomforming usepermit, and possibly getting permission to subdi-vide, can require various tests and permits. Thesecan include one or more of the following:1. An archaeological survey to make sure the
building and development sites don’t containartifacts.
2. A traffic study to determine the impact of
increased traffic on access roads.
3. A test well or wells to find out if there would
be enough water for the proposed project.
4. A septic and soils survey to discover whether
the property’s soils are compatible with large-scale septic systems.
5. An Environmental Impact Report to deter-
mine the effects of the proposed use onwildlife, wetlands, or forests.
6. A study to find out whether road width,
grades, surfacing, and water storage wouldmeet fire codes.7. A report by the local building department
about whether the property’s existing build-ings meet health and safety standards.
As we’ve seen, county officials and neighbors
tend to consider use permit applications morefavorably when the property was previously usedto serve the public. “It’s becoming increasinglydifficult to develop a public facility from scratchon property with no public use history or zon-ing,” observes Stephen Brown, cofounder ofShenoa Retreat and Conference Center inCalifornia.
The specific process of getting approval for
and subdividing your property is considerablymore complex and expensive than simply gettinga zoning variance or a use permit. As such, it’sbeyond the scope of this book, but there areplenty of resources for communities seeking tosubdivide.
Y our first step in any of these scenarios is to
write up an outline of what you have in mind.Visit with an official in the planning depart-ment, a planning commissioner, or county super-visor, or if the property is in a municipality, a citycouncil member, to see whether your proposedexception is likely to be accepted. Ask theiradvice for how you can adjust your proposal tohelp meet the goals of the General Plan, and forthe names of any other local experts you mightconsult. Meeting as many zoning officials as youcan and seeking their advice far in advance ofyour public hearing is, along with meeting theneighbors, the best thing you can do to influencea positive outcome. At the public hearing youwon’t be an unknown group out of the blue, butone whose interests and goals are familiar tothem, and whose members have already demon-strated respect for their authority and for thegoals of their General Plan. They might just
120 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

become the best allies your project could have.
(With one exception — if the change you’reseeking would actually change the zoning lawitself, in many states you’re not allowed to meetwith any officials beforehand.)
Negotiating for What You Want
Y ou can negotiate with the county to try to getwhat you want. In 1991, when Sharingwoodcommunity in Snohomish, W ashington decidedto become a cohousing community, they wanteda narrow pedestrian pathway to connect theirgroup of homes and encircle their central com-mons. The community had legally transformedtheir form of private and shared land ownershipto that of a condominium association, and whenthey applied for a building permit to build theircommon house, the county said their new statusrequired that they couldn’t have a pedestrianpathway but must build a regular city street withplenty of room for parking. Sharingwood mem-bers negotiated, saying it would alter their com-munity’s safe and friendly atmosphere to have awide street circling through it. So to get a nar-rower road they offered the county two conces-sions — they’d forbid street parking (visitorswould park in a nearby field), and they’d allowspeeds no higher than five miles per hour. Thecounty agreed, and shaved four feet of width offthe road requirement. Now Sharingwood has arather thin asphalt road with three large speedbumps, which is used as a footpath, children’splay area, everyone’s basketball court, and veryslow-driving car access for members. It’s not apedestrian pathway, but it’s close.
Y ou can also negotiate a variance, condition-
al use permit, or other kind of zoning exceptionby considering what you can offer in return,based on the policies and goals of the GeneralPlan. Does it call for clustered housing, openspace, or what it defines as “sustainable develop-
ment?” T ell the officials how your community’splanned development will do this, and use theirterms, even their phrasing, from the GeneralPlan. If your property is in an urban area, canyou offer public parking, public open space,creekside access, or extension of any urban trailsor bike paths? If it’s rural, do you have a wildlifebiologist willing to testify as to how your planwill protect a wildlife corridor? Can you protect
an endangered wilderness, wetland, or specieshabitat, or preserve open space and views, orkeep an area permanently devoted to agriculture?One legal device which allows you to do this is aconservation easement, which is an irrevocableuse restriction attached to the deed and bindingon all future owners. Another is a declaration ofrestriction, a use restriction which does the samebut is revocable. (Some counties give property-tax reductions in exchange for conservation ease-ments that help land fit into their General Plan.)When Sowing Circle/OAEC founders werenegotiating to preserve the high density of theirproperty’s educational use permit, they put theirtwo locally famous hillside gardens into anorganic easement, so that they and any futureowners must keep the gardens organic forever.(See Chapter 16.)
Again, hiring a private land-use planner
and/or real estate lawyer to help, as Lost V alleydid, can be invaluable.
James Hamilton, cohousing resident and
project manager of Stone Curves cohousing inT ucson, advises founders to remind local electedofficials that members of an intentional commu-nity put so much time, energy, and heart intodeveloping their project that they’re likely to livethere for many years and invest themselves in theneighborhood. This is highly desirable to electedofficials, since, in our highly mobile society, in
NEIGHBORS AND ZONING 121

each election many people who once voted for
these officials have moved away and the candi-dates must woo new voters.
Zoning Exceptions, Neighbors, and
Public Hearings
Because the concerns of neighbors will most
likely affect how local officials may respond toyour request, you’ll probably need to seek outneighbors, as the Meadowdance group did: lis-ten to their concerns, and make a good-faitheffort to gather all reasonable information toanswer their questions, and even modify yourplans, if possible.
Not all founders have known this. In the
early 1990s, a group of meditators in northernCalifornia wanted to offer meditation retreats totheir fellow meditators in the wider area. Thegroup, which I’ll call V alley Oaks Sangha,bought a five-acre rural property and renovatedthe house to accommodate retreat participants.They didn’t seek the required conditional usepermit for their periodic high-density usebecause they were afraid they might be turneddown. So to call the least amount of attention tothemselves, they interacted as little as possiblewith neighbors. Soon they realized they neededto build more dorm facilities, which required abuilding permit, which in turn required seekingapproval for a conditional use permit and a pub-lic hearing. Again, to protect themselves frompossible objections, community members saidnothing to neighbors about their plans and weresilent about the upcoming public hearing. At thehearing the county supervisors were quite willingto grant the conditional use permit and overlookpast infractions, but not the neighbors, who hadturned out in force. Although they would havehad little objection to the use permit originally,they now vehemently opposed it, resenting thecommunity for being so secretive and unfriendly,
and for trying to slip the public hearing pastthem unnoticed. The supervisors bowed to pub-lic opinion and rejected the use permit. (V alleyOaks Sangha later established another centerelsewhere.)
A similar fate befell a community I’ll call
High Mountain Meadow, whose founders want-ed to establish an educational center for spiritu-al and environmental practices on a former ranchin the Colorado Rockies. They needed theirrancher neighbor to approve a request for higherdensity and clustered housing on one part oftheir property. Although their relationship wasdelicate — the ranchers were suspicious of envi-ronmentalists, and the founders didn’t like theranchers’ target practice on coyotes and prairiedogs — they had reached an agreement.W orkshop participants would park in town andcarpool out to the site, drive slowly on the area’sdirt roads to keep noise and dust to a minimum,and keep their workshops relatively quiet; theranchers wouldn’t shoot off rifles during work-shop weekends.
One summer in their second year of opera-
tion the founders rented their facilities to agroup that led workshops on spiritual-emotion-al healing work that involved a lot of “express andrelease” yelling and screaming. While the grouppromised the founders they’d keep the noise oftheir workshop to a minimum, they got carriedaway, and soon the howls and yowls of long-buried childhood wounds went careening downthe mountainside and bouncing off the cliffs.Three days of what was effective healing workfor workshop participants was nothing butunearthly caterwauling to the ranchers. So, whilethe founders’ conditional use application wasbacked by an inspired vision, an enviable cash-flow, and a committed group of members, at the
122 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

zoning hearing the ranchers squashed it flat.
High Mountain Meadow didn’t get their usepermit. (They succeeded with another plan sev-eral years later, however. )
In 1993, the four young Phoenix-based
founders of a community I’ll call AnasaziEcovillage were all set to buy 147 acres of piñonand sagebrush in a remote county with fewzoning restrictions and no building codes in theFour Corners area. Their property was neartwo towns — a hip tourist destination, and inthe more remote county, an old-time ranchingtown. The founders mailed out a flyer describ-ing their plans to friends and acquaintances inthe area, and posted a flyer in each town.Although the response was overwhelminglypositive from the tourist town, one countysupervisor and several people from the ranchingtown called a meeting to express their alarmabout the project. T o them, the flyer’s terms“composting toilets” and “constructed wetlands”conjured up visions of stench and unsanitaryconditions that would lower their property val-ues. “Ecospiritual” meant the group probablyworshipped rocks and trees. “Ecovillage” meantthey were damned tree-huggers that would tryto shut down the town’s only industry, a plantthat ground up aspen trees to make swampcooler filters. At the meeting, the county super-visor said they could bring the group to itsknees financially if the county insisted that thestate’s subdivision law applied to the project.This would require the founders to widen theiraccess road to standard subdivision width,which would cost them between $35,000 and$500,000. “I know how we can stop ‘em faster,”vowed an irate rancher. “ And I’ll supply thekerosene!” Unwilling to deal with this level ofprejudice and misinformation, the foundersabandoned their plan.It doesn’t have to be this way. In 1994 when
few people had heard of cohousing, the firstpublic hearing for a zoning variance was held forGreyrock Commons Cohousing in Fort Collins,Colorado. After the core group described thecohousing concept and presented the group’sproposed site plan, neighbor after neighborstood up and expressed fears about increasedtraffic,“big developers” coming in to build hous-es that would block views of the neighborhood’sopen meadow, and apprehension about a “snootyclose-gated community” ruining the ambiance oftheir friendly family neighborhood. The CityCouncil didn’t grant the zoning variance, butscheduled a second public hearing severalmonths later to give the Greyrock Commonsfounders time to meet with neighbors and see ifthey couldn’t work something out. This theydid, making appointments to visit and sendingrepresentatives door to door to meet their neigh-bors and listen to their concerns, answer theirquestions, and describe what the founders hadin mind. By the time of their second public hear-ing, like Meadowdance, they’d won over mostthe neighbors and the City Council granted thevariance.
A year later, after Greyrock Commons had
become a neighborhood which local officialsproudly showed off to visiting dignitaries, anactual “big developer” in Fort Collins made plansto turn a vacant ten-acre parcel adjacent to river-front park into a housing subdivision. Theneighbors of the park wanted none of it, and senta delegation to City Hall, saying if a develop-ment was going to come into their neighborhoodand block their access to the park and the river,they’d rather it be that new kind of development“like they have over at Greyrock Commons.”And that’s just what they got. A new core groupformed, and River Rock Commons cohousing
NEIGHBORS AND ZONING 123

was built there instead — maybe the first time
ever that folks in mainstream America clamoredto have an intentional community move in nextdoor.
If your group needs a zoning variance, condi-
tional use permit, or other kind of exception tozoning regulations before you buy your proper-ty , you will also need to meet and listen to yourfuture neighbors. Don’t send your group’s mostserious or businesslike members; send yourwarmest and most engaging. Follow StephenCovey’s advice and “Seek first to understand,rather than to be understood.” First ask what theneighbors might want for the field next doorbefore you lay your community rap on them.Don’t bombard them with information or scarethem off with environmental or sustainabilityjargon. Use the word “community” sparingly if atall, and avoid altogether terms such as “inten-tional community,” “spiritual,” “sustainable,”“ecospiritual,” or “ecovillage.” It may be far betterto simply say you’re a group of families and indi-viduals who want to make life easier and moreenjoyable by sharing some resources and creat-ing a friendly, wholesome neighborhood whereeveryone knows and helps one another, andwhere children and elders are safe again, like inyour grandfather’s day. If you’re environmentallyoriented and have sustainability goals (depend-ing on what you’re planning), you could say youplan to heat your homes partly by the sun’s heat,or save money by generating your own powerinstead of paying a big company for it, or growyour own vegetables like your grandmother did.How could any old-time rancher, conservativeexecutive, or Fundamentalist believer object tothat? (But if your group is also into vegan diets,raw foods, meditation, emotional healing,shared parenting, cross-breast feeding, sharedlove partners, or channeling archangels, aliens,124 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH NEIGHBORS
Even if you don’t need the support of local residents to
change any zoning, you’ll certainly want their support asneighbors and potential friends. The greater the contrastbetween your community culture and theirs — if they’refarmers, ranchers, or other politically and religiously con-servative country folk — the more important this is.
Successful community founders advise giving your
neighbors every opportunity to learn that you’re friendly,hardworking, and respectful; that you pay your bills; thatyou treat your children well. Ask your neighbors’ advice,find out how you can help them, get them to tell youabout their farm or ranch operation and about local histo-ry. Join local civic endeavors — the Volunteer FireDepartment, the Women’s Auxiliary of the VFD, the 4-Hclub, community theater groups, friends of the library, thelocal hospice. Offer to feed and water their livestock andpets when they go on vacation. When they’re planning aconstruction project, go over there with carpentry tools.When they’re going to pour concrete, show up with shov-els. Don’t preach to them about organic food or a vegetar-ian diet or what’s wrong with the government. When theypreach to you, listen graciously. If there’s a fire or otherlocal disaster, they’ll be the best friends you have on Earth.
In 1971, when the founders of The Farm community
near Summertown, Tennessee arrived in a bus caravan fromSan Francisco, their distinctive hippie appearance triggeredalarm and hostility in local residents. So the newcomersbehaved as respectfully and responsibly as possible withneighbors and townspeople, and made sure their checkswere sound and they paid debts promptly. Although com-munity members didn’t smoke tobacco or eat beef, theyhelped neighbors bring in a tobacco harvest, and donatedpulp from their soy dairy to help livestock-raising neighborsget through a rough winter. After a few years Farm membershad earned such a good reputation in the area that rumorhad it you could cash a check anywhere in those parts ifyou just wore tie-dye and had long hair.

or entities from the Causal Plane — please keep
it to yourself!)
Keep in mind that any local media coverage
could be a double-edged sword. A sympatheticreporter with similar visions and values can helpyour case; but if the reporter (or the editor) issuspicious, ill-informed, or simply prejudicedagainst “communes,” an article with snide com-parisons or inaccurate information can negative-ly influence local citizens, future neighbors,and/or the elected officials who’ll consider yourrequest for a zoning exception. T o benefit fromany potential media coverage and mitigateagainst the effects of a potential negative spin,prepare a press release describing what you hopeto do and hand it to any reporter who seeks youout. Keep it short and use your VisionStatement in the first paragraph. Don’t write aself-congratulatory PR puff piece, but a matter-of-fact article in classic newspaper style. (If youdon’t have a group member who knows how towrite newspaper style, hire someone who can dothis for you — it’s money well spent. )When it’s time for your public hearing, be
prepared for the fact that, as in Meadowdance’scase, some of the deciding officials can be inex-plicably for or against a project, or officials whoformerly offered support can suddenly changetheir minds for no reason you can fathom. Evenif you’ve done everything you could to stack thedeck in your favor — meeting officials andneighbors beforehand, getting opinions in writ-ing, and hiring a land-use planner — you couldstill be turned down. If this happens, rememberthat, like Meadowdance, V alley Oaks Sangha,and High Mountain Meadow, a community canstill follow their dream if the first property theywanted to buy, or the first zoning exception theytried for, didn’t work out.
/fl1lft
In Chapter 12 we’ll look at the many ways youcan finance your community property.NEIGHBORS AND ZONING 125

WHEN BUYING PROPERTY for a communi-
ty, it’s clearly more advantageous not to
borrow money at all but to pay cash, owe noth-ing, and be done with it, as Hank Obermeyerdid with Mariposa Grove.
The major disadvantages of borrowing
money to buy property are risking its loss if youcan’t make the payments, and the cost of interest.Interest is like rent. If you rent an apartmentyou’re actually “borrowing” its use from the land-lord. If you rent it for $1,000 a month, after ayear you’ve paid $12,000. If you live there 10years, you’ve paid $120,000. If you borrowmoney you’re “renting” its use for some period oftime, and the interest payments are the rent.Depending on the interest rate and the length ofpayback time, you’ll pay considerably more thanthe purchase price when you include the interest.Y ou can figure this out in advance by looking uptables of principal amounts, interest rates, andpayback times in an amortization loan schedulebook, available at office supply stores.
But since few forming-community groups
can afford to buy community property withdonations of cash from personal assets, borrowwe must. In this chapter we’ll look at how per-sonal loans, owner-financing, and bank financing
apply to communities in which the property isnot subdivided and members will not have titleto individual lots or housing units.
(A good resource for financing and develop-
ing community property in which members willhold individual title is Chris Hanson’s The
Cohousing Handbook. W e’ll touch on this briefly
in “Drawing on the Cohousing Model” later inthis chapter.)
About “Renting Money” — What You
Should Know
The combined borrowing power of your group
means you can theoretically borrow money tobuy your property as well as for a contingencyfund for making payments, development (whichcan include repairs, renovations, and new con-struction), and land development. (Some banksmay discount your borrowing power, reducing itby 10 to 20 percent, because of the inconvenienceof dealing with the net worth statements andcredit reports of a whole group.)
Banks and most owner-financers will want
all group members to sign the loan repaymentguarantee, along with anyone else willing to
126/fl1lftChapter 12 /fl1rt
Financing Your Property
(Loans You Can Live With)

co-sign, such as family members and friends.
While many people co-signing the loan helpsyour group increase its borrowing power, it’s adouble-edged sword. If for some reason you can’tmake the payments for a few months, banks (andmost owner-financers) will repossess your prop-erty and sell it to get their money back. If theycan’t sell the property at a high enough price torepay their loan, they’ll go after the assets ofeveryone who’s co-signed the loan to recover theloss. It won’t matter if you’ve paid 90 or 95 per-cent of the loan before missing a few payments.Banks (and some owner-financers) will stillrepossess your property; in fact, it’s more lucra-tive for banks to repossess your property whenit’s almost paid off.
Here are some tips for borrowing money.
1. Know your group’s borrowing power ahead
of time. As discussed earlier, you should have
figured out your group’s potential borrowingpower before you began the land search. Thiswill help you determine whether yourdesired property is within the means of yourborrowing power.
2. Know each other’s credit rating ahead of
time. Y ou’ll need to know about each other
as credit risks. Ideally, you got credit reportsfor group members intending to be co-sign-ers on a loan before looking for land. Look atthe reports as a group and learn whether any-one has bad credit. If so, arrange for that per-son to re-establish or improve their creditbefore you seek a bank loan. If that’s not pos-sible, don’t have that person co-sign the loan.Perhaps he or she could contribute to thegroup’s cash needs by arranging a small pri-vate unsecured loan, which that memberpays off personally.3. Get the property appraised ahead of time.
The amount you offer on the property will bebased on its current market value, yourassessment of the needs and circumstances ofthe seller, and how much you estimate you’llneed to spend on any repairs, renovations, orfurther development. Hire a local appraiserto get the current market value of the proper-ty before you make an offer on it (unlessyou’re already convinced of its value), andbefore applying for a loan. Y ou’ll want toknow what a reasonable purchase offerwould be, given the current market values inthe area, and knowing that will give you abetter idea of what an owner-financer orbank would consider a reasonable amount toloan you. Bob W atzke suggests that if there’sa chance you’ll seek a bank loan, use theappraiser your bank usually works with. Askthem who they use; they’ll tell you.
Since the bank will arrange an appraiser
anyway, why pay again for the same service?In order to get the highest loan amount (sincebanks will make a loan based on a percentageof the property’s value), you’ll want the prop-erty appraised at the upper limits of its cur-rent market value. Y ou have the best chance ofthis if you know local market values, get yourappraisal ahead of time, and pay the apprais-er yourself. Also, if you already have anappraisal, instead of charging you a secondappraisal fee, the bank may charge you nomore than a minimal “recertification fee” —10 to 20 percent of the original appraisal fee.
“Imagine how confirming it could be to
the bank when they see that your appraisalsupports your requested loan,” says Bob,“andthe signature on the bottom is one of it ownappraisers.” The bank will then have market-ing data and an appraisal of your intended
FINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 127

property that represents and supports the
amount of your loan request.
4. Don’t get loans with penalties for early
repayment, if at all possible.
5. Seek only fixed-rate loans. Bob advises get-
ting 15 to 30-year, fully amortized mortgageswith fixed interest rates, and fixed mortgagepayments. If a land purchase deal is so attrac-tive that you’ve got to accept a variable ratemortgage, then do it — but refinance theloan as soon as possible to a fixed rate andfixed term mortgage.
6. Negotiate for no payments or interest-only
payments for the first few years. If you’re
founding your community with fewer peoplethan you ultimately plan to have, then youwon’t have as much money for monthly orquarterly payments as you will later, whenmore people have joined you. If at all possibledo as Lost V alley, Dancing Rabbit, andSowing Circle/OAEC did, and negotiate forno payments or interest-only payments forthe first three to five years.
7. Establish a contingency fund. Bob W atzke
and other real estate investors strongly advisethat you create a contingency fund for timeswhen you can’t make your land paymentthrough your normal means. “The last timein the world that you want to seek moneyfrom a lender is when you need it — espe-cially when you’re behind in your payments,”Bob says. “From your preliminary marketresearch, find out how much you are likely toneed before you start looking for property.Establish a purchase plan and a budget thatprovides enough money to buy the property,and enough money to operate with, plus acontingency reserve; say, six to 12 months’cash reserves to cover both fixed and variableoperating expenses for that period.”128 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
RAISING MONEY FOR DEVELOPMENT
The amount of money you’ll need to renovate or develop
your property will depend on whether you’re buying rawland, developed property, or a fully-developed turn-keyproperty, and whether you’ll do simple repairs, minor tomajor remodeling, or begin at square one with roads,utilities, and buildings. It will also depend on how manymembers you have, how much money you can raise, andhow long you’re willing to wait for your community tofunction as you’ve envisioned.
Lost Valley raised $100,000 to buy their turn-key
property and another $100,000 to repair and renovate it.Sowing Circle/OAEC raised $150,000 for the down pay-ment on their turn-key property and $55,000 for repairsand new construction.
Hank Obermeyer paid $485,000 for the Mariposa
Grove property, and by the time repairs and renovationare complete, will have spent at least $200,000 more.
Buying raw land is quite different. Dancing Rabbit
raised $190,000 for their land and $35,000 for their con-tingency fee and first expenses of physical infrastructure.Earthaven raised $128,000 as a down payment for theirraw land, and an initial $22,000 for their first develop-ment expenses. Again, the cohousing model is a bit dif-ferent; cohousers who buy raw land develop it all atonce and then move in.
At both Lost Valley and Sowing Circle/OAEC, once
the founders had spent their initial development fund,they were able to live on their property and begin theireducational center businesses. And while additionalincome over the years has been spent on further renova-tion and new construction, most of it was completedearly on. Mariposa Grove’s renovation will be finishedthree years after purchase. At Dancing Rabbit andEarthaven, income from new members adds to thedevelopment process which will take many years tocomplete.

Private Financing
Lost V alley, Dancing Rabbit, and Mariposa
Grove founders used their own funds or privateloans and paid the sellers cash to buy their prop-erties. Kenneth Mahaffey of Lost V alley andHank Obermeyer of Mariposa Grove paid thewhole purchase price from personal assets.Dancing Rabbit’s founders raised two personalloans from within their own membership, onefrom a founders’ family, and another from col-leagues in the communities movement.Earthaven’s founders raised money mostly fromwithin their membership to pay off their owner-financers and hold their own internal mortgage.(For information on creating your own “shoebox” bank, as Earthaven did, see E.F .Schumacher Society in Resources.)
The obvious advantage of borrowing from
founders, family, and friends instead of banks orowner-financers is that no money is owed to out-siders. If the new community has a financial short-fall and can’t make payments for a few months ora year or so, there is far less danger of foreclosure.Presumably founders, family, or friends wholoaned the money would be willing to wait muchlonger before it became necessary to ask for repay-ment or force the sale of the property.
When approaching community founders,
friends, and family members for a loan, offerthem what private lenders usually need to see —a clearly written, well-presented explanation ofyour community’s vision and goals, a strategicplan for how you’ll accomplish those goals andyour intended timeline, and how you’ll manageand care for your property. Create an agreement,such as a promissory note, that covers all thestandard aspects of a loan.
What is the amount of the loan?
What is the length of the loan?What is the interest rate and terms of
repayment? Will payments be monthly orquarterly? Is the interest to accrue andbecome due along with the principal? Isthe interest simple or compounded?
Will the money be secured by real estate
or a promissory note with a personalguarantee from your group? Will youplace a lien on the deed? If the loan issecured by real property or other assets, isthere sufficient equity to guarantee theloan?
If the note is unsecured, how will your
group repay the loan if the communityisn’t successfully created as planned?
Have you notarized the loan and/or
recorded it with the county?
If there’s more than one lender, how have
you arranged that each lender be repaid— proportionally, or first one, thenanother?
Here’s where your real estate attorney can
serve you again. Dancing Rabbit’s founderswanted to make sure that each of their three pri-vate loans were in fact mortgages, so the lawyernot only recorded the loans with the county, butcreated the wording in the promissory notes andplaced liens on the deed showing that the loanswere secured with 9/19ths, 5/19ths, and5/19ths respectively of any proceeds of the saleof the property if the community were to dis-band.
When One Member Buys the Property
Sometimes the best way — or even the only way— for a group to acquire property is for one ortwo members who can afford to do so to just upand buy it. Every community profiled in thisFINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 129

book that paid cash for their property did so
because one or two founders had the money. Theclear advantage here is that the person withmeans secures the property immediately, freeingthe group from spending months trying to raisethe money while another buyer with ready cashsnatches it off the market. The founder buyingthe land functions like a bank, financing theproperty for the group at a presumably reason-able rate of interest and being reimbursed overtime until the loan is paid back.
This is what Kenneth Mahaffey and Lost
V alley did, with members reimbursing his$100,000 purchase loan and $100,000 develop-ment loan over the years through income fromthe conference center business, and later by refi-nancing the property. And Hank Obermeyerwill be reimbursed all but his own ownershipshare when the Mariposa Grove property is refi-nanced as a limited equity housing co-op.Dancing Rabbit is paying off its founder, family,and friend lenders quarterly, through rents col-lected by the increasing numbers of members liv-ing on the land.
Protecting Your Sole Owner with a
Triple Net Lease
Many founders who could afford to buy the
property for their forming community grouphesitate to do so because they’re wary of thepotential problems inherent in sole ownership.For example, if the founder buying the propertywere to make all decisions affecting its propertyvalue (since he or she took a personal financialrisk), other members would resent the powerimbalance — a sure set-up for structural con-flict. On the other hand, if decisions affectingproperty value were made by the whole group,the founder who bought it could resent it sincehis or her equity could be diminished by peoplewho’d risked nothing. The sole property owner
would also be liable for any lawsuits or damagesand financially responsible for maintenance,taxes, and insurance, with no legal recourse toinduce others to pay a share of these expenses ifthere were a dispute.
If a forming community finds a desirable
property and one or two of them could buy it,the group could bypass these problems with aT riple Net Lease (also called a Net Lease). Thisis a device that spells out the rights and respon-sibilities of landlord and tenant in commercialspace rentals. However, it can also be used toprotect a sole property owner from unduefinancial or legal burdens and spread theresponsibilities of property ownership fairlythroughout the group. A community can use aT riple Net Lease as a legally binding documentbetween the person who buys the property (theLessor) and all the other community members(the Lessees). It can declare, for example, thatcertain named community members (includingbut not limited to the property owner) have cer-tain property use rights and restrictions, andare equally responsible for paying the cost ofmaintenance, utilities, taxes, and insurance. Itcan indemnify the property owner from soleresponsibility for these as well as from anyother legal or financial liabilities (although thelegal entity through which the group buys theproperty should offer liability protection aswell). A T riple Net Lease can include clausesthat cover any kinds of rights and responsibili-ties unique to intentional communities but notfound in commercial property landlord/tenantissues, and stipulate any default scenarios orremedies in the event anyone violates the termsof the lease. A lawyer familiar with both com-mercial real estate law and a group’s values andgoals can check over its proposed T riple Net
130 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Lease document to make sure it thoroughly
protects the property owner as well as all com-munity members.
Owner Financing
In owner-financing, the seller is willing to foregoreceiving the entire sale price at once, and insteadwill receive a down payment and earn interest onthe balance due. Normally the seller will want 25to 30 percent down, monthly payments, andinterest at a negotiated rate. The terms could beequal to, or greater than what a bank wouldcharge. Rural properties are commonly financedthis way.
But owner-financing can differ as widely as
the circumstances of the sellers themselves. Forexample, Sowing Circle/OAEC had a reason-able down payment of 17.5 percent of the pur-chase price and generous terms (although, if yourecall, the owner-financer demanded triple thedown payment five days before closing).Earthaven’s founders paid 32.5 percent of thepurchase price and had to deal with unusuallydifficult owner-financing terms.
In contrast, the founders of Abundant
Dawn had a far more straightforward owner-financing arrangement. In 1996 they found 90acres of fields and woods in a rural county insouthwestern Virginia for $130,000. The prop-erty was in a U-shaped bend of a river, with gen-tly rolling wooded hills and meadows, a road, anold farmhouse, a cabin, and an open-sided barn.The owner was willing to take $13,000 or 10percent down, and owner-finance a 15-yearmortgage at 8.3 percent interest. AbundantDawn’s seven founders each contributed slightlymore than $1,800 apiece for the $13,000 downpayment.
If your group plans to seek owner-financing,
take the same steps you would as if you wereseeking financing from a bank and get an
appraisal of the property before you make an
offer. (In which case, unlike when seeking a loan,you’ll want an appraisal at the lower end of thevalue range for the property’s current marketvalue.) Owner-financers will probably want tosee each of your group member’s net worth state-ments and credit reports just as a bank would.
If you’re buying developed property and plan
to improve it anyway, you might do as SowingCircle/OAEC’s founders did and negotiate for alower down payment or better terms in exchangefor a contract promising to do certain repairs andimprovements on the buildings and infrastruc-ture within a certain period of purchase, backedup with a business plan showing how muchmoney you’d use for that purpose and whereyou’d get it. This assures the owner-financersthat the property value will increase with yourownership and lowers their risk, since if yourgroup defaults on payments they would proba-bly repossess a property with a higher marketvalue than it had before.
If you’re bidding on developed property and
you suspect your offer may be less than otherbidders, you can use the same principle. Remindthe owners that it’s not just money they’ll need,but many people on site most of the time tomaintain and protect the property, which issomething your group uniquely can offer.
Y our real estate attorney should see all docu-
ments relevant to the property to make sure anynote to the previous owners has been paid off,and that the seller has the right to sell the prop-erty without paying the note off first. Y ou’ll needa boundary survey, title search, and title insur-ance. Don’t skip these in an attempt to savemoney. The owner could have made an honestmistake, and you’d have to live with it for the restof your community life.
FINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 131

Bank Financing
Bank financing (meaning both banks and other
commercial lenders), is probably the last choice ofmost forming community groups, for two rea-sons. The development plans of most communi-ties don’t meet most banks’ criteria for loans.Further, if your property will be owned as a non-profit, keep in mind that most banks prefer toloan to for-profit legal entities such as corpora-tions or LLCs. And, unlike private lendersfriendly to the community, banks will repossess
the property if the group can’t make payments fora few months. Some founders, like Earthaven’s,also didn’t want bank financing because theyintended to demonstrate workable alternatives toconventional development, including a sustain-able, home-grown financing method.
Banks don’t often want to loan to intentional
community groups, as they’re wary of financingnon-standard or alternative development. Banks132 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Let’s say your group has few assets and little to no bor-
rowing power. You can still do it. Community activistRob Sandelin heard the following story from a com-munity founder he met at a shared campsite.
In the early 1980s this man and his friends
dreamed of creating a community in rural Oregon, butnone of them had any money. They all had jobs of onekind or another, but each household was only meetingits expenses, not saving anything, and the groupcouldn’t imagine coming up with enough money tobuy land and start a community from scratch.
Then they had a very simple idea: Why not all
move in together, and use the amount they’ll save bysharing expenses as a starting stake? They drew up asimple financial agreement saying they’d put themoney they saved every month by sharing rent, food,utilities and other household expenses into a savingsaccount. Although each household could withdrawtheir share of the money if they decided to leave, intime, their accumulated savings would be their staketo buy property in the country.
They found a large rental house in their small
Oregon town, remodeled the garage as a kids’ dormand play area, and took the plunge — eight adults and four children all moved in together. They saved money by buying food and household items in bulk, and by
splitting rent and other living expenses. They quicklydiscovered that they really only needed three to fourcars between them, so they sold their extra four carsand put that money into the account as well. Whilethey learned many lessons about how to live togetheras a community, they managed to put away a littleover $2000 a month. To their surprise and delight, intwo years they had accumulated $50,000.
However, by that time their vision had changed,
and they decided they liked living in their small town.So they formed a legal entity and bought a largehome. They remodeled it to fit their needs and turnedthe yard into a large organic garden with chickens andtwo milking goats.
The amount they owed on the house was low
enough that after seven years they were able to pay offthe mortgage. Their friends all thought they had a greatthing going, so when one of the families moved out,two others bought in as new members. The commu-nity continued sharing resources and saving moneyand bought an RV and a boat, and even took vacationstogether.
Not a bad life for folks who started off with nothing!
NO FUNDS? HOW ONE COMMUNITY DID IT

evaluate a loan application with the possibility
that they may have to repossess the property toget their loan money back, so they want proper-ty that’s attractive to the average home buyer andthus simple and easy to resell. This doesn’t usu-ally include projects with several houses on oneunsubdivided property, natural building tech-niques, off-grid energy, composting toilets, andso on. The more sustainable, natural, and envi-ronmentally sustainable your planned develop-ment, the less likely a bank will be interested init. An increasing number of banks are financingcohousing communities, however, which offersubdivided properties with individual housingunits, and as such are considerably more mar-ketable as possible resales. T o get bank financingtherefore, most cohousing founders have createdstandard housing units with conventional con-struction and utilities.
Meadowdance founders, however, were willing
to get a bank loan for their intended property inV ermont. If private loans or owner-financing aren’tan option, your group may want to do this too.
Most people buying property allow the
bank to determine the value of the property aswell as the amount of the loan. This is less thanideal because you have little to no control overthe process. But Bob W atzke and other experi-enced real estate investors strongly recommendyou learn as much as possible about the prac-tices of local banks ahead of time. Approachthem as fellow business people who alreadyknow the current market value of your desiredproperty and the amount you want to borrow,and compare. “Here’s the current market valueof the property we want to buy; here’s theamount we want to borrow; here’s documenta-tion on exactly how we’ll spend the loan; here’sfinancial and credit information on each of us.Can we do business?”Unfortunately there’s still another difficulty
in seeking a bank loan. As the economy begandeclining in the late 1990s, many banks beganhaving less money available for loans. Thismeans that they increasingly depend on sellingtheir loans to the secondary loan market —large-scale “bankers’ banks” that buy wholegroups of loans in bulk from local banks in orderto free up money to loan out again. (One of themost well known is the Federal NationalMortgage Association (FNMA), orFannieMae.) This way, local banks grant loans,keep them a short while, sell them to the second-ary loan market, and get their money back toloan again. Unlike previously, many banks areincreasingly holding only short-term loans intheir portfolios — those they can sell to the sec-ondary loan market — and hold fewer and fewerlong-term loans.
This results in two problems for community
groups seeking loans. First, banks are reluctantto grant loans FNMA won’t buy from them,such as small loans or loans for nonstandardproperties, because it means it becomes a long-term loan; they have to hold the loan in theirown portfolio until maturity (like a retail busi-ness having too much capital tied up in invento-ry instead of cash). It’s likely that the kind ofproperty a community will buy, and its plans fordevelopment, would require a loan that’s tooodd for the secondary loan market, and thus nota profitable enough loan for the local bank togrant. (By the way, if you think it’s possible you’llseek a bank loan when you create your legalentity, don’t state in your bylaws or other docu-ments that your decision-making method isconsensus. FNMA doesn’t accept consensus asa reasonable decision-making process, althoughthey do accept super-majority voting of 66 or 75percent.)
FINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 133

The second problem is that while banks used
to tell a customer fairly soon that they’dapproved a requested loan, increasingly they canonly give preliminary approval while they waitfor final approval from FNMA or another bankin the secondary loan market. The wait can beweeks or even months, although this varies indifferent areas of the country. It’s possible that acommunity group can put an offer on property,seek a bank loan, get preliminary approval, andfind out the morning of the closing that theloan’s not approved, with enormous negativeconsequences to both buyer and seller. This hashappened to several people I know, and it hap-pened to me. If your group plans to seek a bankloan, make sure you get final approval of the loan— in writing — before making any plans topack, move, quit your jobs, or otherwise changeyour lives.
But let’s assume a bank loan is your only
option. Besides the basics — that you know yourgroup’s borrowing power, each other’s credit rat-ings, and the appraised value of the property —here are additional steps Bob W atzke recom-mends.
1. Make sure your legal documents support
getting a bank loan. Banks will want to see
corporate Bylaws, an LLC’s operating agree-ments, or other documents of your commu-nity’s land-owning legal entity. They’ll alsowant to examine documents relating to theproperty for details about property insur-ance, permission for zoning variances,approval of any plat maps for subdividing,and to make sure nothing would devalueyour property or make it hard to later resell.
2. Research local banks. Call a loan officer at
each bank, and without specifically identify-ing the property or yourselves, find outwhether the bank is making loans on the
type of property you’re interested in. Narrowit down to those banks making this kind ofloan, and ask them about their loan rate andlending practices so you’ll know the terms,policies, and procedures of each bank inadvance. Y ou’ll especially want to know theirpreferred ratio of loan to property value.Request a copy of the annual report of thesebanks and view the profit and loss state-ments of the last year and the current year-to-date. Do they hold any long-term loans(that is, those unlikely to be resold to thesecondary loan market)? If so that’s good,since your requested loan may fall into thiscategory. Examine the size and assets of eachbank and learn who their directors and oper-ating officers are. With this information,choose the bank or banks you’d most like toapproach.
3. Determine the amount you want to borrow
and write up your own loan application.The amount you’ll request will be based on:the appraised property value
the bank’s preferred loan-to-value ratio
how much cash your group has and its
likely borrowing power
how much you’ll want to spend on a
down payment
how much you’ll need for repairs and
remodeling or development and new con-struction
how much you’ve chosen to set aside as a
contingency fund.
Bob W atzke recommends creating a one-
page loan application document which describesto the bank the amount you want to borrow andthe terms you want. He recommends using the
134 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

name and street address or the rural route box of
one of your founders, rather than a post officebox, and not using your community name. Keepit brief, using the terms in the sample loanrequest, below: Borrowers, Guarantors, Purposeof Loan, Loan Security, Length of Loan, andMeans of Payback.
SAMPLE LOAN REQUEST
Loan Request — $200,000
May 25, 2004
John Smith
1563 Northwest Skipper Lane,Nathansville, ME
BORROWERS: John Smith, Jane Smith, Susan
Jones, Cindy Brown, Ned Brown GUARANTORS: John Smith, Jane Smith, SusanJones, Cindy Brown, Ned Brown PURPOSE OF LOAN: To buy property for ourneighborhoodLOAN SECURITY: Property at 3563 Ancient ForestWay, Old Town, ME LENGTH OF LOAN: 30 yearsINTEREST RATE: 9%MEANS OF PAYBACK: Monthly payments of
$1,609.00
The appraisal of your intended property
should be at least equal to, and preferably greaterthan, your intended purchase price. Thereforethe ratio of your loan request to the appraisedvalue should be better than what the bank nor-mally requires, thereby adding to their margin ofsafety. This could make a substantial differencein the bank’s giving final approval to yourrequest.4. Create a document showing, in detail, how
you plan to use the loan funds. If you’re
seeking funds in excess of the amount used topurchase the land, to do repairs or createimprovements, describe the repairs, renova-tions, and new construction, the expectedcosts for each, and your timetable for doingthem, as Sowing Circle/OAEC did. Y oumight want to identify the contractors youplan to use.
5. Collect resumes, net worth statements, and
credit reports for each person co-signingthe loan. The resumes should be brief and
concise, describing each member’s back-ground and accomplishments. Don’t includeyour community’s vision documents ordescription of purpose or goals, which coulddistract, annoy, or turn off the bankers. T ellthem only what they want to know and nomore, focusing on your individual strengthsand your ability to pay back the loan.
Use the bank’s own form for your indi-
vidual net worth statements.
Find out which credit agency or agen-
cies your chosen bank (or banks) use, andfrom each of these credit agencies get acopy of the credit records of each personwho’ll co-sign on the loan, as well as for thelegal entity of your group. Why providebanks with credit information they’ll pro-cure on their own? It will help you to knowwhat credit agencies are going to say aboutyou before the bank knows, which enablesyou to correct any discrepancies — sincestudies show that 20 percent or more ofcredit agencies’ information about peoplecan be false.
6. Meet with the bank’s executive vice presi-
dent. Bob W atzke advises that you dress the
way the way the loan officers in the bankFINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 135

dress, and ask to speak onlywith the executive
vice president (or to the president in theabsence of the executive vice president). Ifthe executive vice president is busy, wait orcome back. If a secretary wants to shunt youoff to one of the bank’s loan officers instead,insist in a nice way on making an appoint-ment with the executive vice president, say-ing it’s about a business loan.
What’s the significance of the executive
vice president? This is the person who runsthe place, Bob says, and if he or she likesyour group, you’re in. (Remember to avoidterms such as “intentional community” and“ecovillage.”) The executive vice presidentcan usually poll the bank’s loan committee orboard of directors by phone. Besides, theauthorized loan-commitment limits for theexecutive vice president or the president arealmost always greater (if not unlimited) thanthose of other loan officers. And finally, ifthe executive vice president doesn’t want togive you a loan, other loan officers aren’tgoing to get it approved either.
When you meet with the executive vice
president give him or her:
Y our one-page loan application docu-
ment
The appraisal for your intended property
and other comparables and marketingdata that supports the appraisal
Documentation on how you’ll repair or
renovate the place (estimated costs,timetable, etc.), if applicable
Documents for your legal entity
Any approvals or permits from the coun-
ty or municipality about zoning vari-ances, use permits, or subdivisionBrief resumes, net worth statements, and
credit reports for everyone who’ll co-signon the loan.
7. Negotiate simultaneously with more than
one bank. Some banks dislike this, feeling
they are being “shopped,” and they are.Nevertheless, you are taking a position ofpower. A bank will know you’re talking toother banks because they’ll order creditrecords of each co-signer (even though you’vegiven them copies), and they’ll see in theserecords that other banks have recently soughtcredit information also. Y ou might avoid thisby applying to all banks on the same day andproviding all the documentation that eachbank needs.
If you believe that these steps may be overly
assertive, Bob W atzke points out that the yourbank will most likely require that everyone inyour group, and perhaps even your family mem-bers and/or officers of the companies any of youwork for also become co-signers and guaranteethe loan. This means if you were unable to con-tinue making payments for some reason and thebank couldn’t recover its loan by selling yourproperty, it could go after each community mem-ber’s other assets, or those of anyone else co-sign-ing the loan. If you’re risking this much to buyyour property, you might as well tailor the loanto your specific needs and requirements. “Moveas assertively as you feel comfortable withoutbeing overbearing,” advises Bob.
Drawing on the Cohousing Model
Unlike the founders of most non-cohousingcommunities, cohousers sell housing units onthe open market and build all their infrastruc-ture and housing at once. Some cohousing136 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

groups have developed their communities them-
selves, or one or more members of their coregroup has served as their developer. But anincreasing number of cohousing core groupshave partnered with professional real estatedevelopers, and such partnerships are often quitesuccessful in acquiring, financing, and develop-ing their property. In exchange for a percentageof profit (usually relatively small, compared tothe profit margins developers are used to), thedeveloper supplies expertise, an entrepreneurial“sixth sense,” some of the up-front money, anintimate knowledge of the local real estate mar-ket, and established working relationships withlocal planning officials and lenders, architects,engineers, and building contractors. Groupmembers are actively involved in the designprocess and in marketing the project.
If your group plans for members to hold title
to individual lots or housing units (whether youplan to sell them on the open market or only toyour own members), you might benefit fromadapting some of these cohousing methods orworking with a cohousing developer. (SeeResources.)
Here is a brief overview of one version of this
model, based on how groups have worked withW onderland Hill Development Company inBoulder. The groups use three sources of financ-ing: funds raised by themselves and the developer,the construction loan, and individual mortgages.
1. Funds raised by the group and the developer.
Before the project breaks ground, the group rais-es at least ten percent, and sometimes consider-ably more, of the total cost of the finished projectfrom assessments to themselves (with new peoplejoining and contributing money at all stages of theprocess), sometimes supplemented by short-termloans from members of the group who might havemore money, or from cohousing lenders. The
developer usually also contributes funds, manage-ment, and overhead, and will be reimbursed later.These up-front funds are used for whatW onderland Hill calls the feasibility phase andpre-construction phase of their process.
In the feasibility phase, the group creates site
criteria, a preliminary budget, and a legal entityfor buying the land (usually an LLC). Groupmembers each get pre-qualified for mortgages ontheir individual housing units. The group choos-es a likely property, puts a 60- to 120-day optionon it, and arranges a feasibility study to deter-m i n e w h e t h e r t h i s p a r c e l o f l a n d w i l l w o r k f o rthem. They pay for legal fees, promotionalexpenses, land-search costs, and the option fee.
In the pre-construction phase, they conduct
the feasibility study, pay for any tests, surveys,permits, and fees, and get any necessary zoningchanges. If they decide to buy the property, theyusually pay a certain amount down and arrangewith the seller to pay the balance when theysecure a construction loan, which can be up to ayear later. Some sellers are willing to owner-finance this pre-construction phase. (If a sellerrequires all cash, the group usually doesn’t pursuethe property, but keeps looking until they findone whose seller could work with these terms.)The group hires architects and engineers todesign the site plan and buildings specifically forthis property, tests the market to see if the hous-ing units will sell at the projected prices per thecurrent budget (and adjusts the prices and/or thebudget accordingly); and advertises and promotesthe project in order to attract additional groupmembers and continue raising money.
2. The construction loan. This loan pays off the
seller and funds the “hard” development costs —grading the site, hooking up utilities, and build-
FINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 137

ing roads and parking lots — as well as all con-
struction costs for the common house and indi-vidual housing units.
A construction loan is granted only after the
group has acquired property and met all legalrequirements to develop it, has produced profes-sionally-designed site and building plans, andhas had everyone in the group pre-qualified for amortgage. T o get a construction loan the groupapproaches local banks with their developerpartner.“Banks are much more likely to give con-struction loans if a well-known local developer isleading the charge,” notes cohousing consultantZev Paiss.3. Individual Mortgages. These are usually stan-
dard 30-year mortgages at current interest rates,set into motion when construction is complete.Money from the individual mortgages pays offany private loans from individual group mem-bers or cohousing funding organizations, thedeveloper’s contribution (plus profit), and theconstruction loan. Money credited towardseveryone’s mortgages immediately pays off anyprivate loans for the up-front costs and anymoney contributed by that developer plus a cer-tain amount of profit. Each individual memberhousehold now owes the bank the balance of thesale price of their own housing unit, which they
138 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
As of this writing, cohousing is not cheap. As of
2002, buy-in fees for studios to two-bedroom unitsand a share in the common infrastructure can range,depending on property values in the area, from thelow $100,000s to the high $200,000s. Three-andfour-bedroom units and detached homes withshared common infrastructure are often in the$300,000 to $400,000-plus range. And yet, whilecohousing communities are usually the mostexpensive of all communities to join, since thehousing units are individually owned, banks dogive homeowners loans for them. And developer-assisted cohousing communities do get construc-tion loans. So, paradoxically, buying in to a cohous-ing community can sometimes — in terms of initialcash outlay anyway — be comparable to buying into a non-cohousing community with shared landownership, if you consider the cost of joining fees,site-lease fees, and building your own house with-out a bank loan. (See Chapter 14.)As of 2000, there was one Christian cohousing
community in North America, at least two with straw-bale houses and off-grid power, and in the formingstages, a vegan cohousing group, a Jewish cohous-ing group, and a group exploring self-financed,exceptionally affordable buy-in costs. I believe thatincreasing numbers of forming communities withspecific shared lifestyles or common purposes likethese — with spiritual, religious, or ecological goals;even aspiring ecovillages — will choose the cohous-ing model, rather than attempting the arduous, do-everything-yourself model we’ve seen in thesepages. These forming community founders will pre-fer private ownership of their individual housing unitand shared ownership of common facilities, devel-oper involvement, and bank loans, rather than tryingto leap the land-purchase, zoning, financing, anddevelopment hurdles entirely by themselves. Thesuccesses of the developer-assisted cohousingmodel might just be influencing forever the way wego about creating intentional communities.
IS COHOUSING CHANGING THE WAY WE FORM COMMUNITY?

pay off like any other mortgage holder, through
monthly payments of interest and principal.
Other developers who partner with cohous-
ing groups do it somewhat differently. ChrisScottHanson of Cohousing Resources recom-mends that the core group first acquire the prop-erty and get the site and buildings designed, thenwork with a developer to build it for them.“Theonly reason to use a development partner,” he
says,“is to have the developer locate, acquire, andguarantee the construction loan financing.”
What about Grants and Donations?
A common misconception among forming com-munity groups is that philanthropists or grant-making foundations would want to fund agroup’s land purchase, but this isn’t usually thecase. W ealthy people and foundations do, how-ever, often give money to groups or organiza-tions whose vision and mission for a better worldmatches their own, who have a demonstratedtrack record of accomplishing their goals, andwhose principal players have shown through pastaccomplishments that they use money responsi-bly. If your group is just starting out and youhave inspiring plans to benefit the environmentor serve people or serve spiritual goals — but sofar no history of accomplishments as a group —it’s unlikely you could get grants or donations tohelp you get started.
But by all means seek grants and donations
after you’ve bought your property, have created a501(c)3 non-profit for receiving tax-deductibledonations, and have demonstrated for severalyears how you’ve benefited the environment orpeople, or achieved some service goals. Seekgrants and donations for a particular projectwith a particular budget, timeline, and measura-ble goals. If you’re an aspiring ecovillage, forexample, and you want to teach others aboutalternative building construction or off-grid
power, seek a grant for construction funds ofyour classroom teaching facility, or for work-scholarship funds, so that potential students cancome as interns and offer free labor to help buildthe facility. If you get a grant or donations, spendthe money the way you said you would, and keepaccurate records. Send photos and the records ofhow you spent the money to your donors, withthanks. If your donors like what you’ve done,they may consider you for future fundingrequests.
Sowing Circle/OAEC got private loans of
$40,000 and $25,000 with generous terms,because the founders were well-known to thephilanthropist lenders, and were their colleaguesin environmental activism. For getting grants,donations, and friendly loans, there’s nothing likeknowing your donors or lenders through sharedactivist work and having a good reputation withthem already.
Refinancing Your Property
If you don’t think it will be easy to live with yourfinancing terms but it’s the only way you cansecure the property, consider how you mightrefinance it later. (Remember, avoid loans withearly repayment penalties.) Y ou can’t live toolong with high monthly payments, or with inter-est-only payments that will skyrocket as soon asyou begin paying the principal, or with onerousterms and lenders who’d readily repossess.Earthaven, Lost V alley, and SowingCircle/OAEC all successfully refinanced theirproperties and their members are now breathingeasier because of it.
W e saw how Earthaven’s founders refi-
nanced the year after they bought the property,creating the EarthShares fund to pay off theirowner-financers and get control of their entireFINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 139

property. It was a good thing they did. The
founders overestimated the number of newmembers who’d join in the next few years, andthe resulting cash shortfall meant that for thenext three years they couldn’t afford to both
develop the property and make their interest-and-principal payments. So they made interest-only payments for three years in order to build140 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Presumably, months before you seek financing, you’ll
have decided whether founders will make financialcontributions toward the purchase, and what the rela-tionship will be of each member’s contribution to basicaspects of community ownership and governance. Hereare some points to consider in determining these issues:
1. Will each founder be required to contribute an
equal amount towards the purchase?
2. Will founders be allowed to contribute different
amounts toward the purchase?
3. Will the amounts each founder contributes confer
equity in the property, and is the amount of equitycommensurate with the contribution?
4. Will the amount of contribution be tied to owner-
ship rights and responsibilities, and to decision-making rights?
5. Will some make loans to the community that others
pay back over time?
6. Will incoming new members contribute the same
amount as the founders did? Will they con-
tribute more, based on increasing propertyimprovements and rising property value? How willfounders be reimbursed?
7. Will the founders’ (or members’) contributions be
reimbursed if they later leave the community?Where will the money come from to reimbursethem?In every community whose purchase we’ve exam-
ined, founders have had equal rights and responsibili-ties for the entire property and equal decision-making rights. But it doesn’t have to be so: for example, a com-
munity could have contributors to the property pur-chase, but not others, make decisions affecting proper-ty value, with all members making all other decisionstogether. If the original contributions were loans, othercommunity members could pay the loans back overtime, and thus earn the right to make decisions affect-ing property value. But while this scheme would solveissues of some contributing money and others not, itraises issues of possible resentment or imbalance ofreal or perceived power in the group. As we saw earli-er, Hank Obermeyer, as sole founder of MariposaGrove, paid for the property himself. However, whenit’s refinanced as a limited equity housing co-op, eachshareholder/member will have ownership and deci-sion-making rights.
Dancing Rabbit and Lost Valley, in which only some
founders contributed loans or gifts, different ways havebeen worked out for non-contributing founders andnew members to reimburse the contributing founders.Dancing Rabbit members don’t pay a joining fee, butpay a fee for the amount of square footage they leasefrom the property, which pays back their loans. LostValley members pay a joining fee and pay rent to thecommunity for their cabins or housing units, whichreimburses the community for their current (refinanced)loans. Incoming Earthaven members pay a $4,000 join-ing fee, and a site lease fee, which has increased by$1,000 every year since the founding. In 2002, the sitelease fee was $17,000.
HOW FINANCING AFFECTS OWNERSHIP AND DECISION-MAKING

the necessary roads and buildings. They could
never have done this with their original owner-financers.
And as we saw in Chapter 1, for its first two
years Lost V alley made no payments on its two$100,000 loans from founder KennethMahaffey, and for the next four years reimbursedhim $30,000 annually — $20,000 in interest and$10,000 toward the principal. This meant thatby 1995 they’d paid $120,000 total, but hadreduced the loans by only $40,000. At this point,Kenneth was far less involved in the communityand no longer living there, and preferred to becashed out if at all possible. So in 1995 the com-munity secured a $125,000 loan from CascadiaRevolving Loan Fund, and a private loan for$150,000 from friends who were members oftheir board of directors. With this $275,000 theypaid off part of the $160,000 in principal theystill owed Kenneth, and used the rest to makeadditional improvements on the property. In1998, they refinanced a second time, borrowing$161,000 from three friends and supporters, andpaid off the balance they owed Kenneth as wellas the Cascadia fund. They still made annualpayments, but their loan was in the hands ofpeople who thoroughly supported what theywere doing and were unlikely to repossess theproperty if the community ran into hard times.Since that time they’ve borrowed more funds fordevelopment and renovation. As of 2002, theyowe $360,000 in total to approximately 15 differ-ent lenders, and pay $3,500 monthly in principaland interest.
Sowing Circle/OAEC began with a
$700,000 owner-financed first mortgage at 6.7percent interest, and two private loans of$40,000 and $25,000 at 5 percent interest each.All three loans allowed interest-only payments
for the first five years. For four years, the commu-nity paid approximately $37,500 a year on theseloans, but as they approached the fifth year theyrealized they’d better refinance before theirannual payment increased dramatically in 2000.They got an appraisal and learned the propertyhad increased in value to about $1,400,000 (by2002 it was probably double that amount). Bythis time OAEC had been offering classes andworkshops for four years in organic gardening,seed saving, permaculture design, and otheraspects of sustainable living, and had gainedquite a loyal following in the region. Many work-shop participants returned frequently, and somebecame friends of the center and regular volun-teers for their monthly garden tours and biannu-al plant sales. Dave Henson asked one of thesefriends about the possibility of becoming moreclosely involved by providing a refinancing loan.The friend was glad to do so, and she and Daveworked out a refinancing loan of $1,000,000, tobe paid back over 30 years at 6.85 percent inter-est. The community used this money to pay offthe $765,000 still owed on all three mortgages,and designated the remaining $235,000 for fur-ther capital improvements and a contingencyfund. Their monthly land payments were then$5,565 a month, split between 11 people, so afterrefinancing they paid $515 per person per monthtowards the refinanced mortgage.
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In Chapter 13 we’ll look at the common chal-lenges of the development process, and howsome communities developed their land.FINANCING YOUR PROPERTY (LOANS YOU CAN LIVE WITH) 141

AS SOON AS THEY BOUGHT their property,
Earthaven’s founders wanted to began the
permaculture design process and create a siteplan. But in their particular circumstances thisprocess would take a year or two, partly becauseof the rugged terrain and partly because theyneeded to get a boundary survey, since the for-mer owners didn’t know the exact number ofacres or the actual location of all the propertylines. At the same time the group wanted to ini-tiate at least some rudimentary physical infra-structure in order to move their vision forward,but which wouldn’t conflict with the site planstill to be developed.
Here’s what they did.
Earthaven’s Development Process
Earthaven’s mountain terrain made creating asite plan and developing the property more chal-lenging than for most new communities. Theirproperty consisted of three converging streamvalleys, flood plains, bottom land, lower terracedslopes, and steeper ridge slopes and ridge tops.(Unlike Abundant Dawn’s forested mountainproperties, Earthaven had steeper slopes, noclearings or meadows, a phone line but no otherutilities, and except for a tumbled-down hunter’scabin, no buildings.) The property’s once-fertile
soil had been depleted by the unsustainable agri-cultural practices of its previous inhabitants, asmall Appalachian farming community. The areahad apparently been settled fairly densely, as apost office stood at the confluence of Earthaven’stwo major streams, and people had even settledin the small side valleys and cultivated the steepslopes. Uninhabited for the past two genera-tions, the land had reverted to forest, and was inthe secondary stages of forest succession whenEarthaven’s founders acquired it in 1994.
The first thing they did was invest about
$6,000 in a boundary survey and about $2,000 inaerial photos and a contour map.
Map in hand, and led by Peter Bane and
Chuck Marsh, two Earthaven founders who arealso permaculture designers, the group walkedthe land to identify sacred sites, springs andstream courses, flood plains, erosion gullies, plantcommunities, land suitable for agriculture, poten-tial pond sites, and potential home and businesssites. They also wanted to get a sense of the opti-mum carrying capacity of the land and limit theirfuture population to match it. The concludedthat if they grew most of their own food theirland could support about 120-160 people.
142/fl1lftChapter 13 /fl1rt
Developing Sustainable Human Settlements

After several seasons of observing the land
and getting to know its nuances under variousconditions, they overlaid key components oftheir intended ecovillage onto their contourmap. They identified sacred sites; land thatwould remain forested; areas for gardening,farming, and orchard; potential locations forponds and hydro-power stations; the center oftheir village and future sites for communitybuildings; the existing road; and future roadsand paths, and they mapped out residentialneighborhoods for clustered housing with likelyroad access. They decided they would buildonly on slopes, and save their flat bottom landfor agriculture.
With this knowledge, and led by their vision
of “a planned permaculture ecovillage,” theydecided to develop the following physical infra-structure:
A village center with a Council Hall, a
large kitchen/dining room/conferencefacility, a media center and library, possi-bly shared workshop and commercialspace, and possibly high-density apart-ment-style housing.
T en (later, 11) neighborhoods of three to
eight passive solar homes on quarter-acreor eighth-acre sites, clustered on gentlesouth-facing slopes, each site potentiallyterraced in home gardens, and eachneighborhood sharing a common agricul-tural area of bottom land, benches,and/or lower slopes.
T o help restore the soil’s fertility and cre-
ate food sustainability, they would keepas much water on the land as possible,through roof water catchments, swales,and ponds, rebuilding the soil in specificareas with layers of organic matter.An initial “base camp” settlement near the
center of the property in which peoplecould try out experimental natural-build-ing construction techniques before set-tling the neighborhoods.
Member-owned businesses on business
sites in the village center and throughoutthe neighborhoods.
Fields with larger-scale agriculture or
livestock.DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS 143
WHAT WE MEAN BY “PERMACULTURE”
AND “ECOVILLAGE”
Permaculture is a set of techniques and principles for
designing sustainable human settlements, with plants,animals, and buildings — and especially the relationshipsbetween them. It’s guided by a set of ethical principles,such as “care for the Earth,” “care for people,” and “shar-ing the surplus.” (See Resources.)
Here’s Robert Gilman’s widely used definition of an
ecovillage: “A human-scale, full-featured settlement in
which human activities are harmlessly integrated into thenatural world in a way that is supportive of healthy humandevelopment, and can be successfully continued intothe indefinite future.”
Although the term was coined in the early 1990s,
increasing numbers of intentional communities areattracted to the ecovillage concept. Some older com-munities have retrofitted various aspects of sustainability(such as building with natural materials or adding off-grid power) and now call themselves “ecovillages,”while others, including some cohousing communities,are attempting to create full-scale ecovillages fromscratch. Most ecovillage activists agree, however, that notrue ecovillages exist yet (since we can’t yet knowwhether these settlements are sustainable “into theindefinite future”), so they call these communities “aspir-ing ecovillages.”

Bridges across each of the three streams
for cars to get to the center of the proper-ty.
They agreed not to build on ridge tops, to
protect their identified sacred sites, andto preserve their most tranquil and beau-tiful valley as a wilderness area, to remainundeveloped.
The process of mapping and observing the
land, creating a proposed site plan and agreeingon it as a group took three years, and occurredwhile they simultaneously raised the money topay off their owner-financers and undertook thefirst stages of physical infrastructure develop-ment.
Here’s what their process looked like chrono-
logically:
1995: This first year, they contracted for the
boundary survey, aerial photos, and contourmap, and began the process of walking the landand observing its subtleties in various seasons,adding to and correcting the contour map.
They investigated the process of creating a
“shoe box bank,” and created the EarthSharesfund to raise the money to pay off the owner-financers more quickly and gain control of theentire property. (See Chapter 9.)
Most of the founders lived and worked in
Asheville, 45 minutes away, so through weekendwork parties and with the help of interns, theycreated a campground and cleared a south-facingslope at the center of the property, where theybuilt an open-walled meeting pavilion and onemember built a small hut.
1996: The next year, they continued walking the
land and correcting their map. They clearedmore land on one particular slope in the centerof the property, and built a second road for bet-
ter access to it. They intended this area, calledthe Hut Hamlet, to be the “base camp” cluster ofsmall experimental passive solar dwellings ofabout 300 square feet each, which would serve astemporary housing until people could build per-manent homes. The founders wanted to trymany different construction techniques in thesehuts in order to learn how to work with locally-available, inexpensive natural materials. Theyalso wanted to make their mistakes on a smallscale first, before attempting larger buildings.
Using lumber harvested from the land with
horse-drawn logging and a portable sawmill,they built a small timber-framed strawbalekitchen/dining room/bathhouse for the HutHamlet, brought in piped water from a spring,installed a small photovoltaic system to powerthe pressure pump and the kitchen’s lights, andinstalled a propane refr igerator. They also built
a clay-straw composting toilet building, a rootcellar, three more private huts, and footbridgesacross the streams. They brought in organicmatter as mulch and began creating gardens.Beauty was important to the founders also; theHut Hamlet buildings had forest-green metalroofs (for water catchments) and, because ofthe red clay in the soil, the earth-plastered exte-rior walls were various shades of peach-pinkand apricot. Several had earth-coupled clayfloors.
Like Sowing Circle/OAEC and Dancing
Rabbit, Earthaven was eager to fulfill its missionof offering sustainability education, so that sec-ond year they began presenting classes andworkshops in the small open-walled pavilion. Bythis time, because they had rudimentary housingand other facilities, a few people lived in the HutHamlet year round.
144 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

1997: The third year, they finished adding
details to their map. Their permaculture design-ers proposed a detailed site plan, and over aseries of meetings, the group modified andapproved it.
This was the year they paid off their owner-
financers and could finally develop their wholeproperty, so they began building roads to theiridentified neighborhoods. They built more hutsin the Hut Hamlet, and logged and milled tim-bers for their planned 13-sided Council Hall. Afew more members moved to the land.
1998: The fourth year, they continued building
roads to the neighborhoods, cleared an area intheir planned village center, erected the timberframing for their Council Hall, and installed amicro-hydro system in the stream across theroad. Several members formed the worker-owned Forestry Co-op to fell and mill timberand do construction, and they set up a portablesawmill and lumberyard in the village center.
The community finally had enough revenue
from the joining fees and site lease fees of incom-ing members to pay not only for ongoing devel-opment projects like these, but to start reimburs-ing principal to the EarthShares fund, instead ofpaying interest only. By this time about 15 peo-ple had moved to the land.
1999: The fifth year, they created a small con-
structed wetlands to handle the Hut Hamlet’sgraywater, built a three-story multi-unit dwellingto house couples with young children, and set upa visitor’s campground across the creek. They puta roof on the Council Hall and filled in its walls(with strawbale, straw clay, and cob), and beganholding meetings there. Several members beganconstruction on their shared community build-ing in one of the neighborhoods.2000: The sixth year, they remodeled and
improved the kitchen/dining room in the HutHamlet. More founders and new membersmoved from town onto the land and builtdwellings in the Hut Hamlet and/or brokeground on permanent homes in the neighbor-hoods. By this time about 25 people lived there.
2001: The seventh year, they finished plastering
the interior of the Council Hall, and built anoth-er root cellar. One member built and opened asmall general store and a lodge which will oneday be a members’ cafe. Another member raisedfunds for and organized volunteer labor to builda sauna.
2002: The eighth year, they completed a large
water tank above the Hut Hamlet to improve itswater supply and extended piped water to othernearby areas. They finished plastering the exteri-or of the Council Hall and installed its woodenfloor. One family built a large house to serve as apermanent home for themselves, and as tempo-rary lodging for visitors and other members whowere building their homes. Another group leasedadjacent home sites and began building a two-story townhouse-style common-wall buildingwith small individual units and a shared kitchenand other common facilities. And at long last,eight years into the project, they finally had thefunds, the labor, and the know-how to buildtheir first bridge across a creek ford.
By this time about 35 people lived full time
on the land.
By Earthaven members’ standards, and those
of many of its visitors over the years, theirs hasbeen an excruciatingly slow developmentprocess, and it isn’t over yet. Even though yourcommunity may not buy undeveloped mountain
DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS 145

land with no utilities, and you may not intend to
build a whole village, Earthaven’s story illustratesmany aspects of the process you’ll face in devel-oping your property, or in renovating buildingsand adding new construction to it.
Listening to your Land
A community site plan depicts how its buildingsand other human-made features (courtyards,common greens, children’s play areas, gardens,orchards, agricultural fields, ponds, roads, bridges,pathways, parking areas, and so on) are situated inrelation to each other and to natural landscapefeatures such as clearings, woods, streams, natu-rally occurring ponds, wetlands, and so on.
One of the principles of permaculture design
is that for human settlements to be sustainable,they must adapt themselves to the needs of theecosystems they inhabit. So a permaculture-based site plan also shows how the human-madefeatures will enhance and mutually reinforce theneeds of the land, its living creatures, and itshuman inhabitants.
Permaculture designers and experienced
community founders strongly suggest creatingyour site plan before locating any homes or com-munity buildings on your property, rather thanfinding a likely spot for the first building andthen making up a plan as you go along. And cre-ating a permaculture-based site plan requiresgetting to know your property intimately first —“listening to the land” over several seasons tounderstand its needs.
“I have had numerous occasions to work with
intentional communities,” observes permaculturedesigner T ed Butchart.“I have been struck by thesubtle but important contribution made by thecommunity members who first pierce through toa real connection with their particular land.They have a clear sense of the spirit of that land,and that guides them in making decisions that
will lead to sustainability.”
T ed notes that the usual approach to land
development in our culture is to see the land itselfsimply as “an exploitable resource: a blank canvaswith a certain topology for us to place our build-ings and roads upon.” T o take a more sustainableapproach, he suggests we must first see our com-munity land as a long-term dwelling place bothfor humans and the other creatures living there.Secondly, he suggests “we must seek out the soulof that land, the spirit of the place. What is sacred,untouchable? What is inspiring or uplifting?” Onequick method, he says, is to find the most beauti-ful place on the property, then build somewhereelse. Lastly, he says,“design the built environmentwith an eye for minimal harm and maximumenrichment of the place.” As we’ve seen, Earthavenfounders followed these design principles.
The other communities we’ve studied have
engaged in a similar process. Dancing Rabbitobserved their land for several seasons, studiedpermaculture design principles as a group, andcreated a permaculture-based site plan for their280 acres. Even though their properties werealready developed, Lost V alley, SowingCircle/OAEC, and Abundant Dawn createdland-use policies and other agreements abouthow they would sustainably develop the rest oftheir land and engage in any new construction.Four communities we’ve studied — Earthaven,Dancing Rabbit, Sowing Circle/OAEC, andLost V alley — offer classes and workshops inpermaculture design or sustainable earth-basedbuilding practices, or both.
Creating your Site Plan Yourselves
“How well we succeed in manifesting our visionof a new village culture at Earthaven will bedetermined by the quality of the work we do as146 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

both social and permaculture designers,”
observes Chuck Marsh. “Most community fail-ures stem from inadequate design, either socialor physical. Design takes time, but up-frontinvestment in good design will more than pay foritself in the long-term health of the communityand its members.”
He notes that while in mainstream culture
design and planning are usually relegated to pro-fessionals, in communities this can be disem-powering to members who are directly affectedby the decisions. Like most permaculturedesigners, Chuck suggests that communities gettraining in permaculture design principles, and,perhaps with the guidance of a permaculturedesigner, create their site plan themselves.“Community-based design and planning, while amuch slower and occasionally frustratingprocess, has the distinct advantage of investingthe participants in an outcome that is more like-ly to meet their real needs.”
Here’s how Zuni Mountain Sanctuary went
about the process. In the 1990s, permaculturedesigner Ben Haggard was hired to help this315-acre community in northern New Mexicodevelop a permaculture-based site plan. Thegroup began with an in-depth study of perma-culture, then assessed their site for wind pat-terns, erosion patterns, and evidence of past firesand floods, and learned something about theirregion’s soils and plant and animal communities.“Zuni Mountain residents identified the mostappropriate locations for buildings, gardens,agroforestry, sacred places, and wildlife corri-dors,” Ben Haggard recalls.“They listened to theland, allowing its potentials and liabilities to dic-tate the pattern of development.”
He describes a portion of one of their draft
site plans: “ A single, short, easy-to-maintainroad offers access to a tightly clustered villagecenter surrounding agricultural fields and a
spring-fed pond. This road gets good solaraccess, so it’s less likely to be icy in winter andmuddy in summer. It’s on contour, so it can pre-vent erosion. It’s just above the orchard, sorunoff from the road surface can be used forirrigating trees. It’s perpendicular to prevailingwinds and the direction of greatest fire danger,so it’s an ideal firebreak. And it leaves themajority of the property free from incursion byautomobiles, minimizing potential pollutionand maximizing open space and wildlife areas.Zuni Mountain members took on an ambitiousand complex project that few could afford orhad the experience to build as individuals.Their efforts will leave the land healthier thanthey found it.”
Avoiding “Urban Refugee Syndrome”
“Many of us have been so traumatized by the fastpace of modern life that we feel we need lots ofspace around us to protect us from a harsh anddangerous world,” says Chuck Marsh.“I find thatone of the greatest challenges at Earthaven is tofind ways to meet people’s privacy needs whilekeeping our homesites compact and notsprawled all over the landscape.”
Ben Haggard calls this tendency to spread
out “urban refugee syndrome.”
“Urban and suburban people, afraid of the
potential lack of privacy in villages and close-knit communities, scatter across the landscapelooking for a place to hide,” he says. “This onlyrepeats in microcosm the worst mistakes of sub-urban development — destructive, repetitivesprawl. Networks of paths and roads proliferate,requiring maintenance, creating erosion scars,and disrupting wildlife. The costs of distribut-ing water, energy, or wastes go up.Communication becomes more difficult. OftenDEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS 147

these siting decisions assume that residents will
remain young and healthy forever.”
Before Zuni Mountain Sanctuary members
learned about permaculture, one member hadplanned his house site far from the communitycenter. Like all Zuni Mountain members, hewould have to first build his house, requiring thedelivery of construction materials and water (forconcrete). Ben Haggard pointed out that aremote location requires its own access road and,in the fragile ecosystem of New Mexico’s highdesert, even driving over the ground once leavesa permanent scar. And this house, like all hous-es, would require ongoing work and materials tomaintain. And even well-designed solar housesrequire fuel — firewood or propane for backupheat during the bitterly cold winters.
Ben also pointed out that having a home so
far from the center of the community wouldmake life harder in an environment where life isalready hard enough. Forgetting a necessary tool,for example, would require a long hike home,sometimes in harsh weather.“I’ve noticed that inspread-out communities, people simply adjust tonot having what they need. The daily effort ofgetting from one place to another hampers resi-dents’ ability to do their work. Individuals andthe whole community suffer as workloadsbecome overwhelming and maintenance of peo-ple and infrastructure is neglected.”
Ben asked the member to imagine the 20 or
more proposed members’ homes placed as isolat-ed dwellings around the land.“He saw that sucha pattern would eliminate the most desirableopen space of the community,” Ben said.“ Anywhere one walked would be someone’sbackyard.”The member agreed, finally persuadedthat clustered housing would allow optimal useof the best areas for building and maintain theintegrity of the commons.Creating Privacy in the Midst of
Community
Y et the desire to spread out is understandable.
T he greatest fear of many people choosing com-munity is that they won’t have enough privacy.However, Danish cohousing residents, who’vebeen living in densely clustered townhouse-stylehousing units since the late 1960s, and cohousingarchitects Kathryn McCamant and CharlesDurrett know very well that not having enoughprivacy is rarely a complaint of people living inthis kind of community housing.“People find thatonce they close their door, their unit is as privateas any private housing,” says Kathryn McCamant.
“It’s much easier to get solitude in the midst
of community than to get community in themidst of solitude,” observes Winslow Cohousingmember T om Moench.
Since privacy is a real issue, we need to find
ways to create sustainable development andmeet
our needs for privacy. Fortunately, there are sever-al things we can do. One is to arrange livingspaces so that front doors and front porches (andoften, kitchen windows) — the “public” side of adwelling — face the front doors and public sidesof other dwellings, and locate living rooms andbedrooms in the rear “private” side, facing awayfrom other dwellings and into rear patios or backyards (with no public sides facing into anyoneelse’s back yards). Another is careful windowplacement, so that windows don’t look out intoother neighbors’ windows. A third way is to effec-tively sound-insulate exterior walls, especiallycommon walls between separate housing units,and use windows and doors that close snugly, tocreate more sound privacy between neighbors.
“Until your needs for privacy and autonomy
are met,” says Boulder architect David Barrett,“you can’t really do community.”148 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Designing for Conviviality
A community site plan can enhance social inter-
action and “community glue,” what ChuckMarsh calls “designing for conviviality.”
“Designing for conviviality involves placing
our access ways and buildings in patterns thatallow for, and in fact encourage, quality humaninteractions as we go about our daily activities,”says Chuck Marsh. Some of these patternsinclude:
Visual connection. Designers use “line of sight”
to help people feel more connected. If you cansee the community building from your frontporch or kitchen window, it tends to make youfeel more connected to it and inclined to visitand use it. If you can see other members’ homesfrom your front porch or kitchen window, ittends to make you feel more connected to thepeople who live in those homes and moreinclined to visit and interact with them. It createsthe feeling of a cozy neighborhood, for example,if dwellings are aligned so that their front porch-es or patios and kitchen windows face each other,so everyone has views of other members’ homes.
Cozy distance. How far away buildings are from
a well-traveled common pathway also affects thesense of community. In a study conducted in the1990s, cohousing architects and members of aDavis, California cohousing community foundthat the coziest and most charming “felt space”for a front porch from a common pathway wasabout ten feet.
Prominence. For a shared community building
to be well-utilized, and to become a beloved andinspiring symbol of the community, it should bemore visually prominent than other buildingsand placed in a central area where people can seeit from their front porches and kitchen windows.
T o take advantage of these “conviviality” patterns,cohousing communities are often designed withtheir dwellings in rows facing each other across anarrow or oblong central commons, about tenfeet from an encircling pedestrian pathway, withtheir large community building at one end of thecentral commons in full sight of every home.
Footpaths, gathering nodes, and centripetal
energy. The flow of foot traffic can also encourage
social connection, and the path of car traffic candisrupt it. Having a limited number of pedestrianpathways between destinations with natural con-gregating places en route — gazebos, shadedbenches, picnic tables, and so on — encouragespeople to spontaneously encounter each other andhave conversations. Locating parking at the edgeof the site, having the pathway between the park-ing area and the homes pass by the front of thecommunity building, and having individual mail-boxes and a community bulletin board located inthe community building encourage people to stopin at the community building while walking toand from their homes and cars, where they’re like-ly to meet others and connect. Design features likethese create a concentrated, centripetal energy,rather than a dispersed, centrifugal energy.
“In good design, conviviality happens spon-
taneously among the inhabitants of the settle-ment because the physical spaces are ‘tuned’ tothe wisdom of our bodies,” Chuck says.“Buildings create positive outdoor spaces;entrances are prominent and transitions aremarked by gateways; paths meander and cross;places to sit or to tarry are frequent, people feelsafe to sleep in public or to make love in thewoods. Permaculture design should nourish notonly the Earth and our bodies, but also the indi-vidual’s soul and the group soul.”
DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS 149

Earthaven’s members utilized many of these
principles in their site plan. Their roads andfootpaths follow the terrain and lead naturally tomembers encountering one another as they walkbetween the kitchen/dining room, dwellings in
the Hut Hamlet, the general store, or theCouncil Hall. Home sites in the neighborhoodsare clustered. The kitchen/dining room with its150 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
YOUR COMMUNITY BUILDING
Community buildings are as varied as the communities
they’re part of. They can range from a single structurehousing a kitchen/dining area and meeting space, orthey can include these functions and more: dancespace, daycare facilities, teen hangout rooms, laundryfacilities, and workshops, to name a few. Some com-munity buildings feature separate structures for differ-ent activities. (A good resource is the “PatternLanguage for the Village” in
A Pattern Language, by
Christopher Alexander et al. See Resources.)
A well-designed community building can literally
help create cohesiveness, give the feeling of a central“hearth,” and be a source of pleasure, joy, and pridefor its members. Here are some design tips to helpyou design such a center.
Put all your eggs in one basket. For better social
interaction, to effectively “design for conviviality,” aswell as to save money, it works best to have relativelysmall individual living spaces and larger communitybuildings with many amenities.
Make it prominent. Many communities use architect
Christopher Alexander’s principles of “building arche-types” in
A Pattern Language for creating a warm and
inviting built environment that invites community spir-it. One of his principles is that the primary communitybuilding in any given location be taller, bigger, orsomehow more visually prominent than other struc-tures around it. Put it at the “heart.” It should also be accessible,
both visually through “line of sight,” and by footpath,from many other locations around the community.
Make it beautiful. Cohousing architects Kathryn
McCamant and Chuck Durrett, as well as ChristopherAlexander, insist that for a community building tofunction well and be used by its members, it must bebeautiful. Ideally, it inspires and uplifts the memberswhenever they see it — a physical symbol of the com-munity to its members.
Build it first. Many founders have learned that con-
structing the community building first, before anyindividual dwellings, adds significantly to a group’sidentity and community spirit. It creates an energeticcenter for the group’s focus — a centripetal energy. Incontrast, when everyone is preoccupied with build-ing their own homes first, it tends to create a moredispersed centrifugal energy in the community.
Build it yourselves. Nothing builds community glue
like working together, and nothing makes people moreproud of their community building than building itthemselves. “I see repeatedly that people in generalenjoy being a part of, and want to contribute in a full-body, hands-on way to the physical building of theircommunity,” observes Ted Butchart. Ideally, a commu-nity building isn’t built quickly by professionals orhired laborers, but created consciously, even ritually,and, as Ted says, “placed and quilted and kneadedand shaped by the users themselves.”

gable-roofed canvas awning and terraced front
patio is larger and more imposing than othernearby structures, and is visible from the maincommunity road and one of the parking areas.The Council Hall is large and imposing andlocated on high ground, and also visible from themain road.
Developing your community physically is an
ongoing process that could take 10 to 15 years tocomplete. But creating community itself is neverreally “complete.”
“Earthaven is very much a work in progress,
a constantly evolving attempt to more deeplyinoculate permaculture and ecovillage culture
into our bioregion,” says Chuck Marsh. “W e’reworking away in the belly of the beast of westerncivilization to find our way home in the compa-ny of kindred yet diverse spirits.”
/fl1lft
In Chapter 14 we’ll look at one of the most cru-cial issues of your community-forming process— how your internal financing affects your livesin community, and how attractive your commu-nity may be to potential new members.DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE HUMAN SETTLEMENTS 151

GETTING FINANCING TO BUY your property
is one thing; living with the financial
arrangements is another.
The financing terms of your property pur-
chase — especially the amount of monthly pay-ment — will affect your internal finances as well.Internal finances are the choices you’ll makeabout whether, and how, you’ll assess yourselvesover time, and/or assess new members when theyjoin. Y ou’ll need to account for such expenses asthe mortgage payment, property taxes and insur-ance, utilities, maintenance and repair costs, anyremodeling or infrastructure development, or anymanagement costs such as office and bookkeep-ing supplies, website expenses, and so on. Sourcesof revenue for communities can include joiningfees, monthly and/or yearly assessments, rentfrom community-owned living quarters, and sitelease fees. Y our internal community economy alsoinvolves members’ labor requirements.
As you’ll see, the founders of the communi-
ties we’re examining arranged their internalfinancing in completely different ways. And mostcreated these unique economies from scratch,without benefit of knowing how any other com-munities may have done it. But your group does-n’t have to reinvent the wheel. I hope the exam-
ples in this chapter will to give your group plen-ty of ideas for considering how you might (1)raise enough money to pay off loans, pay operat-ing expenses, and build any needed infrastruc-ture; (2) call up enough labor; (3) meet yourmembers’ needs for income, housing, and possi-bly equity in the property; and (4) attract thenew members who’ll help you do all this.
Thus, when arranging the terms of your
financing, you’ll need to consider how much themonthly payments will be, and whether theamount you’ll need to assess yourselves to makethese payments will be affordable — dependingon how many of you will split the payments,your income levels, and if your contingency fundis large enough to subsidize part of the paymentsuntil enough new members join you. (And willyour monthly payments and contingency-fundsupplements allow you to choose members basedon your agreed-upon criteria, or will financialpressure dictate that you accept people you aren’tsure of because you desperately need their cash?)
If you’re seeking property in a rural area the
challenge escalates. Y ou’ve got at least threechoices:
152/fl1lftChapter 14 /fl1rt
Internal Community Finances
(Can We Afford to Live There?)

1. Buy your rural property near a town or small
city with a reasonable job market, or withinacceptable commuting distance of one.
2. Arrange financing with monthly payments
that are low enough so that assessments willstill be affordable to members with low-pay-ing or part-time rural jobs, or who aredependent on the uncertain income of indi-vidually owned businesses.
3. Create one or more community-owned busi-
nesses that will pay members decent enoughwages to meet your monthly assessments. (Inthis case,“business” could include a non-prof-it organization that, like Lost V alley’s orOAEC’s educational organizations, gener-ates an income and pays employees.)
Rural Communities — How will your
Members Make a Living?
Here’s how members of some rural communities
make a living.
1. Rural communities near a good job market.
Sowing Circle/OAEC is in a rural-residentialarea surrounded by the cities and towns ofSonoma County, two minutes from the town ofOccidental, 25 minutes from the city of SantaRosa, and an hour and a half from SanFrancisco. It’s relatively easy for Sowing Circle’s11 members to bring in Bay Area-level salaries.Five are employed by OAEC in multi-skilledroles that include administration, grant applica-tion writing, gardening, maintenance and repair,and teaching workshops. The OAEC staff mem-bers began working for $10 an hour, with annu-al seniority raises, and salaries now range from$1,900 to $2,600 a month, depending on senior-ity. This is a low wage by Bay Area standards, butfine relative to the community’s values. SowingCircle’s membership also includes a grade schoolteacher, a college professor, an environmental
educator, and a home-based mom/politicalorganizer. Another member, the president of anon-profit organization, works half-time at hishome office and half-time in Berkeley, an hourand a half away.
2. Rural communities 30-45 minutes from a
low-wage job market. Abundant Dawn is an
hour from the small city of Roanoke, Virginia,and about 40 minutes from three other medium-sized towns, all with relatively few jobs and lowwages. Their members’ income-producing activi-ties are typical of what rural community mem-bers with few nearby jobs must do. One works asa self-employed computer programmer (some-times telecommuting and sometimes travelingelsewhere to jobs); two retirees own, repair andmaintain their own local rental properties —and also bake bread for area restaurants; oneoffers a holistic health service in Roanoke andthe three local towns — and also takes on otherodd jobs; one formerly owned and operated aportable sawmill but now goes to college; and thefour members of their income-sharing pod makeand sell hemp hammocks, work part-time at anearby CSA farm, and own and manage thefruit-distribution service for the CSA farm.
The situation is almost identical at Earthaven,
which is 50 minutes from Asheville, and 20 and 30minutes from two small towns, all of which alsohave few jobs and low wages. Some members areowners of an on-site forestry co-op that fells andmills trees and builds homes for other members.One member owns an herbal products business;another publishes Permaculture Activist magazine
(both employ other community members part-time); another owns rental units in Asheville andan on-site general store. T wo artists paint and selllandscape paintings; one woodworker makes
INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 153

wooden candle-lanterns and another makes cus-
tom stairways. T wo work part-time administeringand promoting workshops on sustainability forCulture’s Edge, Earthaven’s educational non-prof-it. Several are self-employed in full- or part-timeservice businesses: carpenters, permacultureteachers (one also does landscape design, anotheralso teaches consensus), a massage therapist whocommutes to Asheville, and a website designer/landscape designer. T wo work as waitresses in anearby town, one works three months a year as apublicist in a city in another state. Some workpart-time or for a few hours a week for the com-munity, coordinating its labor, doing repairs andmaintenance, cooking for workshop participants,or managing the campground. A few live on theinterest from investments; six are retired.
Lost V alley is within 15 minutes’ drive from a
few small towns and 30 minutes from the smallcity of Eugene, Oregon — all with relatively fewjobs and low wages. Fifteen people (almost three-quarters of its members), work for the communi-ty’s educational center business, either full timeor part-time. One of the part-time employeesalso works as a massage therapist on-site, andothers work part-time in Eugene or the nearbytowns. Members who don’t work for the educa-tional center have full-time or part-time jobs offsite as well — grant writer and consultant, part-time librarian, part-time park ranger, sales rep fora food distributor. Another member flies to a dif-ferent city each weekend to represent products attrade shows. Another drives 12 hours to the SanFrancisco Bay Area for week-long trips eighttimes a year to work as an accounting consultantfor clients there, but at Bay-Area wages.
Rural communities far from a job market.
Dancing Rabbit members have an even greaterchallenge, since they live so much farther from ajob market — 45 minutes from a small town
with low-paying jobs, and almost an hour and ahalf from the nearest city. T wo members are self-employed in service businesses — a musician’sbooking agent and a freelance editor. Some havepart-time or occasional work building homes forother members. Several have part-time jobsworking for the Fellowship for IntentionalCommunity at nearby Sandhill Farm, or inSandhill’s tempeh-making business, or for theMissouri chapter of a national organic certifyingagency. Some work off-site for several weeks ormonths — a personal assistant who helps dis-abled people, a traveling sales representative, andcarpenters who work construction in othercities. Several work a few hours weekly for thecommunity doing accounting, answering corre-spondence, managing their intern program, orfund-raising for the community, and one worksfull-time eight months a year, growing the com-munity’s vegetables. Members of Skyhouse, theincome-sharing sub-community, work a varietyof telecommuting jobs, including computer pro-gramming, website design, and graphic arts.
As you can see, in rural communities away
from thriving job markets, most people make dowith various odd jobs, part-time jobs, one-per-son businesses with an uncertain income, or theytelecommute. Few actually have “a job.”
Starting a new business while also starting a
community can be difficult to impossible; bring-ing a telecommuting job or an already-successfulbusiness to a rural community can work well.For example, the computer programmers atAbundant Dawn and Dancing Rabbit broughttheir professions with them and now telecom-mute. The income-sharing pod at AbundantDawn was already making hammocks as sub-contractors for T win Oaks’ hammock-making
154 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

business before they began Abundant Dawn
(they later launched their own independenthammock line). The owners of various business-es at Earthaven started them before joining thecommunity.
The Risks of Community Businesses
Several founders of rural communities have toldme it would have helped enormously, at the verystart, if they’d had one or more viable communi-ty businesses to employ community members,and there’s plenty of precedent from income-sharing rural communities formed in the late1960s or early ’70s. T win Oaks in Virginia start-ed its hammock business, and subsequently, abook-indexing service and tofu-making business— all still in operation today. Sandhill Farm inMissouri started an organic foods business —growing and processing sorghum syrup, honey,
tempeh, garlic puree, horseradish, and mustard.The Farm in T ennessee started many business-es, including processing soy foods, manufactur-ing electronic equipment, video productionservices, and midwifery and midwife education.All these businesses continue today, althoughsome are now owned as sole proprietorships byindividual Farm members, or are owned bymember collectives.
However, creating a community-owned busi-
ness (or a non-profit educational center that payswages to its employees) is not without its ownrisks. Start-up businesses fail at the rate of atleast 95 percent, usually because they’re under-capitalized or the founders didn’t do adequatemarket research ahead of time. Start-up busi-nesses require not only business experience andentrepreneurial skill to succeed, but often take10- and 12-hour days for at least the first sixmonths to a year. Even if you’re a community ofexperienced, savvy entrepreneurs, where will youcarve out the time and energy to set up a new
community anda business, much less keep rela-
tionships intact with your partners and children?It’s much worse if you try to do all this on rawland you’re developing from scratch. New devel-
opment either requires boatloads of money tohire professional crews, or long hard hours ofINTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 155
PRIVATE ECONOMIES, INCOME-
SHARING ECONOMIES
In a private or independent community economy, how-
ever members earn money — working at outside jobs, byowning their own businesses, through investments, orsome other means — they keep their earnings anddecide how they’ll spend, invest, or save their own earn-ings. In other words, their finances are private and indi-vidual. They pay agreed-upon joining fees, site leasefees, and/or other assessments to the community for allcommunity expenses, and the whole group decideshow to spend or save their community assets. Most com-munities operate this way. In an income-sharing (commu-nal) economy, however, members work for one or morecommunity businesses and pool the profits in a commontreasury, or work at jobs outside the community and pooltheir earnings from these jobs. The common treasury paysthe mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, main-tenance, and other costs, and all members’ basic needsfor food, shelter, monthly stipends, and so on. All mem-bers decide how their common assets are spent.Relatively few communities do income-sharing, howevermembers of Skyhouse subcommunity at Dancing Rabbitand the Tekiah pod at Abundant Dawn organize theireconomies this way. Meadowdance has a hybridincome-sharing economy. Everyone works forMeadowdance’s community-owned businesses, andtheir basic expenses are paid from business profits.Members can also earn money they can use as theyplease by working at outside jobs or working extra hoursfor their community-owned businesses.

your own sweat-equity labor, or both — usually
over a period of several years. It’s unlikely mostcommunity founders could pull this off andstart
a business. Bottom line — if you’re planning acommunity-owned business, if at all possible, getit established and running well before moving to
the land.
But there are several other ways to create on-
site income for members besides the communi-ty becoming the employer itself. Several mem-bers could create a worker-owned co-op, forexample, or could provide the community food,cooking, lumber, construction skill, laundryservices, and so on for a fee. Or an individual orseveral members could start a business enter-prise that employed some or all other communi-ty members.
A community-owned or member-owned
business that employs other community mem-bers also has its own set of problems. On the onehand, community members would have on-sitejobs, the entrepreneurs would have an ongoingsource of close-at-hand workers, and, since it hadan income source, the community would bemore attractive to new members. On the otherhand, just because some folks are fine fellowcommunity members doesn’t make them suitedfor a particular job role. What if the member wasunsuited for the work, or made costly mistakes,or didn’t show up for shifts, or came late and leftearly? What if the person was miserable, or evendestructive, in the job? Imagine the amount oftension that could arise between that memberand the business owners, whether the person waskept in the job (creating resentment in the own-ers and co-workers), or was let go (creatingresentment in the person). Also, if some mem-bers owned the business and others didn’t, a realor perceived power issue could arise betweenwhat could become the “owner class” and the“worker class.” Or the needs of the business, driv-
en by markets, cash flow, and other financial con-siderations, could slowly encroach on and evensupplant the community’s own visions and val-ues for itself. Instead of being a servant to thecommunity — providing income for members— the business could become its master. Anantidote to this kind of “creeping takeover”would be to set up more than one member-owned business from the beginning, or a combi-nation of community-owned, worker-owned,and individually or group-owned businesses, cre-ating a more balanced “marketplace” of businessactivities and employment opportunities.
Another issue is whether a community busi-
ness is really viable. A business might earn thecommunity far less money per member thaneach person would make working outside, but aslong as each member’s expenses are low, theirwork-hours reasonable, the work itself satisfying,and their lives in community fulfilled and bal-anced, they’re probably living better than theirwealthier counterparts in the mainstream. Asthe saying goes: “Living below your means is acheap way to be rich.”
On the other hand, a community business
could pay its overhead, satisfy its customers, fundall necessary community expenses, and seemfirmly in the black, but at the cost of communitymembers working inordinately long hours to pullit off. If members intersperse gardening, mainte-nance, cooking, and other community tasks withhours at the community business they might notreally notice that by the end of the week they’veworked 60 or even 70 hours at the business, andthat their free time had diminished to nothing.Entrepreneurs and business consultants identifythis situation immediately for what it is — a fail-ing business that’s actually in the red — butmany communities can’t see it.
156 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

This happens regularly at a rural income-
sharing community I’ll call Cranberry V alley. Its20 members work at one or more communitybusinesses — installing slate roofs, processingmaple syrup for local stores, and operating a cof-fee house venue in town for local poets andmusicians. But the hours are grueling and thecommunity’s newer members become exhaustedand demoralized. (And in what I call “communi-ty macho,” the long-time members remind themthat it takes a lot of stamina to handle the inten-sity of community life.) Someone finally doesthe math and concludes that the coffee houseloses so much money that everyone’s actuallyworking for $2.00 an hour, and their outrageous-ly long hours are the result of trying to keep itafloat. Eventually, the newer members proposethat Cranberry V alley cut its losses and close thecoffee house so everyone can live normal livesagain. The founders and old timers don’t agree,saying that having a groovy coffee house was partof the community’s vision from the beginning.Then there’s a major exodus. The scene repeatsitself regularly with new groups of members sev-eral months or years later.
Given these pros and cons of running a com-
munity business, here’s how some communitiesmanage it. And, although it’s unlikely that any ofthe members in these community-owned, work-er-owned, or individually-owned businesses willever get rich, or even perhaps earn a normal wageby mainstream standards, they’ve found a way tolive in a rural community and make a livingthere.
1. Income-sharing community-owned busi-
nesses. Meadowdance founders were convinced
from the outset that a significant factor in a newcommunity’s success is whether people canafford to join it. They didn’t want people to haveto eke out a living of odd-jobs and part-time jobs
and still try to make land payments, so havingcommunity businesses was part of their commu-nity vision from the start. They chose two busi-nesses, V ermont Software T esting Group andW ordsworth T yping and Editing, specificallybecause they weren’t living in their permanentrural location yet and both businesses wereportable, and because any members with basicknowledge of computers could be trained aseffective software testers. As we’ve seen, becausethey didn’t get their desired rural land,Meadowdance founders bought a large house ina town and launched their businesses from there.
For the first two-and-a-half years, these busi-
nesses made barely enough to pay overhead andmarketing, house payments (mortgage, taxes,and insurance), food and household expenses,gasoline and maintenance of shared cars, and atiny stipend for each member. Then the busi-nesses began taking off, and the communitycould relax a bit. Even so, they consider thesetwo businesses less than ideal in some ways, sinceboth involve sitting at a computer for long hours.Now that they’ve purchased and moved to theirnew property, they’ll found other communitybusinesses, says cofounder Luc Reid, which mostlikely will be different in nature. Eventually theymay phase out one or both of their computer-based businesses.
Meadowdance organized its income-sharing
structure differently than other income-sharingcommunities. Income-sharing subcommunities,such as Skyhouse at Dancing Rabbit and T ekiahat Abundant Dawn, own their businessesthrough a 501(d) non-profit tax status and shareone tax return, which gives them a definite taxsavings. (See Chapter 16.) But to retain that taxstatus, members cannot work for outside busi-nesses without sharing that income also, and any
INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 157

outside assets must either be put in trust or con-
tributed to the common treasury. Meadowdancewanted to make it easy for anyone with enoughmotivation and energy to be able to earn addi-tional income, and they didn’t want to discourageanyone from joining who owned investments,real estate, or savings. So they don’t own anyassets through the 501(d) non-profit, but owntheir property as a V ermont Limited LiabilityPartnership, and each business as a LimitedLiability Company. (See Chapter 15.) They fileone tax form for the Limited LiabilityPartnership, and spread the tax burden amongmembers equally. With this legal structure, aslong as members meet their internal workrequirements, they can work at outside jobs anddo anything they want with outside earnings andother assets.
Lost V alley’s Educational Center business is
organized differently again. Fifteen memberswork full time or part time for the business, inadministration and programs, consulting,accounting, promotion, gardening, or groundsmaintenance and repair. The base pay is $6.50 anhour, with a seniority increase of 12.5 cents anhour more every year, plus 65 cents an houradditional if the employee has children. Full-time wages range from $845 to $1,040 a month(and full time is 30 hours weekly).
2. Member-owned community-service co-ops.
Eight Earthaven members decided to make amodest living on the la nd by addressing two of
the community’s challenges — the need to clearforest on arable bottom land so the communitycan grow enough food to feed itself, and the needfor building materials and carpenters for com-munity buildings and members’ homes. Theyformed a worker-owned co-operative, EarthavenForestry and Building Company (as a LimitedLiability Company), and taught themselves how
to harvest trees sustainably, mill lumber, andbuild houses. It was a steep learning curve formany of them, as only two were carpenters, andthey went into fairly deep debt with private loansfrom other members for a portable band saw, adump truck, and other equipment. They areaccomplishing their goals — clearing land,milling a surplus of lumber (and even finding away to use smaller-than-normal dimensionallumber for innovative building methods), help-ing build community buildings and members’homes, and slowly payi ng off their debt. As of
2002, they were charging $16 to $25 an hour,depending on equipment used, whether thework involves heavy machinery or logging, andwhether the work is on or off-site. They use partof this for overhead and debts, and split the rest,aiming for a $10 an hour wage. When they can’tpay themselves that much, they pay what theycan and credit the remainder to themselves for afuture draw when the cash is available. LikeOAEC and Lost V alley members, they’re notgetting rich, but they have found a way to makemoney in a rural community and simultaneous-ly serve its long-term vision and goals.
3. Sole-proprietor businesses that serve the
community. Dancing Rabbit also wanted to
find ways to meet members’ needs and generateon-site incomes, so they formed the CattailFood Co-op, which buys produce from severalmembers with thriving vegetable gardens. Thefood co-op collects money from members andorders food items from a natural foods whole-saler that delivers monthly, but most of theirfunds go to the gardeners. In the April-Octobergrowing season, one member works full-timegrowing nearly all the community’s vegetablesfor the co-op. As of 2002, he was making a very
158 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

modest living by ordinary standards, but one
that works in Dancing Rabbit’s low-expenseenvironment. Three other part-time gardenersgrow salad greens, herbs, and other edibles tosell to the co-op.
Keeping Member Assessments
Affordable
There are probably as many ways to assess mem-
bers for community expenses as there are com-munities. The total amounts vary widely,depending on the purchase price of the property(for example, it’s considerably higher inCalifornia than in Missouri); whether it’s devel-oped, and to what degree; the amount of initialcosts (down payment plus repairs, renovation, ordevelopment costs); the monthly land fee (loanprincipal and interest, taxes, and insurance); thenumber of members who will split these costs;and whether members will have equity in theproperty. T able 7 on the following pages illus-trates some of these differences.
In each of the rural communities in the chart,
the monthly land payments are affordable, givenaccess to nearby jobs. In the years 1995 to 1999,when they were still paying interest-only pay-ments on their three loans, SC/OAEC memberspaid $800 a month for the mortgage, taxes, insur-ance, utilities, repairs, maintenance, and furtherdevelopment, which was reasonable in this ruralarea near high-paying jobs. Now, after refinanc-ing, and with 11 members, they each pay $815monthly ($515 in land payments; $300 in taxes,insurance, repair, and maintenance). The com-munity’s operations expenses are not paid bymember assessments, but by their $70,000 annu-al income from OAEC leasing their facilities. Inrural areas with few available jobs, and where theproperty doesn’t cost as much, the scale is lower.Earthaven members pay $15-$20 per month, andDancing Rabbit members pay $25 per month
toward the land payment, and an annual assess-ment of two percent of each member’s annualincome, plus food costs and, if they rent a spacefrom the community or Skyhouse subcommuni-ty, a rental fee of $70 to $150 per month.
The monthly assessment for Abundant
Dawn members for the land payment and otherexpenses ranges from $105 to $350 per month,depending on which pod (T ekiah or DaySpringCircle) the member is part of, his/her assets andmonthly income, and other factors. In 2001,monthly assessments averaged $176 per mem-ber, and this fee will go down somewhat as moremembers join. If they rent community-ownedhousing, Abundant Dawn members pay from$50 to $150 monthly.
Lost V alley members pay a $250 monthly fee
for utilities, taxes, insurance, maintenance, andloan payments, and $75 to $225 in rent for com-munity-owned housing.
Food costs are usually figured separately. At
Sowing Circle, Lost V alley, and DancingRabbit, where members share food expensesand eat together, food costs range from $100 to$150 per person per month. Abundant Dawnmembers pay for their own food, but areassessed $20 per month for bulk foods sharedby the community. Meadowdance members paynothing; their community businesses fund basicexpenses and pay each member a small stipend.(See T able 7.)
Joining Fees
Joining fees vary widely, and some communities,such as Meadowdance and Dancing Rabbit,don’t have them at all. The joining fee is $4,000at Earthaven and $1,000 at Lost V alley.Abundant Dawn has no joining fee for individ-ual members, but each pod pays a one-timeINTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 159

160ABUNDANT DAWN Founders paid $1,800 each plus a $300
nonrefundable security deposit. Eachpod pays $5,000 to join AbundantDawn. For Tekiah pod there’s no joiningfee. For DaySpring Circle pod, newmembers pay $3,000 to $4,000 to reimburse DaySpring Circle founders forthe pod joining fee for Abundant Dawn,and for DaySpring Circle’s infrastructure.No site lease fees.$13,416 yearly; $1,118 monthly.
Interest & principal to owner-financer.
Community Founders’ Contribution
Members’ Joining Fee
Site Lease FeeAnnual/Monthly Mortgage or
Loan Payment
DANCING RABBIT No required founders’ contributions.
No new-member joining fee. $20,750 yearly; $1,600 monthly.
(CRP payments pay about half this.)Interest & (now) principal payment toprivate lenders. Members build homes on leased
sites.
SOWING CIRCLE/OAEC $20,000 founders’contributions. Newmembers pay joining fee of $20,000+which reflects capital improvementsand increased property value.(1995-2000) $37,500 yearly;
$3,125 monthly.
Interest-only payments on three
mortgages.TABLE 7: INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES

Do Members Have Equity
in the Community Property?
Housing ArrangementsAnnual or Monthly
Member Assessment
(excluding food)Weekly Labor Requirement
How Members Make a Living
PARTIAL EQUITY
Undivided ownership of whole property; members lease sites.Members leaving after 3 years may be reimbursed 25% of their land pay-ments, starting w/their 4th year, atcommunity’s discretion.
Live in community-owned housing or
owner-built homes.9 members pay monthly land payment:
amount varies per member (rangingbetween $105-$350 per member),depending on pod, member’s assets &income, & other factors (average monthly fee in 2001 was $176). This Feewill decrease somewhat as more members join.No labor requirement but labor
averages 10-12 hrs. per week.
Few jobs locally. DaySpring Circle
members work in on-site member-owned businesses, off-site jobs, ortelecommute. Tekiah members workingin pod-owned hammock business andoff site jobs.
NO EQUITYProperty owned as Land Trust through501(c)2 non-profit. Members leasesites for $25 monthly.
Live in small owner-built cabins or
rent community-owned cabins for$50-$150/month.Annual assessment: 2% per member.
16 members (2002) hold 20 leases total.Monthly site lease for home, garden &business sites: $25 per 2500 sq. ft. 1.5 hrs labor/wk (75 hours yearly).
Few jobs locally. Members work in
member-owned on-site businesses,jobs off site, telecommute, or work forthe community.
EQUITYEqual undivided interests in property.
Live in community-owned cabins.(1995-2000): 8 people. $37,440 yearly:
$3,120 monthly. $800 per person/monthfor mortgage, operating expenses,development, & maintenance. (2001+):11 people. $67,980 yearly; $5,665monthly. $815 per person/month formortgage, development, & maintenance. (Operations paid byOAEC
annual lease fees.) 7 hrs week/average.
Good job market locally.
5 members work for OAEC (approx.,$1500/mo. take-home pay) or at off-site jobs.
Continued on page 162-163 (over)INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 161

$5,000 fee to be a part of Abundant Dawn.
T ekiah, Abundant Dawn’s income-sharing pod,has no joining fee for incoming members, andDaySpring Circle, its independent-income pod,requires $3,000 to $4,000 per incoming memberto partially reimburse DaySpring Circlefounders for their $5,000 pod-joining fee andexpenses for their neighborhood infrastructure.
The joining fee for new Sowing Circle/
OAEC members is equivalent to the amount(adjusted for inflation) it would cost the com-munity to reimburse a departing founder at thetime the new person joins, even though no one
is actually leaving. This amount is a combina-tion of the $20,000 founder’s contribution, plusthe portion of the monthly loan payment thatgoes toward paying off the principal (but notinterest, taxes, insurance, repair, maintenance),multiplied by the number of months (and years)the founder paid it at the time the new memberjoins. The joining fee is thus continually increas-ing; by 2002, it was close to $35,000. This mayseem high, but consider that 11 members own aproperty that by 2002 was probably worth 2.8EARTHAVEN Founders paid $10,000 ea. for site lease.
New members pay $4,000 joining fee &one-time site lease fee, which increasesby $1,000 every year ($17,000 in 2002).$50,400 yearly; $4,200 monthly. Interest
& principal to EarthShares fund.
LOST VALLEY No required founders fees. (One loaned money for acquisition andremodeling.) New members pay $1,000joining fee.Original property purchase loans are
paid off; now pay $42,000 annually/$3,500 monthly interest & principal tomultiple lenders for further capitalimprovements.Community Founders’ Contribution
Members’ Joining Fee
Site Lease FeeAnnual/Monthly Mortgage or
Loan Payment
MEADOWDANCE No required founders’ contributions;
some gave loans; some didn’t.No joining feeMortgage on house in town: $5,196
yearly; $433 monthly. Property Taxes:$4268 yearly; $356 monthly. Community businesses pay the mortgage.162 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

million. If new members paid a joining fee that
was a proportional share of the property value,with 11 members it would be almost $255,000.
When two new members joined the Sowing
Circle community (as partners in relationshipswith founders), they were responsible for thefull joining fee, which at the time was about$31,000. The community used this incomingrevenue to remodel two of the cabins so they’deach be spacious enough for a couple. The newpeople each paid only about $20,000 of theirjoining fee in cash and are paying the balance inmonthly payments (in addition to their $815
monthly mortgage payment, and food fees.)These payments will reimburse the communityfor cabin remodeling expenses beyond $20,000per cabin. (See T able 7 above).
Housing Arrangements
These can vary widely as well. Some communi-ties provide housing, others rent housing, and atstill others, members must build their ownhomes. The monthly land fees at SowingCircle/OAEC confers the use of a community-Do Members Have Equity
in the Community Property?
Housing ArrangementsAnnual or Monthly
Member Assessment
(excluding food)Weekly Labor Requirement
How Members Make a Living
EQUITY
Undivided ownership of whole prop-erty. Members lease sites. Site leasefees $17,000 (in 2002). Leases may besold to incoming members.
Live in small owner-built cabins.55 members.
$120 yearly for operations; plus either$60 yearly facilities-use fee, or, for resi-dents who use community kitchen,$130 yearly facilities-use fee. 1500 hours labor in the member’s first
10 years (2 hour weekly minimum).
Few jobs locally. Members telecom-
mute, work for on-site forestry co-op,members’ on-site businesses; or at off-site jobs.
NO EQUITYProperty owned as 501(c)3 non-profit.
Members rent community-owned
housing.22 members pay $20 monthly fee for
shared infrastructure.Each pays monthly rental fee, from $75-$225 monthly, depending on size andamenities.10 hours’ labor weekly.
Few jobs locally.
13 members work for educational center business; others work at off-site jobs.
NO EQUITYCommunity has option to financiallyassist departing members in settingup new living arrangements.
Live in community-owned housing. 7 members. Community businesses pay
all other expenses and give members asmall stipend.45 hour weekly (including work in
community businesses).
Members work for community
businesses, though they may work atoutside jobs if they choose.INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 163

owned cabin. Lost V alley members pay from $75
to $225 for community-owned cabins or housingunits, and Abundant Dawn members pay from$50 to $150 for community-owned space(although they can also build their own tempo-rary or permanent housing, and/or bring in atemporary mobile home.) Dancing Rabbit mem-bers can rent community-owned (or subcommu-nity-owned) cabins for $70 to $150. DancingRabbit and Earthaven members lease their indi-vidual home sites, and must pay construction
costs for building their own individual or sharedhomes. Meadowdance members share the housethey own together.
Site Lease Fees and the Debt Load
Dancing Rabbit’s founders wanted to keepexpenses affordable, not only because of theirvalues, but also because of the low incomes peo-ple would likely earn in a rural area as remote astheirs. So they set up their internal financeswithout a joining fee, and assess members twopercent of their annual income every year.
They also set up a system of site leases with
a minimum of about 2,500 square feet per per-son (an area corresponding to 50 by 50 feet,enough for a small cabin and a garden), andcharge one cent per square foot per month, orapproximately $25 a month per leased site.People can lease more than one site, dependingon the size of their household and how muchspace they want, and can also lease business andgardening sites. They can also choose not to leasespace, but rent community-owned housinginstead. The founders set it up so that regardlessof the number of members or any change in theirdebt load, this low monthly assessment remainsthe same.
For their first three years, from 1996 through
1998, they paid slightly over $1,000 a monthtowards two of their private loans, and in 1999, at
the end of their three-year grace period from theirthird loan, began paying about $2,750 a month.As of 2002, with 16 members leasing 20 home,garden, and business sites, this wasn’t enough tomake the payments, even with their annualincome of approximately $12,000 a year fromConservation Resource Program payments. Butthis wasn’t a problem, since they’d planned fromthe beginning to run on a deficit budget until theygot enough members to lease enough sites, sup-plementing their site lease fees and CRP pay-ments with money from their development/con-tingency fund. As soon as they lease 30 sites,they’ll have enough monthly income, supplement-ed by the annual CRP payments, to pay theirloans without dipping into any other sources. Andwith 40 sites, they’ll have enough for maintenance,repair, capital improvements, and so on.
Earthaven’s site lease arrangement is quite
different. The founders raised the funds fortheir down payment and early developmentcosts by paying one-time site lease fees of$10,000 for roughly quarter-acre residential andbusiness sites. Some paid all cash, others paidhalf down with monthly payments, and someleased both business and residential sites. Thenext year, to pay off their owner-financers, theyrefinanced, creating the EarthShares fund witha series of small private loans from members,founders, and supporters.
They intended to pay off the EarthShares
loans from additional one-time site lease fees aswell as joining fees from incoming membersover the years. The site lease fees had to meetthe following criteria. (1) They had to be lowenough to be affordable, considering that mem-bers would also pay a joining fee and construc-tion costs for building their homes. (2) Theyhad to represent a reasonable value, based on the
164 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

increasing amount of community infrastruc-
ture. (3) They had to be high enough to gener-ate enough annual income for Earthaven tomeet its loan payments and maintenance proj-ects, and generate enough total income to even-tually pay off the EarthShares fund and build allthe community’s planned roads, bridges, andcommunity buildings.
The founders met this challenge by planning
a population of 150 adult members, their esti-mated carrying capacity of the land in terms offood self-reliance based on 55 to 66 quarter-acresites. They set the joining fee at $1,000, raising itover the years to $4,000, and began graduallyincreasing the original site lease fee of $10,000.(As of 2002, the site lease fee was $17,000.)
They later added a compact site designation,
roughly an eighth-acre for 60 percent of the fullsite fee, and are considering “common-wall” high-density sites of housing units in apartment-likebuildings with shared yards for half of the full-site fee When all potential sites are leased andthe community is full, maintenance and newdevelopment funds will come from members’monthly assessments, from annual fees fromshorter-term leases for business sites, and fromrevenue-generating events and services for thepublic. (See T able 7.)
Labor Requirements
Another source of wealth in a community’sinternal economy is the labor it asks of eachmember on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis.Community labor tasks can range from con-struction, maintenance, and repair, to house-keeping of common areas, bookkeeping, variousclerical tasks, and answering correspondence. Ifthe community grows its own food and shares allor some common meals, labor tasks will alsoinclude gardening, shopping, cooking, and clean-up. If members work at one or more community
businesses, that labor is included as well.
Communities need to create a budget for
their labor needs, just they do for financialneeds. This important step is easy to overlookunless you realize that your members’ skills andenergy are equivalent to money, and that each ofyou will be responsible for a portion of labor tohelp make the community viable. How muchlabor is required per person per week (or permonth, per year, or for the first ten years) — andhow you allocate it — depends on the numberand kind of tasks you hope to accomplish(building a road, remodeling a building, creatinga bookkeeping system or a website, and so on),how many hours you estimate each task willtake, your number of members, and when you’dlike to finish these tasks. If you don’t create alabor budget, you’ll be forever tempted to addnew projects and ask the community to allocatelabor credit for them, leaving you wonderingwhy you have six half-done construction proj-ects sitting around for years.
As with every other aspect of community
economics, labor requirements vary widely,mostly depending on whether or not the group isdeveloping raw land, how quickly the groupwants to accomplish its goals, how much com-mon space or common activities the groupshares, and how many members are splitting thework. Groups that cook and eat together usuallyrequire a greater amount of community laborthan those in which members have their ownkitchens. Among the communities we’ve beenexamining, labor requirements vary from lessthan an hour a week to ten hours a week. Mostcommunities include community meetings aspart of their labor requirements. At Lost V alley,for example, four of the required ten hours week-ly are for full-group or committee meetings.INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 165

166 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
As in most communities, Earthaven’s
founders spent an enormous amount of laborcreating their financial and governance systemsand their physical infrastructure, and wanted tofind a way for incoming members to match that.So, in the late 1990s, they set up a system where-by all members owe at least 1,500 hours’ labor intheir first ten years of membership, whichmatches what most founders have already con-tributed. Although this averages out to about 3hours a week, Earthaven members can arrangetheir 1500 hours any way they like over the tenyears, as long as they work a minimum of 50hours a year, or pay the equivalent in cash, meas-ured at $7 an hour.
Abundant Dawn has a labor requirement
but doesn’t require a specific number of hoursper week. They hold a labor review meetingevery few months in which members let eachother know what they’ve done since the previouslabor review. Feedback in these meetings caninclude the observation that someone may beworking considerably more hours than others, ora s k i n g s o m e o n e t o d o m o r e c o m m u n i t y w o r k .Their amount of labor is related to the need;during one period it averaged about 10-12 hoursper member per week.
Earthaven and Dancing Rabbit each set up
internal currency systems (Dancing Rabbit“Hours” and Earthaven “Leaps”) for exchanginggoods and services with the community and witheach other, and for keeping track of labor hoursowed to the community. Both currencies arebased on an hour’s labor valued at $7.
Meadowdance members observed that they
engage in many kinds of work that cannot bemeasured in durations of time, such as takingresponsibility for a certain aspect of communi-ty life, or making sure other people are signedup for a particular job, so they made up a unitof work requirement called “Responsibility
Points” or RPs. Even though some RPs are con-ferred for oversight or supervisory functionsthat don’t necessarily take up time, RPs arenevertheless equivalent to about 15 minuteseach. The community requires 180 RPs permember weekly (about 45 hours), which hasaveraged at about 16.5 hours working at com-munity businesses and 28.5 hours workingnon-business community activities per week.Non-business activities include building main-tenance, shopping, cooking, and cleaning,learning and recreational activities with thekids, computer repairs, and management activ-ities such as dealing with taxes, insurance, pay-ing bills, answering correspondence, and partic-ipating in whole-group meetings and commit-tees (land search, work requirements, insur-ance, finance, and so on).
Sowing Circle/OAEC’s labor system is also
not based on required hours, but on require-ments to accomplish different kinds of tasks invarious time periods (although the hours averageout to about 7-10 a week). For example, with tencurrently active community members (at a com-munity where they share all meals), each isrequired to cook once in two weeks and do dish-es once a week, with an intern’s help. Every mem-ber and intern must do a basic housekeeping-type task for the community listed on the“Chore Wheel,” each of which takes three to sixhours a month. Every two months they rotatethe wheel and everyone gets a new chore. Everymember participates in two-hour communitymeetings once a week, three-to-four-hour “deepcheck-in” meetings every other month, and half-day long-term planning sessions and half-daywork parties every few months. In addition, eachmember is responsible for one of ten “workspheres” (for example, wildlands management,

INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 167
finances, development and planning, mainte-
nance), with two or three other members assist-ing, so every member is involved in several workspheres. Each work sphere can take from a fewhours to many per month, depending on a worksphere’s requirements at the time, and how muchenergy the member responsible for it wants todevote to it. (See T able 7.)
Every community we’ve studied depends for
much of its labor on interns — people who workfor the community for several weeks to severalmonths in exchange for room and board (andwho sometimes pay a small amount for the expe-rience). Interns are an invaluable source of com-munity labor — and often a source of potentialnew members as well.
Building Equity
If a community as a whole owns all the propertyand no members hold title to their own lots orhousing units, it’s still possible for the membersto build equity in the property — meaning theyare reimbursed all or part of their founders con-tribution and/or land payments if they leave.Usually such reimbursements come from thefunds of incoming members, often paid out inmany installments over time. And even in thosecommunities that aren’t set up for anyone tobuild equity in the property, members may haveequity in the home they’ve built, or in otherimprovements to their site, which they can usu-ally sell to other members before leaving,depending on the community’s agreements.
Sowing Circle/OAEC members have equity,
but it’s tied to how much they’ve paid in, not toproperty value. As described above, departingmembers would be reimbursed their founder’scontribution and the total amount of principalthey’d paid in monthly payments for all themonths they’d lived there, adjusted for inflation(about $35,000 by 2002). Funds for each reim-
bursement fee would come primarily from thejoining fee of an incoming member, and wouldnot be available unless a new member joined.
Earthaven members don’t have equity in the
strict sense of the term, since everyone owns allof the land (and its bylaws prevent it ever sellingthe land for speculative gain). Members can,however, sell their site leases back to the commu-nity at the same price they paid, depending onthe community’s financial health at the time, andthe community can lease that site to an incomingmember at the current lease fee. Departingmembers can also sell their houses, and anyother site improvements, to incoming members.
Departing Abundant Dawn members who
have lived there longer than three years have thepossibility of partial equity in the property,depending on what the community decides atthe time. If approved by the community at thetime, departing members would be reimbursed25 percent of their monthly land payments forevery year they’d paid in after their first threeyears (minus certain adjustments), over the samenumber of years as they lived in the communityafter the three-year mark.
For example, if a household lived there five
years and left, they’d be reimbursed 25 percent ofthe land payments they made in years four andfive in payments over a two-year period. There’sno profit on the 25 percent equity reimburse-ment, even though the property value will haveincreased, but the amount is adjusted for the costof living. If the departing members had built ahome, they could sell it to incoming members.
Departing members of Lost V alley and
Dancing Rabbit aren’t reimbursed any part oftheir assessments, but if they’ve built homes,they may sell them to incoming members.Departing Meadowdance members also receive

no reimbursements, since they didn’t pay into
assessments for expenses (profit from businessespaid for this) or for building homes or housingunits, as they intend that profits from the busi-ness will pay for members’ homes also. However,depending on what the community decides atthe time, departing Meadowdance members maybe given financial assistance to help them get setup outside the community. If the departingmembers loaned the community money, loan-repayment priorities will be shifted in order toreimburse them sooner. (See T able 7.)
The combination of these assessments and
fees, and issues of equity, helps determine notonly how easily you can live in your community,but also how attractive you may be to potentialnew members.
Can People Afford to Join You?
In the late 1990s, Patricia Greene and JohnCharamella wanted to find the right communityto join. As experienced communitarians, theyassumed this would be reasonably easy financially,since they were debt-free and could sell theirhome for more than enough to pay a joining feeand build a modest house, and they could trans-plant their tile-laying business anywhere therewere enough potential customers. They wereseeking a community in which members hadindependent finances, in a rural area with no tolow zoning and building codes. They assumedthey’d pay from $10,000 to $15,000 in joining feesand site-lease fees or the right to build on a foot-print of land, and about $40,000 to build a housewith their own sweat equity. But after researchingcommunities on the web, and by e-mailing andphoning communities and taking several extend-ed trips to visit the most promising ones, theyended up wondering whether the average commu-nity seeker could afford to join any community.At one end of the affordability scale they
found a 25-year old community whose foundershad long ago paid off and developed the land andweren’t seeking reimbursement. Members livedin small, rustic cabins without water or electrici-ty, and shared meals and took showers in a cen-tral community building. The community want-ed to make living there affordable enough somembers didn’t have to work at outside jobs, sothere was no joining fee, a nominal monthly feefor room and board, and an 18-hour weeklywork requirement. T o discourage new membersfrom starting construction and then leavingbehind a half-built building, the community wasconsidering requiring a $10,000 bond from newmembers planning to build, to be returned tothem when the house was built. And if membersleft, their home would belong to the community.
But mostly Patricia and John found commu-
nities at the other end of the affordability scale.One had a $80,000 joining fee, as well as month-ly payments for overhead. Another communitylooked reasonable — at first. It was $5,000 tojoin, with a $250 per person monthly mortgageassessment. Because members shared meals andtook showers in a central community building,Patricia and John figured it would cost about$25,000 to owner-build a small home withoututilities. But when they added the $5,000 joiningfee, a $25,000 home-building cost, and $250 foreach of them monthly, after 10 years they wouldhave paid $90,000, after 15 years, $120,000, after20 years, $150,000 — all with no equity.
They liked a third community immensely.
The joining fee was a modest $1,200-$2,400 slid-ing scale. The property was paid for, so there wasno mortgage assessment. The monthly fees were$100 to $150 per person rent for one or tworooms and the use of all common facilities, and a$600 per person monthly assessment for food,
168 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

health insurance, community utilities and main-
tenance. If they lived there without building,they’d pay $1,450 a month for both of them forthree rooms, food and insurance. T o build, they’dpay a one-time non-refundable infrastructure feeof $15,000, which went towards the community’smaintenance and development of roads, watersystems, and the off-grid power system. Addedto this was approximately $40,000 to owner-build their house. The work requirement was 15hours a week. But then they did the math. Theyfigured what they’d pay over 10 and 15 years, andwhat they’d get, deducting what food and healthinsurance would have cost if they’d paid it ontheir own, and realized that the exceptionallyhigh work requirement would prevent themfrom either building their home quickly, or frombeing able to work much outside and generateany savings. Coupled with the fact that they’dhave no equity in the property, it just wasn’tworth it.
Patricia and John’s experiences illustrate how
your community’s internal finances can attract orrepel the new members who could make yourland payments more affordable. Y ou’ll need tocreate a balance between how affordable andattractive your community may be, and howmuch revenue and labor you’ll need from eachmember to finish paying off your property pay-ments and building infrastructure. And part of
this attractiveness is whether or not your com-munity allows members to build any equity theycould take with them if they left.
The Internal Community Finances chart
illustrates the relative financial ease of joiningsome of the communities described in this book.Newcomers to Dancing Rabbit, AbundantDawn, and Earthaven would need to bring theirjobs or sole-proprietorship businesses with themor find a way to make a living in a rural county.Their highest expense would be the one-timecost of building a home, which they’d need to dowith their own funds or private loans (or a bankloan if they had other property or assets as col-lateral). Building a home would most likely costmore at Earthaven, since members need to clearand grade their sites and set up off-grid power aswell as build homes. If newcomers to Lost V alleydidn’t work for the conference center businessthey’d need to find a way to make a living in thatrural setting as well.
/fl1lft
In Chapters 15 and 16 we’ll return to some of themost basic tools for growing a community —legal entities that help us buy, finance, develop,and own property in accordance with our values.INTERNAL COMMUNITY FINANCES (CAN WE AFFORD TO LIVE THERE?) 169

170IHOPE IT ’S ABUNDANTLY CLEAR by now that
you should set up the legal entity for owning
property before beginning the search. Choosing
the right one for your community is a process ofassessing available legal entities in terms of sev-eral different issues that will affect your commu-nity’s functioning and well-being. Y ou’ll need toconsider issues such as how you’ll hold title toland, property rights, financing options, mem-bers’ liability, tax consequences, and how attrac-tive you’ll be to new members. Not every legalentity will be ideal in every area, so you’ll need toanalyze them for the best balance of benefits ineach of these areas.
Of course, you should seek the advice of a
lawyer you trust about these matters. This bookdoes not presume to offer legal advice, but ratherto describe how some communities deal withthese issues.
Checklist for Choosing a Legal Entity
Here’s a checklist for the legal entities you’reconsidering (based on a checklist created byDave Henson, cofounder of Sowing Circle/OAEC).
1. How will your community hold title to the
land? Will this legal entity support it? 2. Will this legal entity (and the way you hold
title to land) allow you to choose who willjoin you as a member?
3. Will this legal entity offer liability protec-
tion? For the group? For each of you as indi-viduals?
4. Will it allow members to build equity in the
community, and take all or part of it whenthey leave?
5. How would this legal entity influence banks
or private lenders in deciding whether to refi-nance a mortgage or make a constructionloan? For the community? For individualmembers?
6. Does this legal entity allow the community
to assign its own criteria for decision mak-ing, in terms of how decisions are made andwho can make them? (See below.)
7. Does it allow the community to determine
the relationship between the amount ofmembers’ financial contributions and theirownership rights? Between their contribu-tions and their decision-making rights?
8. How will your community collect contribu-
tions from members (joining fees, site-leasefees, periodic assessments)? And what willbe its expenses (mortgage payments, proper-ty taxes, property insurance, maintenance,/fl1lftChapter 15 /fl1rt
Legal Entities for Owning Property

capital improvements)? How will your legal
entity treat this income and expenses for taxpurposes?
9. Will your members share incomes? If so, will
it be from profits of community-owned busi-nesses, from earnings of outside jobs, orboth? What kinds of member expenses willbe paid by the community? How will yourlegal entity treat your shared income andexpenses for tax purposes?
10. How easy will this legal entity be to set up or
manage over time? How vulnerable is it tochanges in the law, or to IRS or other govern-mental scrutiny? How much are annual filingfees?
11. How easy would it be to make changes in
this legal entity’s controlling documents, orto manage the legal and ownership implica-tions of people joining or leaving?
12. Will this legal entity restrict your group from
engaging in political activity?
While these questions may seem technical,
their answers reflect your community’s basicvalues. So the questions underlying all theseother questions are: Does this legal entityinherently support your community’s vision,mission, and values? Does it support your own-ership, financing and decision-making struc-ture?
Let’s explore some of these questions.
How You’ll Hold Title and Arrange
Members’ Use Rights
There are probably as many ways to organize
land ownership and use rights and finance con-struction of homes in community as there arecommunities. Y ou need to think about theseissues now, before buying property, because yourmethod of land ownership and internal financ-ing both influences and is influenced by the legal
entity you choose, and different legal entitiesresolve these issues differently. Let’s look atsome of the ways your community could dothis.
Buying Raw Land
Like Dancing Rabbit, you could buy
property and lease individual homesitesto members for quarterly or yearly leasefees. Or, like Earthaven, you could use 99-year renewable, transferable leases andreceive substantial fees for homesites,almost like “buying” the sites.
Y ou could assign homesites to members
without using leases at all, but assignthem based on your members’ equity con-tributions. Let’s say you had 10 memberhouseholds who each contributed$30,000 to buy a $300,000 property, andyou designated a five-acre homesite foreach. Or , if you got private financing or abank loan to buy the property, you couldassign yourselves the same homesites andeach pay an equal portion of the mort-gage.
In any of the above scenarios, each of
your member households could pay theconstruction costs for their own houses.Then you’d each own your homes but notthe ground beneath them.
The community could front the con-
struction costs for each house, with mem-bers leasing or renting their houses fromthe community until they’d paid off thecommunity’s construction costs plusinterest. Then you’d own the homes, butnot the ground beneath them.LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 171

In all the above cases, if members left, they
could sell their portion of equity in their housesto incoming members.
As Meadowdance intends to do, the com-
munity could pay construction costs tobuild housing for members, with mem-bers working at community-owned busi-nesses and receiving a small stipend. Nomember would own their own home, butall members own everything.
Each member household could loan your
community the money to build thehomes, and trade the construction costplus interest for as many years of free rentas it took to pay off each member house-hold’s loan. After the loan was paid off,you’d pay rent for the use of community-owned housing.
Y ou could subdivide the property, and
individual member households could holdtitle to their own lots. If you had 10 mem-ber households and bought 50 acres, forexample, you could split it into 10 five-acrelots, or into 10 three-acre lots and shareownership of the remaining 20 acres.
In the same circumstances, you could cre-
ate a cohousing community, with eachmember household owning title to itsindividual lot and housing unit, andeveryone sharing ownership of all the restof the property and all common facilities.
Buying developed land
Like Sowing Circle/OAEC, you could
each live in already-existing communityhousing, with your individual monthlyland payments conferring that right.Like Lost V alley, you could each rent
already-existing community housing,with money you received for working off-site or at a community business.
Like Abundant Dawn, you could rent
already-existing community housing orbuild your own temporary or permanenthousing that you’d then own individually(but not the ground beneath it).
Like Meadowdance (currently), you
could all live in a house your communityowns.
Like Mariposa Grove, you could create a
limited equity housing co-op and eachown a share of the whole property, with alease that allows you to live in “your”housing unit.
Y ou could arrange two or more of these
methods in combination.
How you decide to arrange your ownership
and use rights affects how attractive your com-munity may be to potential members, how youcan finance building your homes, and how muchcontrol you have over your membership process.
Attractiveness to Members
How you own land and apportion use rights willaffect whether and how members may recover allor part of their equity if they leave the commu-nity, or if the community disbands. If you setthings up so that it’s relatively easy for membersto recover equity from, say, site lease fees or con-struction costs, you’ll attract members more eas-ily. And thus, whichever legal entity you choosewill make this particular choice of land owner-ship and use rights easier or more difficult toexecute.172 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Affordability of Building New Housing
Y our choices about ownership and use rights will
also affect how affordable your members’ hous-ing might be if they have to build their ownhomes. For example, if your members held titleto their own plots of ground or individual hous-ing units, they could seek mortgages or construc-tion loans, but if your whole community ownsthe land, your members could either pay cash tobuild their homes, or get private loans with otherproperty or assets as collateral.
Control of Your Membership Process
Y our choices about ownership and use rightswill also affect how much control your com-munity may have over who joins you in thefuture. If your members hold title to their ownplots of ground or individual housing units,but to get members you offer these plots orhousing units on the open market, you mayhave to sell to any interested buyer who canmeet your terms. Thus, you have little controlover who joins you as members. And even ifsomeone leaving your community didn’t intendtheir property for public sale, but to be soldonly to incoming members who’ve gonethrough your member-screening process, thegovernment may assume otherwise. TheFederal Fair Housing Act was enacted to pro-tect buyers from discrimination, so that sellerscan’t refuse to sell to a qualified home buyer onthe basis of race, gender, age, religion, ornational origin. If you decline to sell your com-munity home to a qualified buyer who is not acommunity member, would a court say you areyou breaking the law? Several real estatelawyers have told me that the penalties forbreaking this Act, or even being accused ofintending to break it, are so swift and devastat-ing that they advise against testing it.On the other hand, the buyers of property
for sale in a community may be self-limiting, asmany cohousing communities have found.Relatively few average home buyers are interest-ed in buying homes in cohousing communities;usually, incoming members who buy the homesof departing cohousing members are interestedin cohousing themselves, and it tends to workwell for the community and the new residents.But not always — and when it doesn’t work out,there’s nothing the community can do about it.
As you can see, how your community holds
title to land can cause a trade-off between afford-able housing and control over membership.Again, you must think about this now so you canchoose a legal entity that meets your needs inthese areas.
Organizational Flexibility
The legal entity you choose will also impact yourinternal agreements about finances and rights andresponsibilities. For example, if each member putsin differing financial contributions, do they havedifferent rights and responsibilities in terms ofpaying taxes, responsibility for maintenance andrepairs, liability for debts and damages, enjoymentof the land, choice of homesite, tax-write offs fortax-exempt expenses, and decision-making?
Whichever legal entity you choose will affect
your freedom to determine these issues your-selves. A Limited Liability Company (LLC), forexample, allows you to arrange these matters anyway you like, as long as you spell it out in youroperating agreements when you file with yourstate. State regulations for various kinds of cor-porations stipulate how you must organize theseissues, although in some cases you can createinternal community agreements that apportionthese rights and responsibilities differently thanyour state’s default requirements.LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 173

How You’ll be Taxed
How you set up the internal finances of your
community will affect the amount and kinds ofincome your community receives, which willaffect how you’ll be taxed, depending on yourchoice of legal entities. Since a community isn’tusually a for-profit enterprise, what are sourcesof community “income” that could be taxed?
1. Fees collected from members for mainte-
nance and repair of the community’s landand buildings, income taxes and propertytaxes, and insurance.
2. Fees collected from members for mortgage
payments or other loan payments.
3. Fees collected from members and saved for
longer than a year, such as for maintenanceand/or capital improvements, or savings forany possible future use.
4. Rental or lease fees for community buildings
or land, from community members or non-community members (the IRS can tax theseincome sources differently).
5. Income from the sale of products, such as
timber, firewood, or agricultural products, orthe sale or lease of rights to products, such aswater, mineral, or timber rights.
6. Interest from loans to members, such as
when the community allows members to paysite leases or housing lease fees throughmonthly payments.
Y ou may want to estimate your likely
amounts of income from these sources ahead oftime, and factor the taxation of that income intoyour choice of legal entity.
This chapter offers brief descriptions of
Limited Liability Companies, homeowners’associations, condominium associations, housingcooperatives, and non-exempt non-profit corpo-rations (which have no special IRS tax status),
with advantages and disadvantages of each andexamples of communities that use them.
Chapter 16 gives brief descriptions of non-
profit 501(c)3 corporations (especially in con-junction with separate land-owning legal enti-ties), 501(c)2 non-profits, land trusts,Community Land T rusts, and 501(d) non-prof-its, again with pros and cons and examples ofcommunities that use them.
The information in this chapter and in
Chapter 16 is simply an overview, and not meantas a replacement for your own further research— through additional reading (see Resources),talking with other community founders, and theadvice of your group’s attorney.
Having said that, let’s start with a basic defi-
nition of a corporation.
Overview: Corporations and Non-profit
Corporations
Corporations. A corporation is a legal structure
that, like a person, can enter into contracts, buyand sell goods and services, borrow money, andpay taxes. It is considered an entity distinct fromthe people who own or operate it, so that anycriminal charges, business claims, or lawsuits canbe filed against the corporation but not againsti t s o w n e r s ,d i r e c t o r s ,o f f i c e r s ,e m p l o y e e s ,o rshareholders. They have “limited liability” andcannot be held personally liable for the corpora-tion’s debts. (It’s “limited” rather than zero liabil-ity, because if the corporation is found to beoperating solely so its owners can dodge taxes orbreak the law, the courts can prosecute them per-sonally and/or attach their personal assets.)
Corporations are organized at the state,
rather than the federal level, and are thereforeregulated by the state. A corporation is createdby filing articles of incorporation, paying the174 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

state’s fees, and preparing bylaws and other
required documents. A corporation can beformed for any lawful purpose, and most canissue shares of stock to people (shareholders)who invest money or property in the corporationor provide it with some kind of service.Shareholders receive money back on their invest-ment when the corporation declares and paysdividends, or if any assets remain when the cor-poration is dissolved. One way of distinguishingtypes of corporations is by how they pay taxes;two of the most common taxation systems are Ccorporations and subchapter S corporations.
Non-profit corporations. Also called non-stock
corporations, non-profits are a special kind ofcorporation organized to benefit the public or acertain group of people, rather than to make aprofit. No income from a non-profit corporationmay be distributed to its members, directors, orofficers, although it can pay its employees rea-sonable wages or salaries, and sometimes its offi-cers are paid employees.
Corporations intended to be non-profit must
be so designated when they’re created, and canonly pursue activities permitted by the statutesfor non-profit organizations. Like other corpora-tions, non-profits can enter into contracts, haveemployees, pay taxes, and borrow money. Whilea non-profit corporation is accountable to credi-tors and any lawsuits, its founders, directors, offi-cers, and employees are protected by limited lia-bility.
Non-profit corporations don’t issue shares of
stock or pay dividends, and don’t have sharehold-ers. (Exceptions are certain hybrid corporationssuch as cooperative corporations used by certainkinds of co-ops, including housing co-ops.)
Like any other corporation, a non-profit
corporation is created by filing the requireddocuments with a particular state — the docu-
ments for a non-profit corporation will beslightly different from those for a for-profit cor-poration. Exemption from income tax is deter-mined at the federal level.
Exempt non-profit corporations. The IRS offers
approximately 20 different non-profit tax-exemptstatus types. Some of these the group can simplyselect each year, such as Section 528 for a home-
LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 175
SOME BASIC TERMS
Limited liability. The protection offered by a corporation
(for-profit or non-profit), which means the personalassets of the shareholders, founders, board members,officers, or employees are not vulnerable to most debtsor lawsuits filed against the organization.
Double taxation. In a for-profit corporation such as a C
corporation, any taxable income which is paid to itsshareholders as dividends will be taxed twice: once atthe corporate level, at a rate of at least 15 percent; andagain when individual shareholders pay taxes on thosedividends.
Pass-through tax status. A taxation method used by
partnerships, limited liability companies, and subchapterS corporations, in which the legal entity pays no taxesdirectly. Any taxable income (or loss) is divided up andpassed to its partners, members or owners, who paytaxes on the income (or deduct the loss) on their person-al income tax returns. The purpose of pass-through taxa-tion is to avoid the double taxation of most for-profit cor-porations. Pass-through taxation is a favorable tax methodin circumstances in which a legal entity would pay divi-dends which would be taxed at both the corporate andindividual level, and in cases in which the individual taxrate would be lower than the corporate tax rate.

owners association, while others, such as Section
501(c)3, must be petitioned from the IRS, andinvolve filling out many documents and awaitingthe IRS’s approval of this requested status.
Non-exempt non-profit corporations. When a
group files with the state to form a non-profit cor-poration, but doesn’t apply for or choose any tax-exempt status with the IRS, it could be called anon-exempt non-profit. A non-exempt non-prof-it pays taxes just as any other corporation.
Now let’s examine five types of legal entities
used by communities to own property.
Limited Liability Companies (LLCs)
The founders of Sowing Circle/OAEC set uptwo legal entities and a lease to support theirintentions and goals. They own their propertywith a Limited Liability Company (LLC),which, like a corporation, offers its owners limit-ed liability. They operate the OAEC with a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation, which leases theproperty from their LLC.
Advantages of LLCs
A limited liability company offers limited liabili-ty just as a corporation does, and pass throughtax benefits, just as a partnership does. (It has farfewer requirements than a subchapter S corpora-tion, as well; for example, there’s no limitation onthe number of owners.) As in corporations andpartnerships, people put their money in the LLCand receive a percentage of ownership interest inreturn. A relatively new legal entity, the LLC wasfirst introduced in 1977, and became more wide-ly accepted after an IRS ruling in 1997. Now it’srecognized in all 50 states, though its regulationsdiffer somewhat from state to state.
Sowing Circle’s LLC owns all the land, and
individual members live in its cabins. Each mem-ber pays a monthly fee for community expenses,
including the property’s mortgage and otherland-purchase loans. Because they own theirland this way, they can control their membershipprocess.
An LLC could also be used to own the orig-
inal property that a community later subdividedinto individually owned plots for members,which would allow those members to seek mort-gages or other bank financing for buildinghomes. If so, the community would no longer beable to control who joined them.
Each Sowing Circle member, through their
monthly payments, is building equity in thecommunity, most of which they can take withthem if they leave, but only if a new memberbuys into the community, with the new memberpaying off the departing member. However, acommunity owning property with an LLC couldcertainly retain ownership of all the equity adeparting member had paid into the community,or of any dwelling the departing member built.An LLC’s members can decide such matters anyway they like, as long as their policy is stated inthe documents they file with the state, which iscalled an operating agreement.
Sowing Circle’s founders included their most
important agreements in the operating agree-ment — their vision, mission, and goals; howthey will operate; how they will share ownershipinterests, profits, losses, rights, responsibilities,and liabilities; how they might sell any owner-ship interests back to the community; and whatprocedure they would use to disband the com-munity and dispose of its assets. An LLC usual-ly costs more than a partnership to set up, andunlike with partnerships, requires paying statefiling fees.
As mentioned earlier, an LLC is consider-
ably more flexible than other legal entities. For176 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

example, in an LLC the amount of ownership
interest per member need not match the actualamounts of money contributed by each member,but can be apportioned any way the groupdecides. If six members each put in $20,000 andseven put in $5,000, all 13 members couldreceive equal ownership interest, equal decision-making rights, equal distribution of annualprofits and losses, and equal shares of assets ifthe group ever disbanded and sold the property.Or, the 13 members could have ownershipshares in proportion to their financial contribu-tions, but their decision-making rights couldstill be equal. An LLC can also allow differentkinds of decision-making rights for differentkinds of members. For example, a communitycould have supporter/members who invest acertain designated amount of money but don’tlive at the property, and resident/members whodo live there. Supporter/members could beinvolved in decisions that affect land value butnot day-to-day decisions, which could be limit-ed to resident/members only. If members dodecide to apportion their rights differently thanthe amounts they each invest, or have severalkinds of membership, they should state thisclearly in their operating agreement so the IRSwon’t contest it later.
Like a corporation, an LLC must prepare
and file organizational documents with the state,pay filing fees, and adopt operating rules thatoutline the basic legal requirements for operatingunder state law. Unlike a corporation, LLC s arenot legally required to keep minutes, hold meet-ings, or make resolutions. An LLC passes its tax-able income and tax-deductible expenses on toeach member; however, an LLC can also chooseto be taxed like a corporation to save tax costs incertain situations.Disadvantages of LLCs
Pass-through taxation is only beneficial to indi-vidual members if they’re in a 15 percent orLEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 177
WHY NOT USE A PARTNERSHIP OR A
SUBCHAPTER S CORPORATION?
A partnership offers pass-through tax status, and unlike an
LLC, a community organized as a partnership can accu-mulate savings over the years without having to pass thetax liability for such “profit” onto its members. But a part-nership offers no limited liability, and any partner can acton behalf of the whole partnership — including signingcontracts and borrowing money for it-and such contractsor debts are binding on the partnership as a whole, evenif no other partners agreed. Thus all partners are jointlyand severally liable, which means each partner is liablefor all the debts and liabilities of the partnership. A cred-itor or the plaintiff in a lawsuit can go after all of the mem-bers, or single out only the richest member, to collect thedebts of or the court-mandated damages against thewhole community.
Subchapter S corporations, created for small busi-
nesses, were more commonly used before LLCs cameonto the scene. Most communities which would havepreviously chosen an S corporation (such as manycohousing communities) now use an LLC instead. An Scorporation offers limited liability and pass-through taxstatus, but has more rules and regulations than an LLC,especially in terms of taxes, and is more complex toadminister. It wouldn’t work for a large community, as Scorporations can have no more than 35 members.
“I’m not aware of any reason to form an S corporation
over an LLC,” says Sowing Circle/OAEC cofounder DaveHenson.
For more information about partnerships, limited
partnerships, and other legal entities communities tendto choose less often, see the author’s website<www.CreatingALifeTogether.org>.

lower tax bracket, (the same as corporate taxes).
For any members with middle-class incomes,however, their tax rate would likely be 27.5 or 30percent, almost twice the corporate rate. Also,the IRS will consider any savings the LLC accu-mulates by the end of the year to be “profit,” andthe tax liability for these funds must be distrib-uted (“passed-through”) to each member thatyear.Homeowners Associations — Tax
Advantages (and Disadvantages)
In Colorado’s brilliant sunshine, a few miles east
of Boulder where the Rockies meet the plains, isNyland Cohousing. With 42 two-story town-homes, each painted a different brilliant color,Nyland is one of the largest cohousing commu-nities in the United States. Members share a 178 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
Community Associations (also known as “common
interest community associations” or “master plannedcommunities”) are generic terms for ways people canown shared property together. They include:
1. Homeowners associations, also called “planned
communities” or “planned unit developments,” or,by the IRS, “residential real estate management asso-ciations,” generally own the common areas of theproperty.
2. Condominium associations own no property, but
have a responsibility to manage and maintain all of thecommon elements; that is, all property outside theinterior walls of the individual housing units.
3. Cooperatives, more commonly called housing
co-ops, own the property, while residents ownshares in the housing co-op and lease their individualunits from it.
Community associations are regulated at the state
level, and laws vary from state to state. What is calleda homeowners association in one state may be calleda planned community in another. Community associa-tions are usually set up by developers of real estate subdivisions and multifamily developments, and are
used by the residents to own and manage their sharedproperty together. Intentional communities can usethese forms of property ownership as well.
Community associations are required to have a
board of directors, regularly elected officers, andannual meetings, and, through an elected board ofdirectors, make decisions about the operations of theassociation. Typically, either the board of directorsmanages and maintains the common property, or theyhire a manager or management company to do it forthem. In most real estate subdivisions or multifamilydevelopments, the residents don’t get involved in theday-to-day aspects of management. When intentionalcommunities use a community association for proper-ty ownership, quite often all members are on theboard and use that as the body for governing theircommunity. Whether an intentional community choos-es a homeowners association, condominium associa-tion, or housing co-op depends on the approvalsand/or requirements of the state and/or the local plan-ning department, what kinds of terms banks mightoffer, or how readily available financing might be inthat state. Financing for housing co-ops is less avail-able, and usually costs more than financing for eitherhomeowners or condominium associations.
COMMUNITY ASSOCIATIONS AND INTENTIONAL COMMUNITIES

large wooden common house, a woodworking
shop, a large organic garden, and acres of com-mon land. As in most cohousing communities,people hold title to their own housing units andthe ground beneath them. Nyland’s 135 resi-dents share ownership in the rest of the proper-ty as a homeowners association.
While laws for homeowners associations vary
from state to state, in general they require that (1)the homeowners association owns the commonareas such as pathways, parking areas, clubhousefacilities, and so on, and (2) all owners of housingunits must be members of the association andpay regular assessments for the maintenance andmanagement of its common areas. Intentionalcommunities can also use homeowners associa-tions, primarily because (1) they are recognizedlegal entities for owning shared property and get-ting bank financing for individually owned hous-ing units, and (2) some states and municipalitiesrequire that a group intending to have individual-ly owned housing units and shared commonareas organize as a homeowners (or condomini-um) association before its development plan willbe approved by the city or county.
Some cohousing communities, such as
Sonora Cohousing in T ucson, Arizona, havearranged that residents are automatically mem-bers of the homeowners association’s board ofdirectors, and decide all community matters, notjust those of property maintenance, in their reg-ular community meetings. Others, such asNyland Cohousing, set it up so that memberselect a separate board of directors for theirhomeowners association, but all communitymembers are still part of the whole group’s deci-sion-making body. Earthaven uses a homeown-ers association to own its entire property. Unlikein cohousing, members don’t hold title to indi-vidual homesites, but lease them fromEarthaven’s homeowners association with 99-
year leases. All full, active members are membersof Earthaven Association’s board of directors,and, as such, decide all community-wide issues.
Creating a homeowners association requires
forming a non-profit corporation. But ratherthan petitioning the IRS for a particular tax-exempt status (such as when seeking a 501(c)3tax status), each year the community simply filesunder IRS Section 528, which means they caneither pay taxes as a homeowners associationand receive certain tax advantages, or pay as aregular for-profit corporation. (The IRS 528 taxstatus is different from the 501(c)3 non-profittax status used by educational, charitable, or reli-gious organizations to receive tax-deductibledonations. And, unlike a 501(c)3, if a homeown-ers association disbands and sells its property,there’s no IRS requirement that the assets bedonated to another non-profit; the assets are dis-bursed to the property owners as in any otherbusiness.)
Financing advantages — sometimes. Banks and
other lending institutions are familiar withhomeowners associations and are willing to loanto them when they are used in the typical way,with each household holding title to their indi-vidual housing unit and sharing ownership ofcommon elements with other residents. Thus,homeowners associations are advantageous tocohousing residents, who can seek mortgages fortheir individual housing units and recover theirequity if they leave the community. But home-owners associations don’t offer this advantagewhen a community uses it to own all their prop-erty in common, like Earthaven does. Since noEarthaven members hold individual title to theirhomesites, no one can use a homesite as collater-al for a bank mortgage, and so homes must be
LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 179

built with existing assets or personal loans. (This
is not a disadvantage of homeowners associa-tions in general, but a result of Earthaven mem-bers not owning individual homesites.)
Membership control. However, when a commu-
nity such as Earthaven uses a homeowners asso-ciation to own all of its own land, and leasesrather than sells its homesites, it is free to chooseits members. (Again, this is not because of thehomeowners association, but because homesitesare leased to members rather than sold.) But incohousing communities, individual housingunits are sold on the open market (one of therequirements for bank financing), so the com-munity as a whole has no actual control overwho joins them. The Federal Fair Housing Actprohibits discrimination in the sale of real estate,and most cohousing communities I’m aware ofhave been advised by their lawyers to sell towhomever can meet the terms of sale. However,people buying in to new cohousing projects andthrough resales into existing cohousing commu-nities tend to be self-selecting — only those witha fairly strong interest in the cohousing conceptand cooperative decision making are willing toget involved in a lifestyle so unorthodox by main-stream standards.
Member equity. A member household leaving a
cohousing community using a homeownersassociation simply sells their housing unit andrecovers their equity. People leaving a communi-ty that uses a homeowners association likeEarthaven does can recover their equity by sell-ing their site leases back to the community(which resells them to incoming members) andsell their home and other site improvements tothe incoming members.Organizational control and flexibility.
T echnically homeowners associations (and con-dominium associations) don’t have as much flex-ibility in internal agreements about decisionmaking or what degree decision making may betied to the amount of each member’s equity inthe property. Like all organizations that createnon-profit corporations with the state, home-owners and condominium associations must cre-ate bylaws which describe the organization’soverall operations and how it makes decisions,and use the state-mandated boilerplate languagefor these bylaws, which stipulate one vote perhousing unit. However, real estate lawyerCarolyn Goldschmidt has helped severalArizona cohousing communities overcome thislimitation by adding a paragraph to the bylawsempowering the association’s board of directorsto create a policy manual that outlines their deci-sion-making and other internal agreements.Then the policy manual, not the bylaws,becomes the community’s flexible, easily changeddocument, which, if they like, can stipulate thatthey use consensus decision-making and othermatters of community choice.
T ax advantages — and disadvantages. With a
homeowners association, all income collected inany given year for acquiring property, construc-tion, or managing or maintaining its physicalinfrastructure, is tax exempt. But using a home-owners association can also result in a tax liabil-ity, because the income and expense categories ofintentional communities often don’t fit the cate-gories the IRS created for the mainstream hous-ing developments that homeowners associationsare typically used for. In order to get the specialtax breaks of a homeowners association in anygiven year (rather than being required to paytaxes as a corporation), the community must
180 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

meet the “60 percent test” — at least 60 percent
of that year’s gross income, known as “exemptfunction income,” must come from members’dues, fees, or assessments for maintaining andmanaging that physical infrastructure. And itmust meet the “90 percent test” — at least 90percent of its expenses that year must be for theacquisition, construction, management, mainte-nance, or other operating costs of its physicalinfrastructure. But intentional communitiesaren’t just about physical infrastructure. A com-munity, unlike a suburban housing subdivision,might have other sources of income; for example,from a members’ shared meal program, a child-care program, rental or lease income, incomefrom the sale of firewood or building materials,interest on loans to members, or grants or dona-tions earmarked for an education program orcapital improvements.
And here’s the first tax disadvantage: all of
these sources of income are taxed at a flat 30 per-cent. And the second: if these sources total morethan 40 percent of that year’s income, it willreduce the community’s non-exempt functionincome to less than the required 60 percent andthe community won’t be able to pay taxes as ahomeowners association — with exempt func-tion income — and must pay as a corporation.
And, if more than 10 percent of its expenses
that year pay for similar activities that have noth-ing to with managing and maintaining physicalinfrastructure, such as implementing food orchildcare programs, this reduces the community’sexpenses for physical infrastructure to less thanthe required 90 percent, and again, the communi-ty can’t pay taxes as a homeowners associationthat year, but must pay as a corporation instead.
If the community spent all its members dues
and assessments collected that year for physicaloperating expenses, paying taxes as a corporationwouldn’t matter, as it would be a break-even sit-
uation. But if the community had capital expens-es that couldn’t be deducted that year, but whichhad to be depreciated over several years, or if itwanted to save money for future capital expendi-tures or maintenance that wouldn’t be offset byexpenses in the current year, it would not be abreak-even situation, and the community wouldhave to pay as a corporation.
Stuart Kingsbery, a CPA and tax lawyer, and
Pam Ekrem V ogel, an accountant, examined var-ious alternatives to this situation in Cohousing
magazine (Winter, 1995). A community using ahomeowners association could form a second,for-profit or non-profit corporation as a sub-sidiary, through which it conducted all com-munity activities not involved with physicalinfrastructure — a food program, childcareprogram, educational grant program, and so on.(If the subsidiary corporation was for-profit itpresumably would not pay taxes because itwould break even, with any income being rough-ly equal to any expenses.)
If the community used the subsidiary to rent
out space, the rental income would be taxable tothe homeowners association, and should nottotal more than 40 percent of its income. Inorder to satisfy the IRS, the subsidiary corpora-tion must have a separate board of directors,operate independently of the homeowners asso-ciation, and not be considered an agent of thatassociation.
However, there’s no specific guidance from
the IRS about whether creating a subsidiary cor-poration would really work for a communityorganized as a homeowners association, sayKingsbery and V ogel.
“Use caution,” they warn, and first get the
option of competent tax and legal counsel.Another alternative they consider is to create
LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 181

two different legal entities sequentially, starting
with a homeowners association to collect andspend money almost solely on property acquisi-tion, construction, management, and mainte-nance. Delay meal programs, child-care pro-grams, grant-seeking programs, loans to mem-bers, and other projects or activities that don’tinvolve infrastructure until later, when the initialbuilding phase is done. Then dissolve andreplace the homeowners association with a dif-ferent property owning entity such as an LLC ornon-exempt non-profit (making sure yearlyexpenses roughly match income), and whichcould operate any such social, member-loan, andeducational programs without undue tax conse-quences. They advise tax and legal counsel forthis idea as well.
Condominium Associations
Pioneer V alley Cohousing in western Mas-sachusetts consists of 23 acres of woods andfields, an orchard and organic garden, and a con-centric circle of attached and single family housesin red, blue, cream, yellow, green, and brown, plusa large common house, a workshop, and a homeoffice building where several community mem-bers work. Pioneer V alley’s 94 members owntheir property as a condominium association.
As mentioned earlier, in a condominium
association residents generally own the air spaceinside their individual housing units and hold afraction of ownership in the entire property,including all buildings and common areas. Thecondominium association manages and main-tains the property, but owns nothing. The frac-tions of ownership are usually unequal, and arebased on the square footage of the individualhousing units.
Condominiums are more numerous in the
East, and their laws vary from state to state(although many states have adopted the Uniform
Condominium Act). In Massachusetts, residentsown not just the air space of their individualhousing units, but the inside surfaces of thewalls, ceilings, and floors. Still other states allowcondominiums, called “air space condominiums,”on plots of ground, such as that of SharingwoodCohousing in W ashington, in which people canindividually own their own lots and houses, anda fraction of the entire property. (This form ismost often used in rural areas where a drain fieldor leach field needs to be defined as part of thehousing unit, although it can also be used in sit-uations where the building footprint of adetached house is defined as the housing unit.)
Cohousing communities choose condomini-
um associations for property ownership for thesame reasons they choose homeowners associa-tions: they can get bank financing for them, andsome local zoning jurisdictions require eithercondominium or homeowners associations inorder to approve the development.
Depending on state requirements and the
group’s preference, condominium associationsare created by either forming a non-profit corpo-ration or an unincorporated association, and aswith a homeowners association, annually filingtaxes under IRS Section 528. (Most real estatelawyers recommend that a group form a non-profit corporation rather than an unincorporat-ed association, because the former offers liabilityprotection.)
Advantages and Disadvantages of
Condominium Associations
As with homeowners associations, banks are
familiar with condominium associations and willloan to them. Cohousing residents can get bankloans for their individual housing units and canrecover their equity if they leave. However, since182 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

individual homes are sold on the open market,
the community as a whole has no control overwho joins them. Again, as in cohousing commu-nities that use homeowners associations, incom-ing members tend to be self-selecting.
Pioneer V alley chose a condominium associ-
ation because they got better financing termsthan they would have if they’d organized as acooperative, the only other alternative for thiskind of housing available in Massachusetts.Homeowners associations are not available inthat state. Pioneer V alley residents elected aboard of directors from among their members tocarry out certain tasks. Most community deci-sions, however, are made by the membership as awhole at membership meetings.
Because condominium associations must
maintain and manage the physical area, includ-ing the entire property (not just some common-ly shared property), maintenance fees are usuallyproportionately higher than in homeownersassociations.
Housing Co-ops — Separate Ownership
and Use Rights
Members of a housing co-op (also called a coop-
erative or a co-op) are shareholders in a corpora-tion that owns the property. Their shares confermany of the rights of ownership to a particularhousing unit, and a proprietary lease confers theright to live in that unit. Housing co-ops are setup as either non-profit 501(c)4 mutual benefitcorporations, non-profit 501(c)3 public benefitcorporations, or, in some states, as cooperativecorporations, a specialized legal entity createdfor cooperatives. Sometimes a cooperative’s legalentity is a trust, and owners don’t have shares,but have beneficial interests in the trust.Cooperatives are taxed according to their non-profit or cooperative corporation status.If the housing units are of different sizes, or
some are more desirable than others, memberscan either own specific shares for specific hous-ing units (and these shares have different mone-tary values), or a higher number of shares forlarger or more desirable units, depending onstate law. Usually cooperatives are used for own-ing apartments in an apartment building, butland can also be owned this way. MiccosukeeLand Co-op, for example, is a 279-acre inten-tional community near T allahassee, Florida,founded as a cooperative in 1973. Miccosukkee’sfounders designated 100 homesites up to severalacres in size, and share the rest of the property,including 90 acres of protected wetlands. Onehundred shareholding families and individualsjoined the community and built their homes onthese homesites. Members don’t have title toindividual plots of land, and since getting amortgage in a cooperative housing structure isdifficult, Miccosukkee’s members built theirhouses slowly over time, as cash flow permitted.
In a cooperative, shares can pass from one
owner to another through sale or inheritance, butthe right to live in the housing unit, conferred bya lease, must be approved by the whole group orits board of directors. Thus it is possible forsomeone to buy or inherit shares in a housing co-op but not be approved by the group to live there(which usually means they must sell their unit toa new shareholder approved by the co-op.)
Advantages and Disadvantages of Housing
Co-ops
Like homeowners’ and condominium associa-
tions, individual homeowners in a cooperativeare eligible for bank financing, and can recovertheir equity when they leave. However, fewerbanks loan to co-ops and loans are usually moreexpensive than they would be for other forms ofLEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 183

property ownership. (Pioneer V alley Cohousing
considered organizing as a cooperative, forexample, but the finance costs would have beenso much higher that each housing unit wouldhave cost $2,000 more than if they organized as
a condominium.)
Because the right to live in a co-op must be
approved by the whole membership, theoretically184 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
From the late 1980s through the late 1990s, the first
years of cohousing in North America, many cohousingcommunities created two legal entities: a subchapterS corporation for their land-purchase and develop-ment phase (or an LLC, once LLCs became more wide-ly used), and later, a homeowners or condominiumassociation for common ownership of shared proper-ty. Some real estate lawyers, such as CarolynGoldschmidt, who’s worked with many cohousingcommunities in Arizona, recommend three legal enti-ties, as follows:
Non-exempt non-profit corporation. First, the core
group needs an initial legal entity that legitimizes it asa group. Carolyn recommends a non-exempt non-profit corporation, created by filing as a non-profitcorporation with the state, but not applying for orchoosing any tax-exempt status with the IRS. The non-exempt non-profit has a business name and bankaccount, and is used to collect any membership feesor dues and pay expenses (promotional costs, landsearch fees, lawyers fees, engineers’ fees, and anyother fees associated with the land search), and helpsdemonstrate to potential new members that the coregroup seriously plans to develop a multimillion-dollarproject.
Limited Liability Company. This is usually created
when the core group is about to buy their property,and is the vehicle through which they will buy theland, seek a construction loan, and develop the prop-erty. An LLC may have corporations as well as people
as members; usually the group’s non-exempt non-profit is the LLC’s first member, and the developmentor construction company they’re partnering with is itssecond member. (See Chapter 14.)
Homeowners’ (or condominium) association. This
third entity is usually created after the group hasbought the land. It is the vehicle through which thegroup will own its shared property once the land issubdivided (or not subdivided, if it’s a condomini-um), and with which it will help get bank or lenderfinancing for individual mortgages. Cohousing com-munities and any intentional communities intendingto develop and subdivide their property as home-owners associations or create condominium associa-tions are technically real estate developers. Somestates as well as municipalities require developers tocreate a homeowners (or condominium) associationfor their future lot owners before they will approvethe group’s plat or site plan, and before any construc-tion can begin.
Once the cohousing group has secured mort-
gages for their individual housing units, the communi-ty is built and people have moved in, and the lastdetails of property development have been complet-ed, the original non-exempt non-profit and the LLCare usually dissolved, leaving the homeowners (orcondominium ) association as the cohousing commu-nity’s sole legal entity.
THREE LEGAL ENTITIES OF COHOUSING COMMUNITIES

a community organized this way can choose its
members, yet some real estate lawyers adviseagainst this. While cooperatives have rejectedpotential members in the past, it’s questionablewhether a cooperative could reject memberstoday without triggering any local discriminationlaws, although housing co-ops are exempt fromthe Federal Fair Housing Act.
In a cooperative, ownership and decision-
making rights are not always tied to the amountof equity contribution (although this varies fromstate to state), but are usually expressed as onevote (or one consensus decision-making right)per housing unit, regardless of the relative valueof different units.
Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives
This is a special form of cooperative used to cre-ate affordable housing co-ops, senior housing co-ops, and student housing co-ops. In a limitedequity housing co-op, the price of shares doesnot rise with escalating housing prices. Membersmake down payments and monthly mortgagepayments to the bank; when they leave, they arereimbursed the amount of their down payment,plus an additional amount related to the cost-of-living increase, but no more. In some states,departing members do not recover any amountof the mortgage payments they made to the bankfor the years they lived there. Their mortgagepayments remain in the co-op as equity for thenext incoming members who will live in thosesame housing units, and who will pick up themortgage payments where the departing mem-bers left off. In other states, all assets can berecovered. Thus, owning a home in a limitedequity housing co-op is not necessarily an invest-ment in property, but a way to own a home with-out an undue financial burden, combining fea-tures of owning and, in some states, of renting.Like owners, members must pay a down pay-
ment, which will be reimbursed when they sell,and they own their housing unit and have a sayin the management of their shared property.Like renters (in some states), they have an unre-coverable monthly payment.
While the property for Mariposa Grove in
Oakland, California was purchased and renovatedby its founder, its members are considering reor-ganizing themselves as a limited equity housingco-op. T o become a limited equity housing co-op,Mariposa Grove will incorporate either as amutual benefit or a public benefit corporation(two kinds of legal entities offered in California).
Non-exempt Non-profit Corporations
Abundant Dawn in Virginia owns its propertythrough a non-exempt non-profit corporation,which means it doesn’t have a particular IRS taxdesignation such as 528 or 501(c)3. Rather, itsfounders indicated in the community’s organiz-ing documents that it was a non-profit or non-stock corporation (meaning it would not beorganized to make a profit, and would have nostockholders and pay no dividends). Therefore,Abundant Dawn’s tax rate is the same for as forany corporation: the first $50,000 of net incomeis taxed at 15 percent. Why would a communitychoose this form of corporation?
When Abundant Dawn cofounder V elma
Kahn began researching legal entities, she con-sidered homeowners associations, entities withpass-through tax status such as LLCs, variouscategories of tax-exempt and partially tax-exempt non-profits, and non-exempt non-profitcorporations. She expected the community toreceive income from various sources, primarilyfrom members’ fees, and compared how the com-munity would fare at tax time under the variousentities she was considering.LEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 185

She rejected homeowners associations for
several reasons, including the “60 percent”restriction on income sources and the rule thatonly income collected for maintenance andother expenses related to common propertymanagement is tax exempt. She also rejectedentities with pass-through taxation such asLLCs and subchapter S corporations. Whilepass-through legal entities are taxed the same asdirectly-taxed corporations (in terms of thekinds of income and expenses that are consid-ered tax exempt or tax deductible), V elma con-sidered the pass-through tax status of an LLCor S corporation to be disadvantageous. For onething, while members in low-income tax brack-ets would pay 15 percent on any passed-throughincome, members in middle-class tax bracketswould likely pay 27.5 or 30 percent, almosttwice the corporate rate. V elma also rejectedpass-through taxation because she preferredthat Abundant Dawn pay taxes at the commu-nity level, rather than the individual level, sinceit would mean less entanglement between thecommunity’s finances and its members’ finances.If they were taxed at the community level, nomembers would ever need to wait to finish theirtax returns until the community had figured itsown taxes and determined each member’s pass-through tax portions. And if there were a crisisin community finances, it wouldn’t create a cri-sis in every member’s personal finances. This lefta simple nonexempt non-profit corporation asthe most likely candidate.
V elma’s next step was to consider which por-
tions of the money coming into the communitywould be taxable income and which portions ofits expenses would be tax-deductible. She knewmost of the community’s income would be fromregular monthly payments from members, to bespent on property taxes and insurance, repairsand maintenance such as fixing the tractor, and
buying food and seeds for the garden. If most ofthe money collected from members was spent onexpenses that were by definition tax deductible(in that the monies were collected for the pur-pose of making these expenditures), then it real-ly wouldn’t matter whether their collected mem-bers’ fees were treated as taxable income or not,as the tax burden would be negligible. But V elmasaw two reasons why the community’s tax bur-den might be unjust if the collected members’fees were treated as taxable income.
The first involves Abundant Dawn’s poten-
tial savings. The community might want to saveportions of their collected members’ fees for sev-eral years, or simply carry over some funds fromone year to the next. But if they did this, theamount collected from members’ fees for thispurpose would be consid ered taxable income,
and any amount left unspent at the end of theyear would be taxed.
The second reason involves buying their
property, and to a lesser extent, buying otherfixed assets. The portion of their mortgage pay-ment applied to interest would be tax-deductible, but the portion applied to the princi-pal would not be deductible. (When buyingequipment such as a tractor, the payment couldbe deductible, but in some cases only throughdepreciation over a number of years.) As themortgage would be paid down over the years,and increasing portions of the mortgage pay-ment applied to principal, the community’s taxburden could become substantial.
Fortunately, after researching tax law and
case law, and receiving corroboration from a taxattorney, V elma learned that their member con-tributions for these expenses need not be treatedas taxable income, for two reasons. First,Abundant Dawn members would be in the same
186 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

position as stockholders, and their contributions
would be akin to stockholder contributions toequity — a relationship which is well-substanti-ated in case law. Second, the community would
act in the role of agent for the members, collect-ing money from several households for purposesLEGAL ENTITIES FOR OWNING PROPERTY 187
If you buy property together with no legal structure,
you have two choices: own it as tenants in commonor as joint tenants. (The terms vary from state to state,as do the regulations for each.) If you don’t choose,the state will automatically consider you Tenants inCommon.
Tenancy in common. As tenants in common, each
member of your group has an undivided interest inthe property. Unless you agree otherwise on thedeed, you will all have equal rights to the use of theproperty, and will all share equally in any liabilities orprofits. Usually, this means sharing equally all mainte-nance costs and property taxes. However, as tenantsin common, you can distribute ownership interestsin the property however you wish. Your ownershipinterests could reflect the relative amounts of moneyeach of you contributed, or you could choose equalownership portions even if you’d each contributeddifferent amounts. Taxes, maintenance expenses,profits, and the value of any improvements must beapportioned at the same percentages as everyone’sshares of ownership.
As tenants in common any of you may sell, mort-
gage, or give your ownership interest in the proper-ty to anyone you wish, and the new owner becomesthe new tenant in common with the others. If anyonedies, their ownership share of the property passes totheir heirs or assigns, not to the other people in yourgroup.Joint Tenancy. As joint tenants each of you has
equal rights to the use of the property, and each ofyou also shares equally in liabilities and profits, andusually in maintenance costs, taxes, and workresponsibilities. But if one of you contracts forimprovements on the land, that person is solelyresponsible for paying the costs if the rest of youdidn’t consent to those improvements.
Joint tenants have the “right of survivorship,” which
means if one of you dies that person’s share doesn’tpass to their heirs, but passes automatically to therest of you (free from any creditors’ claims or debtsthe deceased person might have incurred).
Disadvantages of tenancy in common and joint
tenancy. Both tenancy in common and joint tenancy
are poor choices for communities because youcould lose your property because of something onemember does.
In a joint tenancy, for example, if one of you goes
into debt, the creditor seeking collection couldforce the sale of the property to get the cash value ofthat person’s share in the property. Also, any com-munity member could sell or give away their interestwithout the approval of the rest of you. This wouldcancel the joint tenancy, and property ownershipwould revert to tenancy in common.
And, as mentioned earlier, in a tenancy in com-
mon any member can sell his or her ownership inter-ests to someone who isn’t a community member.Worse, any disgruntled community member can forcethe sale of the property to get his or her money out.
CAN YOUR GROUP BUY PROPERTY WITHOUT A LEGAL ENTITY?

which would not be taxable if the same expenses
were paid by a single household (such as when ahousehold pays property taxes or mortgage pay-
ments). The community would be collectingafter-tax income from its members, and thesemembers would have already paid income taxbefore paying their monthly community fees forshared expenses.
V elma knew they would pay taxes on other
kinds of income, such as rental fees from mem-bers renting rooms or cabins belonging to thecommunity, visitor fees, and subscription fees tothe community’s newsletter, and this was fine.
With these questions resolved, it was easy to
choose a nonexempt non-profit corporation.Abundant Dawn members believed such a cor-poration would offer the lowest tax burden ofany of the available legal entities, with no temp-
tation to shift tax reporting to meet a particularlegal entity’s stringent requirements, such asthose of a homeowners association. Moreover,they chose a corporation because regular corpo-rate taxation is simple, straightforward, and easyto explain compared to the taxation of otherlegal entities they’d considered. “ A non-exemptnon-profit corporation was the cleanest,” saysV elma. “It didn’t require any distortion of whatthe community is, or creating two sets of stories,one for the IRS, and one for real.”
/fl1lft
In Chapter 16 we’ll look briefly at various kindsof tax-exempt non-profits.188 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

IN THE EVERGREEN FORESTS of southern
Oregon, Lost V alley Educational Center is
organized as a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation. A501(c)3 non-profit must offer a religious, chari-table, educational, scientific, or literary benefit.(T o the IRS, “religious” is not limited to recog-nized religions, but can include alternative formsof spirituality, which is why yoga ashram com-munities and meditation centers often use501(c) non-profits.) Lost V alley can use a501(c)3 because of its educational mission: toteach people about sustainable living. SowingCircle/OAEC in California, EarthavenEcovillage in North Carolina, and DancingRabbit in Missouri all use 501(c)3s to conductresearch, offer documentation, and offer classesand workshops in sustainable living.
Again, neither I nor the publisher, nor any
community members mentioned in this bookpresume to offer legal advice about tax-exemptnon-profits. This information is intended tooffer a variety of ideas for you and your commu-nity to consider.
Advantages of a 501(c)3 — Donations,
Tax Breaks, Limited Liability
T ax-deductible donations. The primary reason
for an organization to incorporate as a 501(c)3 isto receive foundation grants and tax-deductible
donations. Donors can claim up to 50 percent oftheir adjusted gross income for such donations.People can leave money to a 501(c)3 in theirwills, and upon their death their estate canreceive an exemption from federal estate taxes.Also, having a 501(c)3 may make your commu-nity more desirable to donors and philanthro-pists for private loans with generous terms, as wesaw with Sowing Circle/OAEC’s refinancing.
Significant tax breaks. A 501(c)3 non-profit
doesn’t pay federal or state income taxes onincome generated by any business activities relat-ed to its purpose. It does pay taxes on incomegenerated by activities not related to its purpose,however. For example, Sowing Circle/OAECpays no taxes on fees for its classes, workshops,and plant sales, but if for some reason it alsorepaired cars, it would pay taxes on all car-repairincome, since that activity is not related to itspurpose. In most cases, if a 501(c)3 owns land, itis often exempt from county property taxes. Itdoes pay sales tax.
Other savings. As a non-profit, you are more
likely to receive material donations and supportfrom volunteers. Y ou can get non-profit third
189/fl1lftChapter 16 /fl1rt
If You’re Using a Tax-exempt Non-profit

class bulk postal rates for any bulk mailings, dis-
counted space from some Internet serviceproviders, lower advertising rates in some publi-cations, and free radio and TV public serviceannouncements.
Limited liability. As with all corporations, a
501c(3) non-profit confers limited liability on itsdirectors, trustees, officers, employees, and mem-bers. However, courts hold non-profit boardmembers and officers to a higher standard ofconduct and accountability than those of for-profit corporations. Non-profits often buy liabil-ity insurance to protect their officers and boardmembers.
On-site income for community members. If
your 501(c)3 will be operating an educational orother kind of organization that requires full- orpart-time staff, you can hire your own communi-ty members as employees, and pay their salariesfrom the non-profit’s income (though these can’tbe exorbitant salaries). Rural communities oftenneed community businesses in which people canearn money without commuting to jobs else-where, and depending on their purpose andscale, a 501(c)3’s on-site activities can offer suchjobs. This is how two-thirds the members ofLost V alley Educational Center and five ofSowing Circle’s members make a living withoutleaving their land.
Disadvantages of a 501(c)3 — Onerous
Requirements, Irrecoverable Assets
High set-up and maintenance costs. It can be
costly to hire a lawyer to prepare incorporationforms and a tax accountant to prepare IRS appli-cations. As mentioned in Chapter 8, you can savemoney by doing much of this yourself with thehelp of Nolo Press’s book How to Form a Non-profit Corporation and asking a lawyer and tax
accountant to check your work. The total fees toincorporate in many states is less than $200,including the application fee for federal taxexemption, but annual registration fees may behigh: in 2002 it was $800 per year in California,for example. (However, most states’ annual feesfor for-profit corporations are similar.)
Restricted access to bank financing. If you’ll be
seeking private loans from friends and support-ers to buy your property or for projects that sup-port your mission, having a 501(c)3 for lendersto loan to can be an advantage. But it can be adistinct disadvantage if you’ll be seeking a bankloan, since most banks prefer not to loan to non-profits, preferring instead to loan to corporationsor LLCs.
No equity in the property for members.
Members of Lost V alley and Dancing Rabbitcannot build any equity in their property thatthey could take with them if they left the com-munity, since these communities own their prop-erty as 501(c)3s (or 501(c)2s). Sowing Circle/OAEC members do build equity however, sincetheir property itself is owned as an LLC andtheir 501(c)3 owns nothing but simply managestheir educational center project.
Paper shuffling, number crunching. Like all
corporations, a 501(c)3 requires ongoingrecord-keeping. This begins with the filing ofthe initial documents with the state, and contin-ues with an annual report of activities and othermandatory forms. IRS requirements can also beintimidating. Y ou must keep meticulous finan-cial records with double-entry bookkeeping toprove that your 501(c)3 continues to deserve itstax-exempt status, prepare annual non-profit190 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

informational tax returns, and, if it has employ-
ees, deal with payroll tax withholding andreporting. Often the idealists who want to setup 501(c)3s are unfamiliar with these businessprocedures, but if they fail to do these things theIRS can freeze their bank account and bring alltheir non-profit activities to a halt. Most non-profits start out with a tax advisor or accountantto help them set up their books and create a sys-tem to prepare tax forms on time. Some non-profits get these services at no cost by arrangingthat a bookkeeper or accountant friend is on theboard of directors.
Restricted politics. As a 501(c)3, a significant
portion of your activities cannot be influencinglegislation or endorsing or supporting candidatesfor public office. How much a “significant por-tion” is depends on the state.
Losing control of your non-profit. One critical
point with 501(c)3s is that 51 percent of thepeople on its board of directors must be “disin-terested.” This doesn’t mean uninterested (in thenon-profit’s activities); it means they must haveno financial interest in your non-profit, and can-not materially benefit from its existence. If youown your land with a 501(c)3, at least 51 per-cent of your board members cannot live there,and if it operates your non-profit business, atleast 51 percent cannot be its paid employees.Some non-profits initially organize themselveswith a group of what’s called “voting members”who elect their board of directors every threeyears. If you organize yourselves this way, 51percent of your voting members must be disin-terested.
While it’s relatively easy to find supportive
friends willing to become board members, youcannot predict or control what they might do inthe future. Y ears down the road, as things and
people change, you could find yourselves fightingdesperately with your own board for control ofthe assets you yourselves donated. If the majori-ty of your board members someday vote to radi-cally change your mission, kick all of you off theproperty, or disband the community, you could-n’t do a thing about it. (Y ou couldn’t’ block sucha decision in a consensus process, since state lawrequires that non-profit boards must use major-ity-rule voting. No matter what you might try toblock, a 51 percent vote of your board memberscan change the course of your community’s his-tory forever.) “This is the biggest danger with anon-profit,” warns Dave Henson.
At least one community has found a way to
solve his, however, as we’ll see below.
Irrecoverable assets. Once your community
donates assets such as cash, securities, personalproperty, or land in a 501(c)3 non-profit, you cannever get these assets out again. (This isn’t trueof loans. Y ou can loan money to a non-profit, astwo Dancing Rabbit founders did, and receiveinterest and recover part or all of the value of theloan if the community disbands or sells its assetsto pay its debts.) If things don’t work out andyou disband, you cannot take back the value ofthe land and its capital improvements, but musteither donate your property to another non-profit, or sell it and donate the proceeds of thesale to a non-profit.
For many communities this is not a disad-
vantage, since they choose a 501(c)3 primarilyfor this feature. When Dianne Brause andKenneth Mahaffey bought the Lost V alleyproperty, for example, they wanted to restore theland and protect it from ever being sold for spec-ulative gain. They chose a 501(c)3, knowing thatno community member could ever personally
IF YOU’RE USING A TAX-EXEMPT NON-PROFIT 191

benefit from the sale of the property, which
would act as a major disincentive for any futurecommunity members to disband the communi-ty and sell the land. Sometimes communitieschoose 501(c)3s for land ownership because thefounders want to live out their ideals, intendingto move to community and stay there. Nature’sSpirit founders chose a 501(c)3 partly for thisreason, and partly from a commitment to live amore spiritual way of life in a beautiful rural set-ting. Why would they want to leave?
However, one community’s blessing is anoth-
er’s downfall. It’s disastrous to start a project youcan never recoup your life savings from if that’snot explicitly what you intend at the beginning.What if things don’t work out as you imagined?(Remember the 90 percent?) There’s nothingmore demoralizing than disillusioned communi-tarians grimly hanging on for decades because noone can afford to leave.
If you choose to own your property as a
501(c)3, be sure you understand all the implica-tions. Be certain you’re choosing it for the rightreasons — not just because you think it’s cool!
Land-Owning Entities and 501(c)3
Corporations — The Best of Both Worlds
“Think really hard before you use your 501(c)3
to own anything,” advises Dave Henson. Sowing
Circle community’s non-profit OAEC ownsnothing but its good reputation and some officesupplies. Everything else — OAEC’s officebuilding, equipment, classrooms, dorms, diningfacilities, and the grounds on which they hostvisitors and teach classes-is leased from theSowing Circle LLC. The lease fee is $70,000 ayear, and OAEC splits with Sowing Circle costsfor repairing and maintaining the land andbuildings it uses. The mission of Sowing Circlecommunity founders is to live sustainably incommunity and promote a more environmental-
ly aware, ecologically sustainable way of life.They created OAEC as a 501(c)3 non-profit tohelp them carry out this mission by offeringworkshops and classes to promote the arts, socialjustice, environmental activism, and ecologicalsustainability. Sowing Circle founders also set upOAEC in order to provide income for communi-ty members, five of whom are salaried OAECstaff.
The OAEC non-profit makes money from a
variety of sources, such as workshop and classfees, consulting fees, facility rentals, membershipfees from supporting members, plant sales, foun-dation grants, and private donations (includingvolunteer labor and work exchange and donatedin-kind services, such as printing).
The non-profit spends money on salaries for
20 full- and part-time employees (including off-site employees, and on-site residents who aren’tcommunity members), as well as associatedexpenses for W orkers’ Compensation; meals forwork-exchange staff and course participants;wages for outside instructors; advertising andpromotional costs; office supplies, postage, etc.;and when needed, materials or outside labor forrepairing and maintaining leased grounds andbuildings.
The Sowing Circle community’s expenses,
on the other hand, include mortgage payments,liability insurance, property taxes, food and otherhousehold expenses, and donations to OAECfor materials and any outside labor for mainte-nance and repairs. Because it’s organized as anLLC, Sowing Circle’s taxable income is dividedup and passed to each member.
Sowing Circle receives income from mem-
bers’ monthly dues and OAEC’s lease fees. Inthe beginning OAEC had agreed to pay $24,000in lease fees, but the first year it could only pay192 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

half, and Sowing Circle wrote off the other half
as a business loss. Several years later SowingCircle hired a rural property appraiser andlearned that, at market rates, their propertycould be worth up to $85,000 in annual leasefees (in year 2000 dollars). So Sowing Circleraised its annual lease fee to $70,000. The leasefee Sowing Circle charges OAEC cannot be anyhigher than the appraised market value of sucha lease, or the IRS would consider it “self-deal-ing. T o be safe, Sowing Circle charges OAEC$15,000 less than the appraised leasable value oftheir property.
In terms of decision making, all 11 Sowing
Circle members make decisions about the rela-tionship between their community and theireducational non-profit. All OAEC staff mem-bers (including the non-community members),decide the non-profit’s financial and other mat-ters, and its board of directors make major poli-cy decisions. Forty-nine percent of these direc-tors are also Sowing Circle members. (T o pro-tect themselves, Sowing Circle’s lease documenthas a clause which allows them to terminateOAEC’s lease at any time for any reason. If amajority of OAEC’s board tried for some reasonto take the non-profit in a direction the commu-nity didn’t want, the community could cancelthe lease and OAEC would lose its teachingfacilities.
Sowing Circle community benefits from its
business relationship with OAEC in severalways, including:
Community founders can accomplish
their educational mission without unduetaxation or liability of their members orproperty. If OAEC were ever in financialor legal trouble, the community’s landwould be safe from any debts or lawsuitsagainst the non-profit.Nearly half Sowing Circle’s members,
and six to ten other long-term residentsand interns work for OAEC, and so don’thave to leave the property to make a liv-ing.
It earns $70,000 in annual lease fees.
Most of its property and buildings are
repaired and maintained by OAEC.
Any grants or donations that come in to
OAEC specifically earmarked for facili-ties improvement benefit the communi-ty’s land and buildings (since they’re thesame), and result in capital improvementsto the community.
If Sowing Circle has taxable income left
over at the end of the year it can donate itto OAEC for certain kinds of non-capi-talizable maintenance and repair (that is,projects that don’t improve the propertylong-term), and receive a tax break for thedonation.
OAEC benefits from its business relation-
ship with Sowing Circle community as well. Forexample:
It has beautiful grounds and facilities for
its educational activities.
Its five Sowing Circle staff members are
devoted to its mission, and live on-site.
Its lease is relatively secure, because the
same people, with the same intentionsand vision, are the lessors and lessee. If forsome reason OAEC couldn’t fulfill itsmaintenance responsibilities, or couldn’tpay its annual lease fee, there’d be a greatdeal of flexibility in solving the problem.
For information on setting up and maintain-
ing a 501(c)3 non-profit, see Appendix 3.
IF YOU’RE USING A TAX-EXEMPT NON-PROFIT 193

How One Group Retained Control of its
Board
“W e never wanted to lose control of our own
projects, or even fight with our board if thingschanged someday,” one founder told me. She andher seven cofounders set up a 501(c)3 in such away as to protect themselves from this kind oftakeover.
They planned that 17 “voting members”
(that is, a special group that elects their board ofdirectors every three years), would elect eightpeople to their board. All eight founders becamevoting members. They needed nine more peopleto become the remaining voting members, sothat at least 51% would be “disinterested.” Thefounders asked nine of their closest friends tobecome voting members, explaining that theirsole role would be to vote for the non-profit’sboard of directors every three years. Thefounders described their non-profit’s missionand goals and gave their friends all of its docu-ments. Then the eight founders nominatedthemselves as eight of the board members for thefirst three years. They asked these friends/votingmembers to approve or deny their slate of boardmember candidates (themselves), hoping, ofcourse, that the friends would approve them. (“Ifany of you have a problem with our request toapprove or deny the candidates,” the foundersasked them in advance,“then please don’t agree tobecome voting members.”) Since the friendsknew and trusted the founders they voted toapprove them as board members, as expected.The IRS looked very carefully at each of thesenine voting members to make sure they didn’tbenefit materially from the non-profit, and theydidn’t. After the usual three-year period of closescrutiny, the IRS was satisfied. At this point, thefounders asked their friends to disband the vot-ing membership aspect of the non-profit (which
voting members can do), and increase the boardto 11 members. The voting member-friends didthis, and the founders asked three of them to jointheir board, which they did.
Now the community had all eight communi-
ty members and three friends on the non-profit’sboard. Why did they want three non-membersto join them? Whenever the board had to decidematters that benefited the community (such asadjusting the lease fee of the buildings it rentsfrom the community), or raising salaries of com-munity members who are also paid employees,they must remove themselves from the decision.They have three non-community board mem-bers so that for decisions like these, there willstill be people left who can decide. (There arethree so that if they disagree, one can break thetie. Of course, as friends of the community, theydecide the way the community asks them to. Ifany of the non-community board members wentagainst the community’s wishes, the communitywould vote them off the board and replace themwith someone more sympathetic.)
Title-holding Corporations — Collecting
Income from “Passive” Sources
The primary mission of Dancing Rabbit in
Missouri is to research, document, and educatepeople about sustainable living, and so they use a501(c)3 non-profit to host workshops on sustain-able living and carry out their other educationalactivities. However, another part of their missionis to preserve their land as a sustainable ecovillageand prevent it form ever being sold for speculativegain. So they formed a land trust, and own theirproperty with a 501(c)2 title-holding non-profit,from which members lease small siteholdings.
A 501(c)3 non-profit can own property, but
no more than 20 percent of its income may be194 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

from “passive” sources (rents, lease fees, and
interest on loans or investments), or it can loseits tax-exempt status. So 501(c)2 non-profitswere created in order to hold, control, and man-age property and other assets for 501(c)3 non-profits, and they are often used as the land-own-ing entity in land trusts and community landtrusts. A 501(c)2 cannot exist by itself, and mustbe paired with a 501(c)3. The 501(c)3 mustexercise some control over its 501(c)2, such ashaving the same board members on each non-profit’s board. Unlike a 501(c)3, a 501(c)2 can-not actively engage in any business activities,other than collecting rents, receiving interest,and so on. The 501(c)2 turns over all its incometo its parent 501(c)3, and the two organizationsfile a consolidated tax return.
Private Land Trusts — Protecting the
Land
A land trust is a legal mechanism to preserve the
characteristics of a parcel of land, prevent it fromever being developed in an undesirable way, orprotect it from being sold for speculative gain.Land trusts have been used to protect ecological-ly sensitive areas or the habitat of endangeredspecies, preserve land as wilderness or farmland,and in urban areas, to protect affordable housingfrom the effects of escalating real estate values. Aland trust either takes a property off the marketforever or arranges that it can never be boughtand sold at speculative market rates, or devel-oped in a way that the donors of the land trustdon’t want. Intentional communities have placedtheir properties in land trusts for various reasons— to preserve its rural or agrarian character, toprotect virgin stands of timber, to keep it asfarmland, or simply to preserve it as an ecovillagefor future generations.
Three parties are involved in a land trust.1. The donor or donors are land owners who
place the property in the trust for specificpurposes. They can be the original land own-ers, or people who buy the land in order toplace it in the trust.
2. The trustees or board of trustees administer
the property and protect its mission. Selectedfor their alignment with the land trust’s mis-sion and goals, the trustees make sure theproperty is preserved in accordance withthem. Over the years outgoing trustees arereplaced by incoming ones, so the trust cancontinue in perpetuity.
3. The beneficiaries are the people and/or
plants and animals who live on or otherwisebenefit from the land. For a preserved wilder-ness the beneficiaries are its plants and ani-mals and the humans who hike its trails; foran affordable housing project the beneficiar-ies are the people who live there.
The donors, trustees, and beneficiaries can all
be the same people. Dancing Rabbit’s founderspurchased their property through their 501(c)2land trust entity (making them functionallyequivalent to donors of a land trust), are mem-bers of its board of trustees, and benefit from liv-ing on and enjoying the land.
A 501(c)3 and 501(c)2 non-profit are most
often used for land trusts. The 501(c)2 holdsactual title to the land and grants the beneficiar-ies long-term, renewable leases at reasonablefees.
Donors may deed their property to an exist-
ing land trust organization in their region, whichserves as the trustees for that and other proper-ties. Sometimes the donors have the right to liveout their lives on the land, for example, if theydonated their family farm to a land trust to bepreserved as farmland. Other donors mightIF YOU’RE USING A TAX-EXEMPT NON-PROFIT 195

donate their land as a wilderness area, in which
case they wouldn’t live there. The donor receivesa one-time tax deduction for the appraised valueof the property. In many circumstances, donorsare required to pay $5,000 to $10,000 or more tothe land trust’s legal fund, so the organizationcan legally protect the property from any futurethreats to its mandated use.
Or people may create their own land trust
and serve as its only trustees, in which case it’scalled a “private land trust.” Private land trustscan be either revocable or irrevocable. If it’s revo-cable, the donors can change their minds anddevelop or sell the property for another use.Once land is placed into a land trust it can be dif-ficult to use as collateral for bank loans.
Land can also be preserved by creating a con-
servation easement, a legal restriction attached toits deed which limits all future use of the land toa specific purpose, such as to protect farmland,w e t l a n d s ,a w i l d e r n e s s a r e a ,a n d s o o n .S o w i n gCircle created an “organic easement,” possibly thefirst of its kind, to preserve its two locally-famousgardens as organically-managed in perpetuity.
Community Land Trusts — An
Irrevocable Decision
A community land trust is designed to establish
a stronger and broader board of trustees thanthose of a private land trust. While one-third ofthe trustees of a community land trust may liveon the land (through lease agreements with thecommunity land trust), two-thirds of thetrustees must live elsewhere (be “disinterested”),receiving no direct benefit from the land. Thisensures that any donors or beneficiaries who arealso trustees cannot change their minds aboutthe purpose or mission of the trust, or developthe land for some other purpose, or sell it.Having the majority of its trustees from thewider community serves to guarantee the mis-
sion of the community land trust, because theo-retically they are more objective, and are not in aposition to be tempted by gaining financiallyfrom any change in the use of the land.
Community land trusts are irrevocable,
which means the original owners of the landcannot remove it from the trust once they havedonated it. As with private land trusts, once landis placed into a community land trust, it’s notlikely to be used as collateral for bank loans.
Private land trusts, and community land
trusts especially, are options for founders wish-ing to ensure that the original purpose for theircommunity and its land continues unchangedinto future generations, unaltered by subsequentrequirements for quick cash, loss of commit-ment, or personality conflicts among members.
For “Common Treasury” Communities —
501(d) Non-profit Corporations
Originally designed for the Shakers and other
“Religious and Apostolic Associations” in the1920s, 501(d) non-profits offer tax breaks forcommon-treasury religious communities thatengage in business for the common benefit oftheir members. 501(d)s are also used by non-religious income-sharing communities, whosemembers work in one or more community busi-nesses, and which provide members’ basic mate-rial needs — food, shelter, monthly stipends, andso on. (Again, to the IRS, “religious” and “apos-tolic” does not necessarily mean a traditionallyrecognized religion; communities with alterna-tive spiritual beliefs or secular beliefs havebecome 501(d)s.) The 501(d) tax status wasoriginally created for groups that had taken a“vow of poverty,” but T win Oaks in Virginia suc-cessfully challenged this requirement, and theIRS no longer requires it.196 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Some communities, such as T win Oaks and
the Hutterite communities, use a 501(d) to owntheir land as well as their businesses. Other com-munities own their properties with one of theother legal entities, but a smaller group of mem-bers — a sub-community within the community— use a 501(d) to own their own income-shar-ing business. Abundant Dawn, for example, ownsits land with a non-exempt non-profit, butT ekiah, a pod (sub-community) of AbundantDawn, operates its shared hammock-making andmarket garden businesses with a 501(d). DancingRabbit owns its land with a 501(c)2 non-profit,and Skyhouse, a subcommunity, operatesSkyhouse Consulting, a computer programmingand website design business, as a 501(d). (TheIRS was initially somewhat dubious aboutSkyhouse’s petition to be taxed as a 501(d),because a high-tech telecommuting business withskilled, well-paid professionals was nothing likethe hammock-makers or Hutterite farmers theywere used to. But Skyhouse members demon-strated they were every bit as devoted to income-sharing, common-treasury principles as anyother group, and the IRS granted the status.)
Advantages of 501(d) Non-profits
The main advantage of a 501(d) is income taxsavings. The taxable income of a 501(d) is divid-ed into equal parts and “passed through” to eachm e m b e r a s i f t h e y w e r e f i l i n g i n d i v i d u a l t a xreturns (as in an LLC or partnership). For exam-ple, if a group had 10 members and earned$100,000 one year, they’d each be assigned$10,000 as taxable income (even though theywouldn’t actually receive it). Divided up like this,the rate of taxation is much lower than if it wereone lump sum. A 501(d) can also choose not topay self-employment taxes, which is often up to15 percent of the annual income.Depending on the amount of the communi-
ty’s annual income and how many members ithas (and if it chooses not to pay self-employ-ment tax), the amount assigned to each commu-nity member may not be enough to warrantbeing taxed, which happens most years withSkyhouse subcommunity at Dancing Rabbit.However, if a 501(d) community has a highincome and few members, then the amountpassed through to each member may be highenough to pay taxes on, which has also happenedwith Skyhouse. In this case, the community paysthe taxes on behalf of the member.
If the community chooses not to pay self-
employment tax they’ll never get Social Securitybenefits and must set up some form of in-houseretirement fund and take care of their membersas they age. 501(d) groups can voluntarily payself-employment tax to retain access to SocialSecurity.
A 501(d) non-profit can engage in any kind
of business, passive or active, religious or secular,since the IRS makes no distinction betweenrelated or unrelated income for a group with thistax status. A 501(d) can engage in any kind ofpolitical activity, such as lobbying, supportingcandidates, or publicly advocating political caus-es. However, donations to a 501(d) communityare not tax deductible, as donations to 501(c)3non-profits are.
Communities organized as 501(d)s can
choose their incoming members, and departingmembers may or may not receive equity whenthey leave, depending on the community’s inter-nal agreements.
Disadvantages of 501(d) Non-profits
T o use the 501(d) tax status the community mustbe “income-sharing” in the sense that they shareincome not only from community businesses butIF YOU’RE USING A TAX-EXEMPT NON-PROFIT 197

also from any outside jobs, investments, or other
forms of income. If, however, a substantial per-centage of community income is derived fromoutside salaries or other sources, the IRS mayrescind or deny the 501(d) status. (Unfortunatelythe IRS has not clearly defined what it means by“substantial,” so this remains a gray area.) For thisreason, T win Oaks asks any members who havesignificant assets such as real estate, securities, orsavings accounts to place these in a trust for theduration of their community membership.
Members of Meadowdance in V ermont are
“income-sharing” in that they work at communi-ty-owned businesses, pool business income in acommon pot, and provide their basic materialneeds from it. But, as mentioned earlier, theyhave a hybrid economy — each member is freeto spend money from existing assets, and canearn extra money by working longer hours at
community businesses, or working part-timeoutside the community. Meadowdance doesn’tqualify for a 501(d) tax status nor does it want tobe limited by the requirements of a 501(d), sothey own their businesses as Limited LiabilityCompanies.
The 501(d) non-profit is not applicable for
most communities, but if your group plans toshare income from community businesses andprovide most of your members’ material needs, itcan offer an ideal way to save on the tax bite.
/fl1lft
In Part Three we’ll return to the essence of grow-ing a healthy community — the “people skills.”198 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Part Three:
Thriving in Community
— Enriching the Soil

WHEN LARRY KAPLOWITZ and his wife
Karin moved to Lost V alley in 1994, they
arrived a few weeks after more than half themembers had moved away for various personalreasons unrelated to the community. Theremaining four members had desperately neededhelp for the community’s conference center busi-ness and put out the call for new people. Larryand Karin were part of ten newcomers whojoined in response. The rapid turnover was diffi-cult for everyone.
“Here, suddenly, were ten of us; enthusiastic,
full of our own hopes and ideas, hurts anddefenses, and relatively short on the kind ofexperience it takes to make community livingwork,” Larry recalls. “Lost V alley’s communityculture, delicately woven over the previous years,couldn’t survive the onslaught. W e began to sinkin misunderstandings, resentment, and conflict.”
“Within a year, conflict had practically para-
lyzed us. In our weekly business meetings, wherewe make decisions by consensus, almost everynew idea or initiative, if not rejected outright,was resisted or undermined. Some people hadbecome so uncomfortable with each other thatthey would go out of their way to avoid crossingpaths. Resentments simmered but were rarely
expressed directly, except in occasional outburstsof anger. At times the tension was so thick wefelt like we were choking on it.”
Eventually the people who were most at odds
with each other left the community, and thingsimproved a bit. But the experience had left peo-ple feeling hurt, discouraged, and cautious. Forthe next year, Lost V alley accepted no new mem-bers. People did their own thing and tried to stayout of each other’s way.
“By the summer of ’96 every one of us was
frustrated, dissatisfied, and considering leaving,”Larry says. “W e agreed that if we were going tosurvive as a community we needed major change,which meant we would have to face our difficultissues directly.”
Serendipitously, they learned about the Naka-
Ima training. A Japanese phrase meaning “herenow,” Naka-Ima is an interpersonal healingmethod designed to help people reveal themselveshonestly and connect with each other deeply. Sothe Lost V alley folks signed themselves up.
“By the end of the weekend training,” Larry
recalls, “the obstacles we all had in the way ofbeing clear, compassionate, and honest with each/fl1lftChapter 17 /fl1rt
Communication, Process, and Dealing with
Conflict: The Heart of Healthy Community
200

other seemed to have dissolved, leaving a room
full of radiant beings. W e knew that the ‘glow’would come and go, and that our obstacles,defenses, and wounds would continue to playhavoc with us. But they no longer had the samepower over us. As we integrated what we’d expe-rienced over the next few weeks and months, webecame increasingly hone st with each other. W e
began taking the time to stop and address issues,conflicts, and hurts. W e began making space foreach other to express our feelings.”
T o save their community from continued
stalemate and decline, Lost V alley membersembraced what I call “good process” — commu-nication skills and other techniques that helppeople feel connected and stay connected. Likegreat community property and a healthy internaleconomy, “good process” is another foundationfor sustainable community. Learning goodprocess skills nourishes the soil of healthy com-munity. Notlearning them is another set-up for
structural conflict.
The “Rock Polisher” Effect
Most people drawn to intentional communityare seeking a more harmonious and connectedway of life than that of mainstream society. Butwe can’t just wish it into existence. If we want tolive better lives in community, we’ve got to dothings differently there.
Most of us don’t realize that our wider socie-
ty is dysfunctional because it’s just ourselves,doing what we habitually do, but multiplied andmagnified by millions of people. When we seegovernments or corporations using manipula-tive, controlling, or punishing behaviors —through threats, terrorist attacks, or outright war— it frightens and disgusts us. But when we dothe small-scale versions of these same ploys our-selves, we don’t see it. W e may revile “terrorists,”but what about our own choice of words and
tone of voice this morning with our partner orchild? Those of us who think we do these behav-iors the least are often th e ones who do them the
most. The more spiritual we imagine we are, theharder it is to see it.
This is why good process is so important to
community. For life in community to be betterthan it was before, we’ve got to be better than we
were before. In fact, we need good process skillsmore when we’re involved in community, since
the community process tends to trigger faster-than-normal spiritual and emotional growth.The “crucible of community” tends to magnifyand reflect back to us our own most destructiveor alienating attitudes and behaviors. W ebecome magnifying mirrors for each other. Themore intensely we dislike these attitudes andbehaviors in other community members themore likely we have them in ourselves (or used tohave them), although we may be unaware of it.The more we criticize other people for them, themore likely that we’re unconsciously condemn-ing ourselves for doing the same.
The close and frequent interactions with
other community members about how we’ll liveand work together tends to evoke some of ourworst and most destructive behaviors. Andpotentially, it can heal them. I call this the “rockpolisher” effect. Rocks in a rock tumbler firstabrade and then polish each other. In forming-community groups and communities our roughedges are often brought up and then wornsmoother by frequent contact with everyoneelse’s. But the rock-polisher effect can be sopainful it ejects some people right out of thegroup, or the group becomes so fraught withconflict that it breaks up.
Through good community process we can
make the rock-polisher effect more conscious.COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 201

Rather than suffer helplessly, we can use com-
munity as a powerful opportunity for personalgrowth. The process of sharing resources andmaking decisions cooperatively in community— and no longer being able to get away withour usual behaviors — is a wake-up call to thesoul. Community offers us the chance to finallygrow up.
Nourishing Sustainable Relationships
“ At Lost V alley we learned that sustainable com-munity must be based on sustainable relation-ships — relationships that give more than theytake — that nourish, enliven, and inspire us,”says Larry Kaplowitz. “Such relationships are acontinual source of energy. They support us inbecoming fully ourselves.”
As you’d expect, the same kinds of communi-
cation and process skills that enhance love rela-tionships do the same in community — sharingfrom the heart, listening to each other deeply,telling difficult truths without making eachother wrong. This includes speaking to and per-
ceiving others in ways that allow us to stay inbeneficial relationships with them while dis-cussing even the most sensitive subjects.
Here are some “good process skills” communi-
ties often use to create sustainable relationships:
Speaking more consciously. This involves speak-
ing to one another in ways that tend to increase,rather than decrease, the level of harmony andwell-being between people. When communica-tion is “clean” enough, people feel confident theycan talk to each other about anything, includingdisagreements or sensitive issues, and still feelgoodwill and connection. These include using “I”rather than “you” messages, checking assump-tions, describing feelings with real feeling words(“angry,” “worried”) instead of blame-words (“crit-icized,” “manipulated”), and using neutral lan-guage to describe behaviors rather than charac-terizing people negatively.
The most effective communication skills I’ve
found are those of Marshall Rosenberg’sNonviolent Communication process, which helppeople speak to each other in ways that tell thedeepest truths while enhancing goodwill anddeepening their connection. Many resources areavailable for learning these and other basic goodcommunication skills (see Resources).
It takes time, energy, and willingness to change
the ways we habitually talk with people, so thatour conversations enhance, rather than diminish,our relationships. At first these methods may feel“unnatural.” It helps to remember that all commu-nication skills, including those we use now, arelearned behaviors, and we can learn new ones.
Creating communication agreements. Conflict
can arise because of the widely differing commu-nication styles and behavioral norms that people202 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
THE PROCESS TEAM
Some communities, such as Sharingwood Cohousing in
Washington state, help maintain well-being in the com-munity by establishing a team of consensus and processfacilitators whose job it is to train meeting facilitators,introduce process methods (sharing circles, threshingmeetings, the public/private scale, and so on), and keepan eye out for potential conflicts, intervene when neces-sary. “Get your best facilitators and the people most inter-ested in process,” says Sharingwood process facilitatorRob Sandelin. “Encourage them and give them funds toget training in and bring back good process techniquesback to the group. The investment of time and money ingood group process will more than pay for itself in com-munity health and well being over the long run.”

bring to community from different regions, sub-
cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. Sosome groups agree on and write down explicitcommunication and behavioral agreements. Forexample, is jumping in before someone has fin-ished speaking considered a disrespectful inter-ruption, or normal lively conversation? Is comingdirectly to the point considered respectful of eachother’s time, or brusque and preemptory? Areusing swear words or explicitly sexual expressionsof anger considered no big deal, or way out ofline? Is inquiring about each other’s romantic, sex-ual, financial, or health matters seen as friendlyand intimacy-creating, or an invasion of privacy?
Check-ins: Check-ins can occur before decision-
making meetings, or in separate meetings.Everyone around the circle tells what’s going onin their lives at that time, their feelings about it,and perhaps their hopes and dreams about it. Noone interrupts or responds — there’s no sympa-thizing, criticizing, or offering advice. Usuallythere’s a time limit, such as five or ten minutesper person.
Abundant Dawn allows 15 to 30 minutes of
check-in time at the beginning of business meet-ings for members to let each other know what’sgoing on that may affect how they communicatein the meeting, as well as any events that mayaffect community business itself. “If we justlearned that someone’s father died that week, forexample,” says member Joy Legendre,“then we’ll allknow why he hasn’t been his normal self lately.”
Sharing circles: Sharing circles are also some-
times wisdom circles, the talking stick process,listening circles, heart shares, or the councilprocess. These are sessions in which people sharewhat’s true for them and listen to each otherdeeply. Inspired by the Native American talkingstick process, the purpose is not to solve prob-
lems or make decisions, but to explore issues andlearn together, share personal stories and becomecloser to each other, or hear everyone’s truth,pain, or joy about community issues.
People usually sit in a circle. Candles and rit-
ual objects, including a small object such as atalking stick or a stone, are placed in the center.One person at a time picks up the talking stickor object and speaks from the heart. This meansbeing honest and real, and allowing any emo-tions that might come up. It involves taking therisk to speak your truth without knowing how itwill be received. Speaking from the heart oftenopens the door for others to do the same.
As in the check-in process, everyone listens
respectfully, and no one comments (although ingroups that follow Native American traditions,people often say “ho!” if the speaker’s words havetouched them deeply). When the speaker is fin-ished, the talking stick or ritual object isreturned to the center, and there a short periodof silence. The next person moved to speak doesso, and then others, until everyone who wishes tospeak has had a turn. Not every person needs tospeak. In some sharing circles no one speakstwice; other groups encourage individuals tospeak two or three times.
In another version of this process, when each
speaker finishes, the ritual object is passed to theperson on the left, who speaks next, and so onaround the circle. Some groups go around atleast three or four times, with each person takingone to three minutes each.
The Roots of Conflict: Emotionally-
charged Needs
“Most of the time we no longer resist conflict, or
ignore it, or try to tiptoe around it,” says LarryKaplowitz .“W e’ve come to see it as an opportunityCOMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 203

to identify our patterns, to uncover and heal our
old wounds and distress. W e’re usually willing tostop what we’re doing and address conflict, get tothe root of it, and clear it.
“But we’ve accepted that it’s not an instant
process, nor a tidy one. Lifelong patterns don’tgive up the ghost without a fight. Sometimes wefall back on our denial and avoidance for daysand weeks until it gets unbearable, but eventual-
ly someone always musters up enough courage orannoyance to shout ‘Enough!’”
Community process consultant Laird
Schaub defines conflict as at least two peoplehaving different viewpoints about something,with at least one of them having an emotionalcharge on the matter. Conflict also seems to be a204 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
FIVE WAYS TO RESPOND TO CONFLICT
1. Ignore and suppress it. Rarely a conscious
choice, but rather a lifelong avoidance pattern, thisresponse erodes the quality of well-being in a group.Your members might not notice the buried resent-ments accumulating over time, but visitors certainlywill. “Why does this group feel so heavy?” And like try-ing to squash beach balls by pushing them under therug, ignored conflict always pops up somewhere.
2. Leave it. Leave the subject, leave the room, leave
the group or the community. Another popular, mostlyunconscious choice, this is usually a lose/lose situa-tion, for the person and for the group.
3. Leap into it aggressively. Some people thrive on
conflict, and enjoy how emotionally alive they feelwhen sparring with others. They may crave emotionalintensity; or believe that aggressive criticism is equiva-lent to “being honest.” They may unconsciously wantto recreate a negative but familiar experience fromearly childhood. Some people may not experiencetheir feelings consciously, so yelling at others getsthem in touch with suppressed anger, and it feelsgreat to let it out. Other people can only feel connect-ed with someone once they’ve had a fight — as ifthey’re testing someone’s solidity or strength beforethey can trust them. By leaping into conflict people may meet their own needs for aliveness, authenticity,
healing, connection, or trust, but their strategy of fight-ing with people to meet these needs can drive othersright out of the room and right out of the group.
4. Change how you feel about it. In this response to
conflict, emotional upsets are considered opportuni-ties for personal growth and spiritual development.You don’t address issues that upset you, but rather godeeply into any anger, fear, or sadness as a result of theproblem in order to release these feelings and enter astate of tranquility. This can empower individual mem-bers, and certainly prevents angry confrontations inthe group, but it doesn’t necessarily empower thewhole community or help create sustainable relation-ships. Gary may continue blasting his loud music at3:00 am and annoy the hell out of everyone else, nomatter that you’ve become enlightened because of it.
5. Use the conflict to strengthen the community.
Lastly, you can use conflict to generate more under-standing and connection, and make changes inbehavior to improve how everyone gets along — inother words, use it as part of “good process.”Handled well, dealing with conflict can make a com-munity stronger, more connected, and lighthearted inthe long run.

multi-layered process. On the surface it may
seem to be about differences in ideologies, prior-ities, and values, especially about such controver-sial community issues as children, food, laborrequirements, and pets. But below that layer, itseems to be about fear, guilt, or resentment, andbelow that, deep longings from early childhoodfor certain basic human needs — for acceptance,approval, control, love, and so on.
Psychologists recognize that besides physical
needs for food, water, warmth, and so on, certainemotional needs must be met for infants and chil-dren to develop into emotionally healthy adults— including nurturing, affection, love, accept-ance, empathy, connection, being valued, andbeing respected, to name a few. When an infant orchild doesn’t experience nurturing and affection inadequate amounts, for example, these needs canbecome highly charged because they’re associatedwith the pain of loss, which creates the uncon-scious fear that the person will never get enoughnurturing or affection. Hence, buried pain fromlong-ago unmet emotional needs can trigger con-flict in community 20, 30, and 40 years later.
Having deeply-buried emotionally charged
needs is not the problem. The problem is believ-ing that at some level that community will some-how meet these needs. The secret, silent demand
that community or other community membersmust provide what seems to be missing adds acutting edge to conflict. This is why argumentsabout what on the surface seem like ideologies,priorities, or values, can be so intense. Imay
assume that community means valuing inclusion(because I desperately needed acceptance as achild and didn’t get it); youmay assume commu-
nity means freedom for each of us to do our ownthing (because you desperately needed autonomyas a child and didn’t get it). So we end up havingfierce fights about what “community” means.What can we do about it? W e can develop
good communication and process skills, learn toaccept and welcome feedback and do course-cor-rection when necessary, find ways to heal ourindividual issues, and deal constructively withconflict when it arises.
High Woundedness, High Willingness
“We’ve learned that it’s the little things — theminor hurts, the small resentments, the pettyjudgments about each other — that subtly yet per-vasively undermine and limit the degree of well-being in our relationships,” says Larry Kaplowitz.“Even a small degree of mistrust can prevent usfrom really being open with each other. Uncleared,this can quickly spiral downward into disconnec-tion, avoidance, more resentment, and conflict.”
Clearing these issues often involves offering
feedback, by which I mean telling someoneabout something they did or said and how itaffected you negatively.COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 205
COHOUSING AND CONFLICT
Cohousing founders tend to excel at the logistics of form-
ing a community — acquiring land and financing, anddealing with development — but tend to stumble overinterpersonal communication, often becomingembroiled in intractable conflict once they move intotheir beautifully constructed buildings. Founders of non-cohousing communities, however, often stumble overbusiness and financial hurdles but seem to instinctivelyvalue good process and communication skills. (Foundersof more recently built cohousing communities, however,seem more aware that the human connection is as impor-tant as the construction loan.) We certainly need bothsets of skills! Let’s hope members of cohousing and non-cohousing communities will learn from one another, andwe’ll all benefit.

Many people attracted to community have so
many highly charged unmet needs that they areeasily triggered into hurt, anger, and defensive-ness. They give feedback in brusque, unskilledways and resist any feedback that others try tooffer them. They have what I call “high wound-edness.” Y et others attracted to community,equally wounded, are also willing to do what ittakes to heal themselves and learn good processskills. Such people have what I see as “high will-ingness and high woundedness.” Even thoughdealing with critical feedback is difficult, theyoften learn good communication skills wellenough to give feedback compassionately, anddevelop enough self-esteem to hear and thought-fully consider any negative feedback offered byothers. They often become community’s bestfacilitators, counselors, and mediators.
Before dealing with the art of giving and
receiving feedback, however, let’s examine somecommon kinds, as well as some common sources,of community conflict.
Seven Kinds of Community Conflict We
Wish We’d Left Behind
Here are how certain habitual “old paradigm,”
“dominator culture” behaviors and attitudes areoften expressed when transplanted to intention-al community. W e can begin to dismantle thesebehaviors in ourselves by first realizing that if wewant to live more sustainably and harmoniouslyin community than we did in mainstream cul-ture we’ve got to change ourselves too!
1. Founder’s Syndrome (I). Unconsciously
assigning parent and authority figure roles tofounders and acting out adolescent rebellion andself-identity issues by resenting, undermining,and/or challenging the community founders’ wis-dom or experience, and/or the validity or relevanceof the community’s values, vision, or purpose.
2. Founder’s Syndrome (II). Founders’ clinging
to an unconscious self-image as parents orauthority figures; assuming a wiser, superior, ormore privileged status than other members; andresenting, undermining, or challenging anyefforts to question the founders’ authority orotherwise offer the community innovation, newperspectives, or change.
3. Visionary Abuse. When dynamic, energetic,
visionary founders, burning with a spiritual,environmental, or social-justice mission, workgrueling hours in primitive, cramped, uncom-fortable, or health-risking conditions, and happi-ly expect all members, interns, and apprentices todo the same. Related to eco-macho, sustainablerthan thou, campground macho (“W e all lived intents for three years with no heat, electricity, orrunning water, and you should too”), and com-munity macho (“Community is not for wimps:wecan take it, can you?”).
4. Violating community agreements. The
resentment and erosion of community trust thatoccur when a few people don’t follow the com-munity’s agreements and policies consistently,while others follow and uphold them.
5. Letting people get away with violating com-
munity agreements. The further resentment,
erosion of trust, and breakdown of communitywell-being that results when a member isn’tcalled on disregarding agreements and so contin-ues disregarding them. By default the personbecomes a kind of community aristocrat withthe privilege of living outside the normal rules.Often perpetuated by interpersonal powerimbalances.206 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

6. Interpersonal (as compared to “structural”)
power imbalances. Conflict, resentment, and
the breakdown of trust in community whensome members have more power than othersbecause of behaviors that others are reluctant toor afraid to deal with. These can include:
Intimidation power: Habitually emanating
anger, suppressed rage, “panic-anger,” andburning intensity; speaking sharply orharshly, bossing people around, criticiz-ing people frequently, and sometimesname-calling and shouting people down.The person with intimidation powerwields power over other membersbecause it’s difficult to muster the courageor energy to disagree with their opinionsor ask them to change their demeanor.People may have tried many times to askfor change and have given up, or the per-son is now less aggressive as a result ofpast feedback and others are too worndown to ask for further change, or theperson also offers such beneficial qualitiesthat others resign themselves to having amixed blessing and let it go.
Undermining power: “Bad-mouthing,” dis-
crediting, and undermining another per-son’s behavior and/or character to othercommunity members; assuming theworst about the targeted person’s motivesand then criticizing those motives to oth-ers (“He’s just trying to rip us off,” “She’sjust trying to control everyone”); not dis-tinguishing between one’s own fearsabout the person and objective reality;not talking about these concerns with thetargeted person or setting up a third-party mediation. The undermining per-son wields power over others in the com-munity because s/he operates behindpeople’s backs, and others are reluctant to
voice concerns about this behavior forfear they’ll be targeted next.
Hypersensitive power: Reacting to even
mildly worded feedback or requests forchange as though it were an intolerablepersonal attack; becoming visibly upsetwhen others disagree with one’s views orbeliefs; responding with such defensive-ness and self-justification so that peoplegive up: “Y ou can’t tell Reginald a nything.”
This wields power over other communitymembers because no one has the energyor patience to deal with this person’s highlevel of fear and drama. People withhypersensitive power, like those withintimidating or undermining power,maintain their power over others becausethey rarely receive feedback.
7. Assuming the worst about other people’s
motives. Resenting and criticizing someone not
only for what they may have done, but also forthe assumed “worst-case scenario” motives fortheir actions (He’s trying to cheat us,” “She justwants to bully everyone,” “He’s always trying toshow off ”) and using these assumptions as proofof the person’s malfeasance or character flawswithout (1) realizing these are assumptions, notfacts, and (2) not asking the person if theassumptions are true.
Twenty-four Common Sources of
Community Conflict
“Structural Conflict” Set-ups
1. Vision and values differences. Arguments
over how money should be spent, or how timeand labor should be allocated, based on differingvalues or visions about the community. (SeeChapter 4.)COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 207

2. “Structural” power imbalances. Resentment
and blame arising from real or perceived powerdifferences in terms of how decisions are madeand who makes them, or who has more influencethan others in the group, either because of per-suasive influence, expertise, or seniority in thecommunity. (See “Interpersonal power imbal-ances,” above.)
3. Exhausting, divisive, or unproductive meet-
ings. Resentment and anger from too-frequent,
overlong, or dragging meetings that accomplishlittle and go nowhere, or meetings characterizedby resentment or hostility. (See Chapter 6.)
4. Lack of crucial information. Arguments about
whose fault it is that we’re suddenly stopped inour tracks, or must raise unexpected fundsbecause we didn’t adequately research somethingearlier; for example, not knowing that our localzoning regulations don’t permit our planned pop-ulation density or clustered housing, or not know-ing composting toilets are illegal in our county.
5. Remembering verbal agreements differently.
Eruptions of resentment, blame, or hostilitybecause some community members appear to bedishonest or trying to cheat others, because weall remember our financial or other agreementsdifferently. W e can’t just look up the agreementsbecause we didn’t write them down. (SeeChapter 7.)
6. No communication or behavioral agree-
ments. Misunderstandings and resentments
because group members have widely divergentcommunication styles or behavioral norms.What are our norms for how people talk to eachanother, or express disagreement and strongemotion? 7. No processes for accountability. Resentment,
blame, and flying accusations because some of usdidn’t do what we said we’d do, and certain proj-ects can’t move forward because some earliertasks are unfinished, causing us to lose money ormiss important opportunities.
8. No membership criteria or new-member
screening process. Resentment and mistrust
arising because new people enter who don’t shareour values and vision, don’t align with our com-munity culture, or can’t meet our financial andlabor requirements. (See Chapter 18.)
9. Being swamped with too many new mem-
bers at once. Disorientation, overwhelm,
depression, loss, or panic because the “container”of our shared history, values, and culture isthreatened or damaged by the sudden influx ofmore people than we can assimilate easily.(Forming community groups and communitiesdo better to add new members slowly.)
10. High turnover. Disorientation, overwhelm,
depression, and associated emotions because toohigh a percentage of members are continuallycoming and going for the community to estab-lish a sense of itself. The center does not hold;there’s no “there” there.
Differences in Work and Planning Styles
11. Processors vs. Doers. Conflict between
group members who want to process emotions orclear up points of meeting procedure, and thosewho want to focus on facts, strategies, and “real”things, but who sometimes override other peo-ple’s feelings or ignore agreed-upon procedures.
12. Planners vs. Doers. T ension between those
who want to gather facts and data and make208 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

long-term plans before taking action, and those
who want to leap in and get started.
13. Spiritual vs. physical manifesters.
Annoyance and impatience between those whowant to use visualization, affirmation, or prayeras the primary means to manifest community,but may not feel comfortable with budgets,mortgages, shovels, or power tools, and thosewho want to use strategic plans, cash flow pro-jections, and work parties as the primarily meansto manifest community, but are leery of “invisiblestuff.”
14. Differences in information processing.
Disrespecting, dismissing or devaluing peoplewho may process information differently (visual-ly rather than aurally, in wholes rather than stepby step), or at a different pace than we do.
15. Differences in communication style.
Socioliguistic differences based on region, eth-nicity, subculture, socio-economic background,gender, or whether a member has lived in com-munities for decades or just arrived from themainstream.
Fairness Issues
16. W ork imbalances, or perceived imbalances.Resentment toward those who work less often orless rigorously on community projects than wedo, or than they’ve previously agreed to.
17. Financial issues. Arguments over who’s
expected to pay for what, and if and whenmoney can be reimbursed. Resentment and ten-sion over the relationship between financial con-tribution and the amount of influence in deci-sion-making.18. Time-crunch issues. Disagreements about
the amount of time spent in meetings and oncommunity tasks versus. time with one’s familyor household. Conflict over the best times toschedule meetings or community projects sothey’re convenient for everyone. Arguments overhow consistently community members shouldcontribute to the group and whether it’s OK totake periodic breaks.
19. Gender imbalance and power-over issues.
Power imbalances and resentments if there areconsiderably more members of one gender thananother, or one gender dominating some areas,or one gender consistently teasing, behaving sug-gestively towards, or dominating the other.
Neighbor Issues
20. Behavioral norms. Conflict over what’s con-
sidered acceptable behavior in community; forexample, to what degree people might intervene inor restrain potentially unacceptable, unsafe, ordestructive behavior of other people, their chil-dren, or their animals. Can community membersrequest changes in parents’ child-raising style, orrequest that others restrain, train, or fence theiranimals? What are standards of acceptable behav-ior outside the community, where someone’sbehavior might reflect on the community?
21. Boundary issues. T ension about what com-
munity members do on their homesites, in theiradjacent homes, or shared common spaces, thatcan be seen or heard by others, including whatnoises may too loud or disruptive to others dur-ing certain hours or what physical objects mightbe an eyesore to others. What behaviors — suchas disciplining children, having loud arguments,butchering livestock, drinking, taking drugs,nudity, displays of affection, or sexual expressionCOMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 209

— are fine for some to overhear or view are fine
and which are “over the line.” T o what degreecan fellow community members borrow eachother’s personal items without asking? Whatdegree of playful, affectionate, or sensual physi-cal touch is welcome to some and unwelcome toothers?
22. Care and maintenance issues. Conflict
about standards for taking care of and maintain-ing jointly owned equipment or tools, and who’sresponsible.
23. Cleanliness and order issues. Te n s i o n o v e r
standards for cleanliness in common rooms, andcleanliness of jointly used items and how they’restored, particularly in kitchens and bathrooms,and who’s responsible.
24. Lifestyle issues. Conflict arising from items
some members may own or activities they mayenjoy privately — smoking, liquor, drugs, guns,pesticides, and meat eating — which may be nobig deal for some but disturbing to others.Conflict over the degree to which relationshipsbetween families, couples, or households may bethe business of other members, such as parents’discipline or lack of discipline with children,open marriages, polyfidelitous relationships, orgay or bisexual relationships. T o what degree ishow people treat each other in their love relation-ships the business of other community members?
Every one of these conflicts can be reduced or
prevented by well-crafted agreements and proce-dures, good training in group process, or both.
The Fine Art of Offering Feedback
Offering feedback is notan attempt to assess or
guess or criticize the person’s intentions ormotives. If you do that, it’ll probably triggerdefensiveness and escalate the problem. And
although you can also request that the person dothings differently in the future, this can alsomake things worse, if wanting the person tochange is the only reason you’re giving the feed-back.
“Get in touch with your motives for offering
feedback,” advises process consultant PaulDeLapa. “If your intention is to offer informa-tion about how the person’s actions or behavioraffected you, there’s a good chance the person canhear and accept it. But if your motive is tochange them, it probably won’t work.”
Don’t try to convince or coerce them.“People
don’t resist change itself as much as they resist‘being changed’,” says Paul. So offering feedbackcan support someone’s own willingness tochange something if the feedback is offered in away that doesn’t register as a demand or as animplication that they’re somehow bad or wrong.
How you say it has everything to do with how
feedback will be received. It requires all the bestcommunication skills we can muster — usingneutral language, describing what the person actu-ally did rather than assessing his or her characteror motives, and using real feeling words ratherthan blame-words. Again, the best process I knowof for offering feedback constructively comes fromthe Nonviolent Communication process.
Receiving Feedback — Listening for
Kernels of Truth
Even if you learn to offer feedback skillfully,
much of the critical feedback you may hearabout yourself could be delivered in a gracelessmanner. Even people committed to good processcan still speak awkwardly or harshly whenthey’re trying to deliver a difficult message. Y oucould get feedback that implies or outright statesthat you’re wrong, bad, or defective in some way.210 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Y ou can hear guesses and presumptions about
your motives stated as facts. Y ou can be told you“always” do such-and-such or “never” do such-and-such. Y ou can be armchair-psychoanalyzedas to what childhood factors cause your malfea-sance. This can be so painful it completelyobscures the important information the personis trying to give you.
Hearing critical feedback can hurt. Not only
because of any harshness in the delivery, but alsobecause of the possibility that, to whateverextent, it may be true. It helps to keep some prin-ciples in mind:
1. Just because feedback is delivered in a critical,
exaggerated, or hostile manner doesn’t meanit doesn’t contain a kernel of truth — ormaybe a lot of truth.
2. On the other hand, it could be a projection of
the person’s own issues onto you, with noth-ing to do with your own actions or behaviors.
3. And even when delivered skillfully, feedback
might still be exaggerated, or partially orwholly invalid.Hearing critical feedback requires at least
two skills: the ability to respond to the person ina way that doesn’t make things worse — for you,for them, and for the whole community; and lis-tening for the kernel of truth in what they sayand finding ways to check it out objectively.
Suppose Jason says:“I’m annoyed and frustrat-
ed by the mess in the kitchen after you’ve used it.I’ve been cleaning up after you and I’m gettingtired of it. I wish you’d clean up after you’re done.”
Constructive responses could include
(depending on how accurate you think Jason’sobservation may be): “Thanks for telling me,” or“Thanks, I’ll consider that,” or “Thanks, I’ll dosomething about it,” or just “Thanks.”But what if he’d said: “Y ou’re a slob who
leaves a mess every time you use the kitchen! W ealways have to clean up after you!” With a mes-sage like this, it can take a great deal of patienceand tolerance not to retaliate in kind. If you do,you, Jason, and the whole community will prob-ably feel worse. If you respond more neutrally assuggested above, you’ll have helped the commu-nity’s well-being by not adding to the burden ofill will Jason has just dumped into it.
How do you know when feedback is true?
Introspection, self-observation, and any mannerof self-awareness techniques, including askingfor inner guidance, can help you assess its degreeof truth. Even better, you can ask other commu-nity members directly. I recommend doing thisin relatively straightforward way, for example:“Excuse me, Sally, do I sometimes leave a mess inthe kitchen?”
Sally could say,“Y ou sure do. I’ve been mean-
ing to tell you about it. W ould you please takemore time to clean up after you’re done?”
Or she could say, “Hmmm, let me see. W ell,
maybe once or twice, but not all the time.”
Asking various people and getting a consis-
tent response one way or the other is one way togauge the accuracy of someone’s feedback.Asking questions in a straightforward way givesyou a better chance of getting neutral, accurateinformation.
But suppose you felt so hurt or angry by how
Jason criticized you that you exaggerated and“horriblized” what he said when you tried to ver-ify it: “Jason says I’m a horrible slob who alwaysleaves a mess in the kitchen and everywhere I go.He says everyone always has to clean up after me!Is that true?”
This defeats your chances of getting accurate
feedback, because Sally would probably saysomething like: “Of course not! Y ou don’t leave
COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 211

messes everywhere!” And you’ll have missed the
kernel of truth that you do, in fact, sometimes
leave a messy kitchen.
W e can help create sustainable relationships
by giving feedback as skillfully as we can, withoutexpecting or demanding that other people are anygood at it. W e can sift through any graceless orharsh criticism for whatever helpful truths aboutourselves we can glean. This is a lot to ask. Y et it’sthe rock polisher in action, and it’s one of the bestways we can use community to grow and healourselves and strengthen our relationships there.Threshing Meetings
“The amount of time and energy conflict cansuck out of a community can endanger its viabil-ity,” says Dave Henson of Sowing Circle/OAEC.He’s right — and it’s everyone’s business toresolve small conflicts before they become com-munity-wide conflagrations.
Most communities profiled in this book have
regular meetings to unearth small conflicts beforethey escalate to larger ones. Threshing meetingsare like safety valves that periodically let off pres-sure, and can include giving appreciative as well ascritical feedback, venting frustration or anger,asking people for specific changes in behavior, orsimply exploring controversial issues.
Using processes like threshing meetings to
handle conflicts early, when they’re small, oftenprevents them from mushrooming into majorconflagrations later on. It’s also much easier for agroup to resolve large conflicts once they’velearned to handle smaller ones.
Abundant Dawn members set aside an hour
and a half twice monthly for what they call “per-sonal/interpersonal time.” People describe what’sgoing on in their lives, says Joy Legendre, as wellas delve into any conflicts. “Just knowing thatspace is there for us to bring these issues up helpsdefuse the little tensions and problems. It’s easi-er to let them go and not get bothered by them,just knowing that we can always discuss them atthe meeting.”
But they’re not called “threshing” meetings
for nothing. “Public feedback sessions can berisky,” cautions process consultant PaulDeLapa, “because it risks undermining trustbetween people instead of building trust.” Manypeople aren’t willing to offer feedback one-on-one, and will criticize people behind their backsrather than speak to them directly. In public212 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
HEALING OUR INDIVIDUAL ISSUES
If several people say give us the same feedback, maybe
we should do something about it. But what? How canwe get along better with each other, and help our livesbecome happier, lighter, and more enjoyable?
“Thought field therapy” is a relatively new method
for releasing hurts and wounds from the past that maybe influencing perceptions and attitudes in the present.I’ve tried various therapies over the years, but neverfound anything so effective, painless, cheap, and fast. Itcan take only three or four sessions, for example, tomake a noticeable difference. Thought field therapydoesn’t require re-experiencing or even understandingold upsets, or using visualization or affirmations. It’sessentially a mechanical technique involving certainacupuncture points, but without the needles, and onecan do it at home, without a therapist. It seems to workby healing issues at the core — for me it’s like pressingthe “erase” button on a tape recorder, unbelievablethough that sounds. I recommend this healing tool forany community members seeking an exceptionally fastand simple way to peel away the negative layers thatcan get in the way of sustainable relationships. (SeeResources.)

feedback sessions such as threshing meetings
these are usually the people who suddenly feelfree to unleash the floodgates of pent-up frus-tration and resentment. For the person receiv-ing the feedback it can feel as thought they’rebeing ganged up on. If everyone in a groupplans to give one member feedback, Paul rec-ommends that the person sets up some bound-aries, such as what kind of feedback they’d bewilling to hear, and how they’d prefer it bedelivered. Establishing some boundaries firstempowers the person and helps them feel lessvulnerable.
But in some circumstances feedback offered
in a group setting can be easier to take thanone-on-one. If V aughan gives Sally critical feed-back, and other group members say they’venever had that experience themselves, it couldoffer Sally a wider perspective and lessen thesting. And if V aughan were to offer feedback ina harsh way, other, more skilled communicatorscould intervene, and remind him to alter hislanguage.
The public/private scale exercise, first sug-
gested for the visioning process can help peo-ple in a threshing meeting (or any meeting)break the ice in discussing an issue that they’rereluctant to talk about publicly. Let’s say it’sbelieved that someone repeatedly breaks com-munity agreements or has seriously breachedbehavioral norms, or some members cannotmeet their financial obligations to the commu-nity, or it’s rumored that someone may beharming a child — and no one wants to bringit up. Using the public/private scale and fram-ing the issue as a series of questions makespublic the range of members’ opinions aboutthe issue, which can help induce people tospeak up and address the matter directly. (SeeExercises, Chapter 5.)Creating Specific Conflict Resolution
Agreements
Some groups create a set of agreements about
how community members will handle conflictwhen it comes up. Here are the agreementsSowing Circle made, excerpted from their“Conflict Resolution Policy.”
Sowing Circle Community: Conflict
Resolution Policy
When confronted with conflict of any kind,
the community agrees to adhere to the conflictresolution principles and steps outlined below:
I. Problem-Solving Ground Rules. All mem-
bers agree to attempt to solve problems by firstdealing directly with the person or persons withwhom he/she is experiencing problems. Implicitin this agreement is a commitment to honest,direct problem-solving. All members will agreeto the following ground rules when involved inconflict resolution efforts:1. A commitment to mutual respect.2. A commitment to solve the problem.3. No put-downs.4. No intimidation, implied or direct.5. No physical contact.6. No interrupting.7. Agreement to use the conflict resolution pro-
tocol, below.
II. Conflict Resolution Protocols. Community
members in conflict will:
Make a good faith effort to resolve the
problem between/among themselves. Ifthis does not work, the members in con-flict will:
Ask a mutually agreed-upon member to
help mediate and solve the problem withthose having the conflict. If this does notwork, the members in conflict will:COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 213

Formally request assistance from the
community in solving the problem.
If the community is unable to assist in
resolving the conflict, and all avenues ofconflict resolution have been exhausted,then the community may choose toengage in outside mediation to solve theproblem.
III. Third Party Confidentiality. W e recognize
the importance of the conflict resolution protocoloutlined above, and agree to abide by it in princi-ple and practice. As non-involved parties, we willencourage conflicting parties to deal directly withone another. However, we also recognize theneed, at times, to discuss, seek advice, or seekcomfort from others while in the midst of con-flict. Such a situation requires confidentiality. As“third parties” who are approached for solace,advice, etc., we agree to provide these things inthe spirit of helping to improve the situation.
W e d o n o t w i s h t o c o n t r i b u t e t o r u m o r s ,
gossip, “bad-mouthing,” or the perpetuation ofproblems. If a person who is experiencing a con-flict with one or more people on the propertyapproaches a neutral “third party” it is under-stood that the person is responsible for keepingthe health and well being of the community inmind. That is, while maintaining confidentiality,the third party should remind the conflictedperson of the conflict resolution protocol, if nec-essary. In addition, by virtue of being privy tothe conflict at hand, the third party is alsoresponsible for monitoring the situation. If thefeelings, issues, etc., are leading to greater con-flict or to a weakening of the community, thenthe third party should take steps toward facili-tating resolution, even if this means exposingthe fact (not details) of the problem at hand toothers in the community.IV . Confidentiality with Regard to Internal
Community Conflict. In the spirit of protecting
the privacy and rights of members of the com-munity, we are committed to maintaining confi-dentiality regarding individual and communityissues of a sensitive nature when speaking withpeople outside the community.
Helping Each Other Stay Accountable
to the Group
One of the most common sources of conflict in
community occurs when people don’t do whatthey say they’ll do. As in business, this oftencauses repercussions “downstream,” since somepeople count on others to finish certain prelimi-nary steps before they can take the next steps.But by putting a few simple processes in place,community members can help each other stayaccountable to one another in relatively painless,guilt-free ways.
One is to make agreements about tasks in
meetings, and keep track of these tasks frommeeting to meeting. This involves assigning tasksto specific people and defining what they’re beingasked to accomplish and by what time. It alsoinvolves having a task review at the beginning ofevery meeting — the people or committees whoagreed to take on these tasks report whether theyhave been done, and if not, when they will be.
It also helps to create a wall chart of assigned
tasks with expected completion dates and theperson or committee responsible for each.Assign someone the task of keeping the chartcurrent and taping it on the wall at meetings.
Community activist Geoph Kozeny suggests
creating a buddy system, where everyone isassigned another group member to call andcourteously inquire, “Did you call the countyyet?” or “Have you found out about the healthpermit?” This is not about guilt-tripping; it’s214 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

about helpful inquiry and mutual encourage-
ment. These methods rely on the principle thatit’s more difficult to forget or ignore responsibil-ities if they’re publicly visible. Social pressure canoften accomplish what good intentions cannot.
If not completing tasks becomes an ongoing
problem with one or more people in the group,you can add additional processes. For example,when anyone accomplishes a task, thank andacknowledge the person at the next meeting.When someone doesn’t accomplish a task, thegroup as a whole asks the person to try again.After awhile, the simple desire not to let othersdown usually becomes an internalized motivatorfor more responsible behavior.
If someone still frequently fails to do what
they say they’ll do, you can use a graduated seriesof consequences. (See below for a more detailedexplanation of a graduated series of conse-quences.) First, several people could talk with theperson, for example,. describing the repercussionsto the group of failing to follow through. If thatdoesn’t resolve it, the matter could be taken up bya committee convened for this purpose. Last, itcould become a matter for the whole group.
Why is this such a common source of com-
munity conflict? I think it’s about developing thehabit early in life of procrastinating or agreeingto take on more than is possible, and not havingenough motivation to change. When we livealone or live with our families, it’s relatively easyto change our minds about whether or not, orwhen, we’ll do something we said we’d do, or justplain let it go. But in a forming communitygroup or community, this can have widespreadnegative impacts on other people, and we’ll cer-tainly hear about it. It can take time, energy, andcommitment to shift from “live-alone” or “single-family” mode to consistently considering howour actions will affect others.When people repeatedly don’t do what they
promise and others continue to hold themaccountable, it usually results in the personeither changing their habits or eventually leavingthe group.
A Graduated Series of Consequences
It’s especially painful for community groupswhen someone consistently violates agreementsor behavioral norms, or refuses to make changesrepeatedly requested by other community mem-bers regarding behavior or communication style.One remedy is to agree on and implement nega-tive consequences for such offenses. In order toprotect a community, it’s possible to design agraduated series of fair, compassionate conse-quences, from mild to increasingly serious, thattreat people with respect while inducing them tomake necessary changes.
Many communities have no consequences
for such breaches, partly because most of us feeluncomfortable considering such matters, andpartly because having negative consequencesseems no different than the fines and jail sen-tences of mainstream society. It’s difficult forcommunity members to propose or implementcoercive methods of governance when what theyCOMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 215
GETTING OUTSIDE HELP
Sometimes conflict gets so entrenched and seemingly
irresolvable that communities call in process gurus, con-sensus facilitators, or other communication consultants tohelp sort out the problem. These consultants are skilledin process and conflict-resolution methods, and, sincethey’re often community veterans themselves, their com-munity experience gives them a context for the uniquechallenges that arise when people attempt to live moreclosely and interdependently. (See Resources for sug-gested community process consultants.)

really want is a finer, kinder, more conscious
society than the one they grew up with. For thesame reasons, the communities that do have con-sequences are often reluctant to enforce them.
Still other communities have consequences,
but the consequences are too severe for theoffense, so people are loathe to employ them. Forexample, one large income-sharing communityhas just one consequence for members who gettoo far in the “labor hole” (failing to do their shareof labor) or the “money hole” (borrowing too muchagainst future stipends) — eviction from the com-munity. But this requires polling the members for100 percent agreement to take this action. Whilemany people in this community have gotten intothe labor hole or money hole over the years, thisconsequence is rarely proposed. And when it is,usually enough friends of the member in questionvote against it so he or she doesn ’ t have to leave.Everyone loses here. The community continues tofinancially carry members who contribute less andtake more, and the offending member continues toget away with irresponsible behavior and has littlemotivation to change.
Occasionally, community members need a
series of consequences to finally understand thatthey must make changes. When all else fails, coer-cion can give a person a needed kick in the pants.
Community Alternatives Society in
V ancouver, Canada, had no real “rules” until theywere forced to create agreements about behavior,and more importantly, institute a graduated seriesof consequences if anyone breached them. Thiscommunity’s series of consequences treats mem-bers with respect, yet has “teeth.” Here’s what theydo if someone seriously violates behavioral normsor repeatedly breaks community agreements:1. One person talks with the member in ques-
tion about the problem and asks him or herto make changes.2. If this doesn’t work, four people meet about
the problem — the first two and a trustedfriend of each, again, requesting that the per-son make changes.
3. If this doesn’t solve it, the person meets with
the Accountability Committee to resolve theproblem.
4. If this still doesn’t solve it, the Accountability
Committee creates a five-month contractwith the member that outlines how he or shewill make the necessary changes, and meetswith the member monthly for updates. Thepurpose of the contract and meetings is notto
punish or humiliate the member, but toencourage and support their making thechanges.
5. If even this doesn’t work, the whole commu-
nity meets specifically to decide what actionto take, which may include asking the personto live somewhere else for a while, and possi-bly also revoking his or her membership. Themember can participate in this meeting, buthas no blocking power.
6. If most members want to take this action but
one or more people block it, the committeemeets with the member in question and thethose blocking the proposal to seek resolu-tion together.
The number of consequences a group has,
and how far it goes (a whole-group meeting?expulsion?) will depend on the size of the groupand how deeply connected people feel — often afunction of how long they’ve been together.
Isn’t it drastic to put a member back on a
provisional membership status, or ask them tolive elsewhere for a while, or worse, to ask themto permanently leave the community once you’reall living on the land? Y es, it is drastic. And some-times, when the violation is severe enough or the
216 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

conflict too wrenching, it’s the only way to pro-
tect your forming community group or commu-nity from breaking up altogether.
After they took the first Naka-Ima work-
shop, Lost V alley members noticed two diver-gent trends developing in their community. Mostmembers wanted to move in the direction ofmore cooperative and shared resources, but feltfrustrated because other members wanted moreindependent lives. At that time, as a relativelysmall consensus-based group of ten members, itseemed that without something changingnobody would be able to get what they reallywanted — especially since using consensusrequires a common purpose.
“T o those of us who held the cooperative
vision,” Larry recalls, “it seemed necessary tobreak with precedent and ask the others to leave,freeing the energy to move forward. W e didn’tfeel we had enough of a foundation to toleratethat kind of diversity. This was the first in aseries of courageous and risky choices that webelieved we must take to restore our integrity asa community.”
The people did leave, and Larry reports that
the community became more harmoniousbecause of it.
/fl1lft
Asking someone to leave your group or commu-nity is probably the most disruptive and painfulway to deal with apparently irresolvable conflict.It is far easier to address the likelihood of suchconflict ahead of time by carefully choosing thepeople who join you. W e’ll address this contro-versial topic in Chapter 18.COMMUNICATION, PROCESS, AND DEALING WITH CONFLICT 217
IDEALISM AND DISILLUSIONMENT
Community founders and newcomers often assume that
they won’t need conflict resolution methods, ways tohelp each other stay accountable to the group, or conse-quences for violations agreements — since none of theseissues will ever come up in their community. They assumethey won’t be living in the “old paradigm,” so why haveremedies for it? But a few months or a few years into theprocess they see that heir community does not at allresemble the harmonious and deeply connected “newparadigm” family they envisioned, and disillusionmentsets in.
Usually they blame the community itself (“We’re so
screwed up!”) or particular members (“If only Olliewould leave!”), rather than realizing they had unrealisticexpectations to begin with, and they are having a typical(some say, inevitable) community experience.
Community life is more functional and satisfying than
life in mainstream culture — but often not as functionaland satisfying as we’d hoped!
Community is like crossing a bridge between win-
lose culture and the more harmonious and sustainableculture we aspire to and would like to leave to our chil-dren. Community members are traversing the bridge,passing from one realm to the other, helping generatethat future as we keep learning better how to interact andcommunicate with each other in cooperative, win/winways, resolve conflicts successfully, and so on.
Utilizing the processes described in this chapter isn’t
evidence of our community’s failure. These processes arelike training wheels; they’re small, helpful, devices to helpus travel more easily from we’ve been to where we’regoing — toward communities that are socially, ecologi-cally, and spiritually sustainable.

IN THE MOUNTAINS AND HIGH DESERT val-
leys of southwestern Colorado, six profession-
al women in their forties through sixties planneda small community I’ll call Pueblo Encantada.After awhile it became clear that a seventh per-son who’d recently joined the group, whom I’llcall Regina, couldn’t afford the $20,000 land-purchase contribution. Everyone assumed she’dno longer be involved, but Regina, deeply movedby the vision of a rural community in a beautifulsetting, was convinced it was her destiny.“I know
I should be there,” she said.“It’s calling to me spir-itually.” So the other members, moved by thedesire not to exclude anyone for financial rea-sons, and unwilling to go against anyone’s strongspiritual conviction, took Regina into the com-munity, bought an 11-acre property, and placedher name on the deed with everyone else’s.
Most of the women lived and worked in
town and visited the land on weekends, planningto move there as soon as they could afford it orafter they retired. But a few, including Regina,lived on the land full time.
After about six months, tension arose over
land use. Regina had acquired a horse, and insist-ed on certain requirements for pasturage andaccess to water, although this limited the othermembers’ use and enjoyment of the land. As a
consensus-based group, no one could force theissue unless everyone agreed, and Regina didn’t.(And because they were new to consensus, noone realized there had been no real agreement inthe first place since they’d never decided as agroup to allow Regina to use that amount ofland.) The conflict grew steadily worse. Theother women resented Regina for behavior thatseemed unfair and demanding, especially sincethey had literally gifted her with communitymembership out of their own pockets. Over thenext several months feedback sessions didn’twork, threshing meetings didn’t work, outsidemediation didn’t work. Finally, the others offeredto split the 11 acres, with Regina retaining anacre and a half, although not the portion shewanted. She could reimburse the others inmonthly installments, with no down payment.The community would continue, minus Regina,on the remaining nine and a half acres. But sherefused. By now an intolerable situation, the onlyrecourse the women had was to sue Regina toforce the sale of the property and get theirmoney out. This they did. In less than a year anda half, Pueblo Encantada had become PuebloNada.
218/fl1lftChapter 18 /fl1rt
Selecting People to Join You

If this weren’t bad enough, because Regina
was on the deed as co-owner, the court disbursedto her one-seventh the proceeds of the sale, inspite of the fact that she’d paid not a dime. Butthis wasn’t the worst part. The worst part wasthat every one of the six women had felt uneasyabout Regina when they’d met as a core group.Her energy, her communication style, and hernear-insistence that she belonged on the land,had raised red flags for everyone. But no one hadsaid a word, not wanting to appear unkind, orworse, “selfish.” W anting to be generous, unwill-ing to heed telltale signs, and ashamed of theirfeelings of aversion, no one voiced her privatemisgivings. Being “nice” cost them their dream.
Select for Emotional Maturity — the
“Narrow Door”
Pueblo Encantada’s story is not at all unique; I’ve
heard many variations of this tale in the yearsI’ve been watching forming communities.
Accepting someone into to your core group
or already-established community who isn’taligned with your vision and values, or who trig-gers strong reservations, doesn’t work. It canpotentially lead to spending hours of meetingtime on conflicts that leave everyone drained andexhausted, or worse, to lawsuits and communitybreak-up. And, because people project so muchidealism onto community, we tend to make thesame kinds of mistakes choosing communitymates as we do choosing lovers: leaping beforewe look, projecting idealized archetypes ontoordinary folks, refusing to pay attention to tell-tale signs.
The antidote is to put in place a well-
designed process for accepting and integratingnew members and screening out those who don’tresonate with your group. Since community liv-ing involves getting along well with others, you’llwant to select people whose lives demonstrate
they can do this. Ideally, you’ll select for emo-tional maturity and self-esteem. Not having a
membership selection process can be a heart-breaking source of structural conflict later on.
“If your community front door is difficult to
enter, healthy people will strive to get in,” saysIrwin W olfe Zucker, a psychiatric social workerand former member of Findhorn and other com-munities.“If it’s wide open, you’ll tend to attractunhealthy people, well-versed in resentfulsilences, subterfuge, manipulation, and guilttrips.” Once these people become members ofthe group, he warns, everyone’s energy may laterbe tied up in getting them out again.
A membership screening process usually
means a period of time visiting the core group orcommunity as an observer, answering questions,being interviewed by the group, and acceptancethrough the consensus process. In forming-groups, this can include paying membershipdues and/or fees towards land purchase. Inalready-established communities, this usuallymeans a more rigorous set of questions, a longervisiting period, a six-month-to-a-year provision-al membership, and possibly higher membershipfees.
An important part of the screening process is
how accurately the group describes itself pub-licly. Done well, your promotional materials(brochure or other handouts, inquiry responseletter, website, classified ad in Communities maga-
zine, listing in the Communities Directory ), will
draw those people aligned with your values andvision, and who are able and willing to meet yourtime, energy and financial requirements.
Y our promotional materials can help you
draw the kinds of people you’re seeking anddeter anyone else. Y ou can be explicit about thisif you wish. One community’s brochure reads:SELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 219

W e’re looking for people who feel confident and
good about themselves, who have achieved adegree of emotional maturity, and who can getalong with others in a group situation.
W e’re interested in people who don’t feel that
they’ve been harmed or taken advantage of byothers, or who don’t get the feedback thatthey’re moody, or touchy. W e’re seeking peoplewho enjoy the company of others, and are will-ing to ask for what they want and need.It makes sense to have a formal member-
screening process once you’re living together incommunity, but is it reasonable to ask someoneto go through all this simply to attend meetingsof your core group? It doesn’t make sense for vis-itors who will simply observe and offer com-ments. But it does if they will become decision-making members who’ll help influence thefuture of your community.
Another reason to screen new core group
members involves keeping the ones you’ve got. 220 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
WHO DOES WELL IN COMMUNITY?
1. Someone who doesn’t “need” it. People who are
fulfilled and doing well in their lives are more likely tothrive in and contribute to community.
2. Someone with a healthy sense of self. People
with emotional maturity and self-esteem, who knowwhat they want and know their strengths and weak-nesses, and who are seeking personal growth forthemselves, tend to do well in community.
3. Someone who is open to and able to hear
other points of view. The aggressive, competent
business executive or entrepreneur who instinctivelyknows best and makes decisions quickly tends to feelfrustrated and impatient in community until he or shebecomes comfortable with cooperative decision-making. Then such a person can thrive in communityand contribute a great deal.
4. Someone with a sense of connection to people
and an interest in the well-being of others.Obviously a socially confident person who likes peo-ple will enjoy community, but people who are shy ornatural loners can have difficulty at first. They can beinsensitive to other people’s needs and have no idea what’s expected of them. But with enough “high will-
ingness,” such people can use community as a learningopportunity and become fully contributing members.
5. Someone willing to abide by group agree-
ments. Some people fiercely guard their autonomy,
find the idea of interdependence with others unset-tling, and tend to bristle when asked to do followrules or perform a task. Again, with enough “high will-ingness,” such people can move from “I” conscious-ness to “we” consciousness without losing their senseof self. It feels good to be interdependent with oth-ers; however, for some people it takes a certainamount of self-confidence and trust even to try it.
6. Someone willing to speak up. People who are
willing to take the initiative, say so when they disagreewith others, and ask for what they want, tend to dowell.
7. Someone willing to be quiet and listen. People
who always know what’s best, or who are dynamic,assertive, and full of ideas, may need to tone downthat energy somewhat in group meetings in order togive others the space to speak.

Once you’re living in community, it’s not easy for
someone who’s fed up with a newcomer’s behav-ior to leave. But until a core group’s level of com-mitment has increased, for example, after buyingland, if someone joins you who annoys or dis-rupts the group, anyone in the core group couldbecome annoyed enough to walk away and neverreturn.
But is it Community?
Many people don’t think it’s “community” unlessthe group is inclusive and open and anyone canjoin. Doesn’t community mean offering a moreaccepting, inclusive culture than mainstreamsociety?
Most experienced communitarians would
reply that not having criteria for new members— admissions standards, if you will — is simplyan invitation for emotionally dysfunctional peo-ple to arrive. Without realizing it, they seek outcommunities in order to heal childhood hurtsand wounds. They look to community to pro-vide the loving family they never had. (One com-munity founder told me that their communitysign out front might as well have read:“Emotional Hospital — W elcome.”)
When I bring this up in workshops, many
people shift uncomfortably in their seats — itgoes against the grain to consider excluding peo-ple. I can always spot the experienced communi-ty members though; they’re the ones rolling theireyes with “you can say thatagain” looks. They’ve
usually learned this through bitter experience;there’s no reason you should learn it the hardway too.
“ An intentional community is a scarce and
valuable commodity in our culture,” observescommunitarian Harvey Baker of DunmireHollow in T ennessee, “existing only because itsfounders have invested a lot of time and humanresources. It’d be a shame to let in someone in
who could destroy what has taken so many peo-ple so many years to create.”
But what about the rock polisher effect?
Aren’t everyone’s rough edges worn smoother bycontact with everyone else’s? V eteran communi-tarians often point out that most people natural-ly mature in community because of the (hopeful-ly) constructive feedback they’ll receive and thenatural tendency to learn from the (hopefully)good communication skills modeled by moreexperienced members. Many groups know peo-ple who were difficult to be around when theyfirst arrived, but were so motivated to learn thatthey became model community members.
But the rock polisher effect appears to hinge
on the willingness of the potential new memberto learn and grow and change. I’ve seen formingcommunities — even those with otherwise fineprocess skills — break apart in conflict andsometimes lawsuits because even just one mem-ber didn’t have enough self-esteem to functionwell in a group. The person’s “stuff came up” — aseveryone’s does in community — but theirs wastoo destructive for the group to absorb. When aperson is wounded and having a difficult time, heor she can certainly benefit from living in com-m u n i t y ,a n d ,i d e a l l y ,c a n h e a l a n d g r o w b e c a u s eof the support and feedback offered there. But acertain level of woundedness — without “highwillingness” — appears to be too deep for manynew communities to handle. I believe one deeplywounded person can affect a group far more thanten healthy people — potentially derailing thecommunity’s agenda and draining its energy.
Passive Victims, Outraged Victims
Consider the person who has had the misfortuneof being abused as a child and hasn’t had muchhealing before approaching your group. Such aSELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 221

person usually feels needy at some level, and
tends to interpret other people’s inability orrefusal to meet his or her needs as simply moreabuse.
Sometimes the person seems timid, passive,
or insecure, which people sometimes character-ize as having “victim” energy. Others, equallyhurting, have the opposite traits, appearing edgyand intense, or erupting into anger rather easily.In both cases, it appears that on an unconsciouslevel, the person expects to be victimized, and is“ready for it” in advance. Such a person tends toeither seek out abusive situations or provokenormally mild-tempered people to anger. Theycan perceive angry or abusive behaviors wherethey don’t exist, and conclude,“See, I knew you’dabuse me.”
The problem is not that the person was once
victimized, which obviously wasn’t their fault.The problem is the ongoing interpretation ofother people’s actions as victimizing them.
Here’s how this often plays out in communi-
ty. Let’s say Darleen arrives at your door, orbegins attending meetings of your core group.She’s in difficult life circumstances; you feelcompassion and want to help, so you do. Y ou feelgood about this, and all is well for awhile. Butsoon tension builds between Darleen and othermembers. At sharing circles she retreats.Attempts to offer her feedback are rebuffed.Requests for minor changes in her behavior areseen as attacks. Any “good process” attention thecommunity gives her is seen as persecution. Atfirst Darleen thought you were allies, but look:just like everyone else, you’re out to victimizeher too.
For some reason “Darleen” often shows up in
communities as a single mother on welfare withseveral small children and two dogs which thechildren are very attached to. The mother hasenvironmental illness, one of the children has
special needs, the dogs have fleas and the mange.(The potential drama and cost to the communi-ty escalates if the father of Darleen’s children istrying to take them away from her, or wants tomove in and abuse her further.) Darleen isexhausted and desperate, and of course you wantto help her. By all means feed the family, givethem shelter for a few nights and a little money,if you like. Encourage Darleen to get help withcounty social services. Just know what you’ll betaking on if you let her join you.
Lost V alley once rescued a single mother in
circumstances like these, and she ended upresenting and blaming the community no matterhow they tried to help. “W e didn’t have what ittook for her to continue accepting our charity,”Dianne Brause recalls wryly.
Or let’s say Mike arrives at your door. Angry
with the corrupt powers that plunder the Earth,he’s certain of his convictions and passionateabout social change. He knows community —your community — is part of the answer. Hejoins and you welcome his zeal. All is well forawhile.
Soon tension builds between Mike and a few
others. The feedback he gets is wrong; requestsfor change are power-plays; sharing circles are forwimps. Any “process” attention the communitygives Mike is coercion. At first your communityseemed like righteous allies in the struggle, butlook: you’re just corrupt power-mongers likeeveryone else.
Darleen is operating out of fear, Mike out of
rage. Both are victims.
What kind of communities can people in
these circumstances join, besides therapeuticcommunities, or service communities organizedto offer support to people in need? A large, old,well-established community can sometimes take
222 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

on difficult or wounded people without much
damage to itself. A mature oak tree, after all, canhandle being hit by a truck. But don’t take onthis challenge if your group is small, or brandnew. Y ou’re just a seedling, not an oak tree, andstill too vulnerable.
Membership Screening and the Law
As mentioned earlier, if you have housing unitsor lots for sale on the open market, you can’t pickand choose your members, but must sell to any-one who meets your terms. If, based on yourmembership criteria, you choose some buyersand reject others, courts could interpret this asdiscrimination. Cohousing communities facethis issue, but, as mentioned earlier, usually findthat only those people who want more commu-nity in their lives are interested anyway, so theirmembership selection process becomes self-selecting.
But sometimes a cohousing core group sees a
red flag and does something about it. This wasthe case with a forming cohousing group in theNorthwest, which I’ll call Redwood Commons,and a member of their group whom I’ll call“Cal.” Cal spoke in a monotone and had littlefacial expression, what psychologists call “flataffect.” Everyone noticed his unusual, somewhatmechanical demeanor. Some felt compassionand were kind; others were unnerved. When itwas time for Redwood Commons to put moneydown on a property and move forward, somedidn’t want Cal in the group. “What if he ‘snaps’someday and harms one of our children?” theyasked. Others were heartsick about it. Theywanted to be kind to Cal, who was obviouslyhurting and would benefit from community liv-ing, but they didn’t want to risk it. So a fewmembers took Cal aside, and rather awkwardly,asked him to leave the group, which he did. Theydidn’t point out that he had every legal right to
buy in. T o this day many Redwood Commonsmembers feel ashamed of the way they asked Calto leave; it was obviously a painful experience forhim. Could they have done it more kindly, theyask? Should they have discouraged his meetingattendance earlier in the process? And were theyjust dead wrong? Cal could have been a fine com-munity member. Frequent contact with neigh-bors, particularly children, could have broughtneeded warmth into his life.
Y et even though this issue is painful to con-
template, I think these core group members didthe right thing by following their instincts andtaking the action they thought best for the com-munity. Unlike Pueblo Encantada members,Redwood Commons people didn’t let shameabout their feelings of unease stop them fromspeaking up.
Dealing Well with Saying “No”
Whether a group has homes or lots for sale onthe open market, or owns its property and canthus choose its members, is it worth it to asksomeone to leave, given how badly they may feel?Consider this: someone who is not accepted formembership in a group or community feels dis-appointed, gets over it, and moves on. But some-one who is accepted as a community member,moves to the community and lives there forawhile, and is later asked to leave, may be deeplyscarred. It is far easier on everyone concerned totake this painful step at the beginning.
I’d much rather see a new community get
established, sink roots, and grow strong andhealthy for a few years before taking in a wound-ed person who might be disruptive but couldbenefit from community, than see them try thiswhen they’re first starting out and risk everythingin the process. Y ou’re propagating from seedsSELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 223

here. Y ou need all the protection you can get.
This can be so difficult that people don’t deal
with it at all, especially if they were raised tobelieve that it’s not “nice” to say “No.” Like PuebloEncantada members, people can feel ashamed oftheir feelings that something’s “not right,” andjudge themselves for being “judgmental” orworse, for being “discriminating.”
“Judgmental” means to criticize someone as
unworthy, whereas what you’re doing is assess-ing whether this person resonates with yourvisions and values, is aligned with your behav-ioral norms, and can meet your financial andlabor requirements. And to “discriminate” meansto recognize the differences between various
choices; to differentiate, to discern. And discernyou must, since you could be living near andsharing property with this person for the rest ofyour life.
How Can You Tell?
Since most of us are wounded to some degreeand are in various stages of recovery, how can wetell in advance who might be wounded severelyenough to drain and exhaust the group? Mostpeople with serious emotional difficulties don’tgive off signals like Regina and Cal, but seem justlike anyone else at first.224 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER
SCREENING NEW MEMBERS
Communities organize their membership screening
process in various ways.
At Earthaven, for example, people learn about the
community’s vision, values, membership require-ments, and other information through its website andinformation packet (which includes magazine articlereprints and a video). Interested people can take atour, attend the community’s Council meetings, andarrange weekend visits.
The first stage of membership is to become a “sup-
porting member,” which is an opportunity for the per-son and the community to get to know each other in arelaxed way without too much being asked of anyone.A supporting member can visit anytime, can live in thecommunity if accommodations are available, canattend Council meetings but not participate in discus-sions, and receives the community’s newsletter andemailed copies of Council minutes. Supporting mem-bers pay a small monthly membership fee and sign anagreement saying that they understand the communi-ty’s vision and values. When people decide to join the community they
become “provisional members” for at least six monthsfirst (although it can be longer), which allows themand the community to get to know each other far bet-ter, with a fair amount of commitment on either side.Provisional members can participate in communitymeetings (although they cannot block proposals) andthey’re encouraged to live in the community. They paythe community’s $4,000 joining fee and sign a contractagreeing to pay a site lease fee at the time of full mem-bership. They are required to attend at least two com-mittee meetings a month, work 48 hours per quarter oncommunity tasks, and get to know as many communi-ty members as possible.
Supporting members apply for provisional mem-
bership by filling out a questionnaire about themselvesand their community aspirations (which is shared withthe whole group), as well as telling aspects of their lifestory at a whole group meeting convened for this pur-pose. If no one objects in to the person’s provisionalmembership status in the three-week period following

This is what two founders, whom I’ll call
Celeste and Brad, asked after their upperMidwest community, which I’ll call FarawayLake, broke up in conflict and heartbreak.
Celeste and Brad are two of the most likable,
capable, and spiritually grounded people I know,so when they began planning a new communityI was sure it would be a success. They wrote abeautiful description of their vision for FarawayLake and attracted five other cofounders, each ofwhom seemed equally grounded and capable.The group met for months at each other’s homesto make plans.
After looking at over 50 properties the groupfound an ideal site by a lake, with everything
they’d been looking for. While they had enoughmoney for a down payment, they didn’t haveenough to buy the land outright, so began asearch for a mortgage. In the meantime theyrented a cabin near their intended property andcamped in the yard or slept dormitory-style inthe attic. In order to make a living in their ruralsetting they started a small, cooperatively ownedmanufacturing business, for which Brad andCeleste and two others invested savings and bor-rowed start-up funds from friends. They rentedand renovated a nearby factory space and set towork. Over the next few months the group toiled
SELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 225
the storytelling evening, he or she becomes a provi-
sional member. (If the community doesn’t ultimatelyaccept the person as a full member, the fee isreturned. But if the person decides not to join thecommunity, the community keeps one-third the feeas a deterrent to anyone’s joining too casually.)
In six months, if the person has met the labor and
other requirements, he or she can apply for fullmembership. Community members are polled fortheir comments and whether they support the per-son’s becoming a full member. The questionsinclude: “Have you been able to get to know thisperson? If not, why not?” and “How do you think thisperson could best contribute to the community?”and “Do have any concerns about this person as amember? If so, have you met with the person to dis-cuss them?” If a member does have a concern, he orshe must meet with the provisional member toattempt to resolve the concern. If issues cannot beresolved, or if the community as a whole has con-cerns about the provisional member, the person may
be asked to continue in that membership status forawhile, and apply for full membership again later. Ifno one has any objections, the person is proposedfor full membership at a Council meeting for consen-sual agreement. Then everyone celebrates.
Meadowdance has a similar process with suc-
cessive levels of membership, but with morecheckpoints; at the first-month, fourth month, sev-enth month, and 13th month, when the personbecomes a full member. At each membershipstage the person can participate in meetings, butcannot block a proposal. Meadowdance’s processmust necessarily be more regulated than joining avillage like Earthaven, since Meadowdance mem-bers join a household, share a kitchen, and work forthe community businesses.
Most of the “successful ten percent” have similar
multi-step membership processes.

long hours at the new business, but still managed
to take time out to enjoy stories around thecampfire, go hiking and sailing, and meditate bythe lake at sunrise.
Unfortunately their new business had a
series of unexpected setbacks. The financialuncertainty, along with the fact that they lived incrowded conditions, strained their good will, andsoon they began bickering. This didn’t alarmBrad or Celeste, who’d lived in community beforeand were old hands at group process. But in onemember, whom I’ll call David, rage was growing.In sharing circles or feedback sessions, he seemedto be listening and understanding, but wassecretly becoming even more angry, resentful,and entrenched in his position. He took a partic-ular dislike to Celeste, who had asked him tochange certain attitudes and behaviors towardpeople outside the community with whom theywere doing business. As conflict escalated overthe next few months and Celeste, Brad, and oth-ers attempted to give David feedback, the morehe singled out Celeste as the cause of the prob-lem. As their conflict grew worse, it got framedas a power struggle between the two of them.Celeste wanted David to become more consciousof and alter certain behaviors; he wanted her tostop trying to “dominate everyone.” As experi-enced communitarians, Brad and Celestebelieved that since they all lived under one roofand were financially interdependent, David’s orany other member’s behavior was everyone’sbusiness, but for David, it was an outrageousinvasion of privacy. The group split into factions.Distrust and tension mounted.
Just when it seemed as though things could-
n’t get any worse, the business failed, still deeplyin debt. Exhausted and demoralized, the groupfelt it had no choice but to call it quits. Everyonemoved away. After fourteen months FarawayLake was no more. David, who’d put no money
into the cooperatively owned business, refused tomake payments towards reimbursing its loan.Living on their own again, dejected, and feelingstrangely ashamed of the failure of their commu-nity dream, Brad and Celeste worked for thenext three years to replace their savings.
“How could we have known how David
would react to living in community?” Celeste laterasked. “No one could have guessed by meetinghim. During the months of planning he was oneof the most engaging and delightful people you’dever hope to meet. How could we have known?”
Questions, References, “Long
Engagements”
“Look for good history of love and work,” advis-
es Irwin W olfe Zucker. According to psycholog-ical studies, past behavior is the best predictor offuture behavior, so he recommends asking ques-tions, through questionnaires and interviews.Let’s say you’re seeking people who are financial-ly stable, emotionally secure, and, ideally, havesome experience living cooperatively. The moreintimate the community you’re planning — interms of physical proximity, the amount ofshared resources, and the amount of financialinterdependence — the more direct your ques-tions might be.
For example, besides the usual questions
about the person’s community aspirations, youmight ask:
How have you supported yourself finan-
cially?
Can you describe some of your long-term
relationships?
What was your experience in high school
or college? 226 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

How much schooling did you complete?
If you chose to leave school, why was
that?
Have you pursued alternative education-
al or career paths such as internships,apprenticeships, or on-the-job training?Where, and for how long? Did you com-plete them?
Have you lived in shared or cooperative
living situations before, such as collegedorms or student housing co-ops, sharedgroup households, or other intentionalcommunities?
Do you have a significant love and/or
family relationship now? How long haveyou been together? Do you plan to livetogether in community?
If you’re a single parent, what is your cur-
rent relationship with your children’sother parent? Are you on good terms andshare parenting or are you estranged?Does the other parent want custody ofthe children?
Will you be able to meet our labor and
financial requirements? How?
While these are certainly personal questions,
keep in mind that you’re considering this personfor a truly personal relationship, involvingaspects of both marriage and a business partner-ship. Y ou’re expecting him or her to be responsi-ble and trustworthy as a close neighbor andsomeone who may be a friend to your children,as well as someone with whom you’ll own prop-erty and make important financial decisions.
By the way, not having the money to pay a
share of land-purchase costs or membership feesbut wanting to join anyway is sometimes a pre-dictor of trouble later on, as was the case withRegina and David. But not always. Some of the
most active and contributing members ofEarthaven, for example, are young people whojoined without funds, and are paying off mem-bership and site-lease fees through a laborexchange with the community.
Y ou could also ask for three or four refer-
ences — from former partners, current and for-mer employers, landlords, housemates, and/ortraveling companions. What if new people justgive names of friends who’ll only say goodthings, you ask? Consider that even the way peo-ple respond to the request for references tells yousomething. If they are happy to provide refer-ences and do so immediately, it’s a good sign. Ionce called references for people interested visit-ing a small forming community. (Referenceswere asked for before, rather than after a pro-posed visit, so that if the references didn’t checkout, the visitors wouldn’t have wasted their timeor travel expenses.) I learned that you can get apretty good sense of how others may feel aboutsomeone by about the third or fourth referencecall. And it certainly would have benefitedFaraway Lake if Brad and Celeste had soughtreferences or a background check on David.They later learned he had been fleeing court-ordered judgments for punitive damages andreimbursement of funds owed former businesspartners in two different past businesses, andhad been attempting to go underground,“hiding”in various intentional communities.
But wait a minute — is past behavior always
the best predictor of future behavior? Whatabout people who change and grow? People def-initely can mature and become more stable,compassionate, and responsible over the yearsand we must allow for that possibility. I suggestasking people about this directly: “What wereyou like in your twenties? Have you changed in
SELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 227

any significant ways since then?” W e need to
seek a balance between considering people’s pastbehavior (and for some, perhaps during only thepast five or ten years), and their current state.Questions and interviews, references, and a longgetting-to-know-you period where we can expe-rience the new person on a day-to-day basis allhelp with this process.
But, wait another minute — what about the
people who started the core group or the commu-nity? If they screened themselves for all the samemembership criteria would they have gotten in?Do they even meet their own requirements?
P e o p l e o f t e n d o t e n d t o s e e k h i g h e r s t a n –
dards in new members than they exemplify inthemselves. It seems to be human nature to aimhigh, perhaps like the father for whom noboyfriend is good enough for his little girl —even though old dad doesn’t meet his own stan-dards. My advice is for founders of core groupsand communities to seek a balance betweennew-member requirements that are so idealisticthat few could pass them (and certainly notthemselves!) and so lax that the requirementsdon’t accomplish their intended purpose —attracting capable, like-minded people who willhelp the community achieve its goals.
Besides getting information about the per-
son, membership requirements usually alsoinvolve a “getting to know you” period, and vari-ous kinds of fees. Time and money requirementsalso help separate serious community seekersfrom the merely curious.
I’m a firm believer in “long engagements:”
extended guest visits or provisional member-ships of six months to a year or more, so thegroup and the prospective member can continueto get to know each other. Most long-lived com-munities have discovered that this length of timeis important. Sometimes it takes a year to findout what someone is really like, or more impor-
tantly, what they’re like under stress, andwhether it seems they’ll be able to live happilywith your community agreements.
Finally, it’s important to have a process to
integrate new members into your group or com-munity. Besides sharing your decision log andmaking sure the new person knows your agree-ments and financial and labor requirements,you’ll want to share as much community histo-ry and “community culture” as you can with thisperson, and invite him or her to participate in asmany work parties, shared meals, and celebra-tions as you can. Most of this will naturallyoccur over the period of provisional member-ship (and in forming-community groups, duringthe “visiting observer” period). Sometimes com-munities take it a step further; for example, hav-ing a series of orientation sessions and/orassigning the newcomer a sponsor who’s avail-able to orient the new person and answer anyquestions.
The most critical part of any orientation
however, should be making sure that the newperson is familiar with your decision-makingprocess. If you use consensus, you’ll want theperson to fully understand its philosophy andpractice, and especially the blocking privilege.Some groups require that new people complete aweekend consensus workshop before becoming afull member with decision-making rights, whichseems like an excellent idea.
/fl1lft
The suggestions in this book for planting theseeds for your ecovillage or intentional commu-nity and helping it grow and thrive are by nomeans all you need to know; nor is this the endof your learning. It is, of course, the beginning.228 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Y ou and your friends in community are pio-
neers in the finest sense. Y our choice to live coop-eratively with others, share resources, and evolvea more harmonious and sustainable way to live,has the potential to benefit others in far greaterproportion than your numbers. Through slow,small increments, as people hear about yourcommunity and visit you — and hear about andvisit other ecovillages and intentional communi-
ties across North America — they’ll be influ-enced by a vision for human settlement that’spotentially so inviting it ultimately makes a pos-itive difference in our culture.
Creating community may be one of the most
meaningful ways you can spend your time. I wishyou every good fortune on the journey.SELECTING PEOPLE TO JOIN YOU 229

Lost Valley Educational Center , Oregon
A community can alter its vision documents
to reflect changed circumstances and insights.
Vision (1996):
T o be a vital resource for the creation of
sustainable culture for the PacificNorthwest.
Mission (1996):
T o support people in creating sustainable
lifestyles by providing learning opportu-nities to develop skills and awarenessesthat promote cooperative, harmonious,sustainable and joyous ways of living inrelationship with each other and theEarth.
Goals (1996):
T o offer and develop high-quality learn-
ing opportunities to develop skills andawarenesses for sustainable living.
T o provide a nourishing, supportive, and
responsive environment that facilitatesparticipants in achieving their goals andderiving full value form their learningexperiences.T o provide financial and operational
resources to support and enhance theactivities of the educational center.
Vision Statement (1999):
The mission of Lost V alley Educational Centeris to create and foster mutually beneficial rela-tions between humans and all parts of the web ofexistence. W e believe that these relationshipsprovide a means to well-being as well as survival.
In fulfilling this mission, our purpose is to
create and maintain an intentional communityand an educational center dedicated to threegoals which guide us in all activities:
T o educate broadly in areas such as ecol-
ogy, sustainable agriculture, human-madeenvironments, personal and spiritualgrowth, and community development.
T o live an ethic in which we are open to
spiritual diversity, demonstrate rightlivelihood and sustainable economics,support individuals in their personalgrowth and healing, and steward the landto sustain and heal the Earth for genera-tions to come.
T o participate in the global community,
network with others, and facilitate the
230/fl1lftAppendix 1 /fl1rt
Sample Community Vision Documents

evolution of cooperative societies and
socially responsible relationships at everylevel.
W e dedicate ourselves to learning and teach-
ing this way of life.
Earthaven Ecovillage, North Carolina
The following is excerpted from Earthaven’s“New Vision” document:
W e are the members and pioneers of a
planned permaculture ecovillage, activelyengaged in building sacred community, support-ing personal empowerment, and catalyzing cul-tural transformation.
W e share a vision of a community with a
vital, diversified spirituality, healthy social rela-tions, sustainable ecological systems, and a lowmaintenance/high satisfaction lifestyle.
Earthaven’s “ReMembership Covenant” out-
lines the following purpose and goals:
Purpose:
T o be an evolving village-scale community dedi-cated to caring for people and the Earth by learn-ing, practicing and demonstrating the skills forcreating holistic sustainable culture, in recogni-tion and celebration of the Oneness of all life.
Goals:
1. Make conscious our connection to Spirit and
Earth and our interdependence with the webof all life.
2. Facilitate our transition toward a life of ele-
gant simplicity.
3. Nurture an increasingly abundant world by
enhancing living systems, while reducingconsumption of resources.
4. Foster the lifelong learning and growth ofevery community member, recognizing each
individual is both teacher and learner.
5. Preserve our landholding through proper
stewardship, designated wilderness areas andecologically sound use of our resources.
6. Create a learning center that serves as a living
demonstration of this holistic vision.
7. Envision a positive, restorative future and
develop the skills needed to create and sus-tain it.
8. Promote personal and planetary healing on
all levels.
9. Serve and reach out to the local and global
community, encouraging spiritual and cul-tural diversity and other forms of creativeexpression while providing a sense of inclu-sion, integration and celebration throughresponsible community activities.
10. Encourage the growth of our village until we
have at least 66 site holders.
11. Encourage the establishment of member-
owned and managed, ecologically soundbusinesses.
12. Actively support the intentional communi-
ties, permaculture and land reform move-ments as we are able.
Abundant Dawn, Virginia
Following is Abundant Dawn’s vision state-ment:
W e are creating a loving and sustainable
culture. W e live close to one another,cooperate, and share resources, so that wemay live more lightly and joyously on theearth.
As we seek to realize ourselves through
service, and work towards ecological andsocial responsibility, we respect the diver-sity of our members’ life choices.APPENDIX 1 231

Whether in times of peace or conflict, we
meet each other face to face, with open-ness and caring. W e are each individuallycommitted to reaching through our hurtsand fears to find and share our deepesttruths.
W e honor the spark of the divine in all
beings.
The following is excerpted from Abundant
Dawn’s vision documents:
Abundant Dawn intends to be a large com-
munity (possibly 40-60) made up of four or fivesmaller subgroups, which we call pods. Pods aresmall enough for all the members to sit in a roomtogether and make a decision. Decisions regard-ing such important matters as membership, chil-dren, housing, and level of economic cooperationare decided at the pod level, with input from thewider community when appropriate.This structure gives us some advantages of a
large community (diverse population, sharing alarge property, tractor and community center) aswell as some advantages of small communities(intimate living groups, direct input into life-affecting decisions, face-to-face meetings).
Each pod has a few acres designated for its
use and control. Within the guidelines of ourvision statement, land plan, ecological guidelines,and other broad agreements, pods are encour-aged to develop their own ways of living togeth-er. W e intentionally include a spectrum of eco-nomic models from full income sharing to inde-pendent household incomes.
Major decisions, such as our overall land
plan, are made by a consensus of the full mem-bers of Abundant Dawn. This may shift to con-sensus by pod representatives as we grow larger.
232 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Decision Log, Buffalo Creek Community
The following excerpt in the Decision Log of
Buffalo Creek Community (not their real name)illustrates the kinds of agreements a formingcommunity makes in their early stages, beforebeginning the land search. Buffalo Creek’s visionwas to live in a spiritually focused community ofdeeply connected friends in a rural setting.While they took detailed minutes of their meet-ings, this document records only their decisions,by date. They used this document as a “groupmemory” when considering new issues, and toorient visitors and new members to the group.
Sept 15: W e named the community “Buffalo
Creek.” Our emphasis is on personal connectionwith each other, with community living as a sub-set of that.
Oct 21: Five criteria determine an active member
of the community: (1) Being in alignment withthe Buffalo Creek Community MissionStatement and Agreements; (2) Payment of$150 (or $75 for waiting list); (3) Participationin at least one action group and general meet-ings; (4) Missing no more than two consecutivegeneral or action meetings; and (5) financial pre-qualification to buy a lot and build a house.Active members are entitled to a reserved
housing unit, participation in decision-making,and access to our community lending library.
At least one-third of all households will be
reserved for families with children under 16.
All meetings are open and anyone may
attend. Non-active members may be asked toonly observe at meetings. They would not partic-ipate in consensus or other decision-makingprocesses.
If a vote is called for, each household is enti-
tled to one decision-making right, which may besplit if members of that household chose todecide differently from each other.
Number of households to target for: 24.
Dec 16: W e will pay for an option or down pay-
ment on land only after we have 24 active house-holds.
Jan 19: A household can sell its place (3rd, 16th
etc.) on the membership list. As a place is vacat-ed, all households that follow move up one placeon the list.
Mar 16: The W aiting List is limited to 50 per-
cent of active members. For example, theremaybe 12 members on the waiting list when/fl1lftAppendix 2 /fl1rt
Sample Community Agreements
233

there are 24 active households.
Apr 20: For any decision to be binding on the
entire community, two-thirds of all householdsmust agree to the decision.
A decision made by consensus will be con-
sidered to meet the requirements of the two-thirds rule.
May 18: The Coordinating T eam is given the
authority to approve, by consensus decisionmaking, expenditures of up to $500. If theirdecision is not unanimous, or if the expenditureexceeds $500, it should be proposed to the wholegroup for approval.
Jun 15: W e established a Site Fund. Each active
community household is required, beginningAugust 1, to deposit $250 quarterly to theCommunity T reasury to be held for necessaryexpenses for obtaining the community buildingsite, including but not limited to professional,legal, or other help. Further, this “forced savings”will be held in a safe interest-bearing account.
The primary decisions of our next meeting
will involve creating an “exit clause” for anyactive members who wish to leave the BuffaloCreek group, as well as a “default clause,” for anyactive members who do not meet the quarterlypayments.
“Ode” of Respects & Responsibilities:
Community Alternatives Society
Community Alternatives Society members, who
live in their own apartment building in down-town V ancouver as well as a farm in the country-side, called this agreement an “ode,” rather than a“code” of behavior, because it sounded morepoetic and less bureaucratic. I suggest using thisas a stimulus for your thinking when you consid-er the issues of any behavioral agreements your
group makes.
Seven Areas of Respect
1. Respect personal boundaries, touch others
appropriately, and refrain from violence.(Physical Respect)
2. Respect other people’s feelings and emotions,
and take responsibility for my own.(Emotional Respect)
3. Be honest, use respectful forms of communi-
cation with others, hear what others are say-ing to me. (V erbal Respect)
4. Respect my own and others’ right to privacy,
solitude, quiet, and security in their personalspace, and negotiate the use of communalspace. (T errito rial Respect)
5. Care for individual, communal, and commu-
nity property. (Material Respect)
6. Respect the diversity of people’s age, sex,
racial origin, sexual orientation, spiritualpractices, and physical and mental capabili-ties. (Respect for Diversity)
7. Respect the community structure and con-
sensus decision-making process.(Community Respect)
Seven Areas of Responsibility
1. Be conscientious in my attendance of com-
munity meetings.
2. T ake responsibility for communicating my
ideas and feelings.
3. Contribute time and energy to the commu-
nity in the form of work parties and chores,and negotiate the duration and terms of anyreduction in community participation that Imay require.
4. Serve as a contributing member of a com-
mittee and the planning team during myrotation.234 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

5. Be open and conscientious regarding my
financial responsibilities.
6. Inform the community about guests staying
for extended periods of time and any changesin my personal situation which affect the com-munity and/or my ability to contribute to it.
7. Promptly inform the appropriate people
about any violence or serious violations ofthe “R&Rs” that I witness.
Steps Toward Conflict Resolution
1.Direct One-to-One Communication between the
involved parties. (If an individual feelsunsafe, go directly to #2, below. If any indi-vidual witnesses or experiences a flagrant vio-lation, go directly to #3, below.)
2.Hear and Clear Session(s). Each person
involved in the conflict invites a trusted com-munity member to the session as their advo-cate and the four individuals work toward theresolution.
3.Consultation with the “R&R” Accountability
Committee. Advocacy/resolution groups may
consult the committee for assistance whenavenues #1 and #2 have not proven success-ful. If the involved parties are not willing toresolve the conflict, they will be requested bythe committee to engage in a contract of self-empowerment with the community.
4.Self-empowerment Contract. The party(s) in
question will be given one month to submitin writing and present to the community, aplan of action that outlines how that personwill make the necessary changes in his or herlife. The community will expect monthlyupdates and this contract will have a dura-tion of five months. At the end of this periodthere will be a marked improvement in thesituation or the community will proceed to#5, below.5.Community Action Meeting. In the case of a
serious flagrant violation the communitymay go to this step directly. In a situationwhere all other attempts at resolution havefailed, and where the party(s) in question hasnot honored his or her Self-EmpowermentContract with the community, and is there-fore exhibiting a lack of commitment to thecommunity, a Community Action Meetingshall be called. The involved party mayattend this meeting but may not be involvedin the decision making. If the rest of the com-munity reaches consensus, the involved partyshall be evicted (6a) and may also have his orher membership in CAS revoked.
6.Lack of Consensus. If consensus is not reached
at the Community Action Meeting, the plan-ning team will meet with the person(s) whoblocked the proposed action and the per-son(s) who violated the Self-EmpowermentContract to seek a solution.
Pet Policy, Abundant Dawn
Abundant Dawn’s Pet Policy, although unfin-ished, demonstrates the kind of broad and deepthinking community members must undertakewhen dealing with especially controversial sub-jects, such as pets. I suggest you use it as a start-ing point when considering the issues of yourown pet policy. (Y es, you’ll need one.)
Special terms: “pod,” a subcommunity or
neighborhood within the larger community;“wild side,” the steeper, more forested side oftheir property;“mild side,” the more gentle slopesand pastures they intend to develop.
This document covers our agreements
regarding dogs, cats, and house pets. It does notcover our agreements regarding pasture animals,such as cows, whether or not they are pets.APPENDIX 2 235

Pets in General: W e agree to clearly state to vis-
itors/potential members our concern about hav-ing pets on this land because of wildlife, noisepollution, quality of life standards, etc. W e agreeto write up our experiences with and discussionsabout pets so new members understand the“why” of our policies.
W e will have no pets on the wild side, except,
as it is beyond our control, free-ranging cats.
Dogs: Every pod will have 1.5 dog chips (one
chip represents the right to have one dog). Chipsare loanable, holdable, sellable, negotiable amongpods. Chips cannot, however, be transferred per-manently, but at maximum for the life of the ani-mal in question. The dog chips (and thus thedog limits) are applicable to both indoor andoutdoor dogs.
There will be a membership process for all
dogs.
We will have no dogs running free on the
property. Dogs may be walked on leash on mildside of land. W e will have no dogs on the wildside.
The community will fund a fenced dog park
(perhaps 0.5 to 0.75 acre) within which dogsmay run and play, with the amount of humansupervision to be determined in future delibera-tion. There will be a regular fee for dog owners(applicable to owners of both indoor and out-door dogs) to pay back the expense of buildingthe park, fund upkeep of the dog park and fence,and pay other dog-related expenses. Dog ownerswill be responsible for the labor of building thedog park and maintenance.
Whole pods will not be fenced. There can be
a fenced yard, run or pen for dog(s) within thepod.
Dog owners will be responsible for the care
and control of their dogs.Dogs who are heavy barkers, or aggressive to
people, cannot live here.
Dog owners must deal with dog shit, espe-
cially keep it off paths.
Dogs must have rabies vaccinations.Dogs must be spayed/neutered.Noise, odor, flea and other nuisance issues
will be addressed by the dog owner to the com-munity’s satisfaction. Dog owners will preventfleas by method of their choice. If it is not suffi-cient, owner will be open to feedback and tochanging their method to a more effective one.
Cats: Definitions. “Free-ranging” cat means an
unconfined outdoor cat (which may also haveaccess to indoor space). “Confined cat” means acat which is confined in a building and/or a yardwith an effective cat fence.
Every pod will have one cat chip (one chip
represents the right to have one cat). Chips areloanable, holdable, sellable, negotiable amongpods. Chips cannot, however, be transferred per-manently, but at maximum for the life of the ani-mal in question. The cat chips (and thus the catlimits) are applicable to free-ranging cats only.There is no community-level limit on confinedcats, except insofar as there are problems withnoise, odor, fleas, etc.
There will be a membership process for all
free-ranging cats.
Free-ranging cats must have a bell to mini-
mize the effect on wildlife.
All cats must be spayed/neutered. A variance
can be applied for related to an confined cat.
Noise, odor, flea and other nuisance issues
will be addressed by the cat owner to the com-munity’s satisfaction. Cat owners will preventfleas by method of their choice. If it is not suffi-cient, owner will be open to feedback and tochanging their method to a more effective one.236 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Cats must have rabies vaccinations.
Owners of free-ranging cats will work out
cat-fighting issues in acceptable ways, possiblytaking turns confining their cats.
Future issues: Abundant Dawn is still in the
process of agreeing on standards for pet care.Issues still to be decided: What is the minimum
amount of space in which dog or cats of varioussizes might be confined? Under what circum-stances might the community intervene in termsof suspected mistreatment or abuse?
The community has not yet written a policy
regarding pets other than dogs and cats.APPENDIX 2 237

Creating a 501(c)3 non-profit and keeping it
going can be time-consuming, and may not
be worth it unless (1) your organization gener-ates a surplus of taxable income each year, (2)you want to attract tax-deductible donations,and/or (3) you want to apply for public or pri-vate grant monies.
Filing
First, file your Articles of Incorporation with thestate, noting your intentions to be a non-profitcorporation, and then create your bylaws andother necessary documents.
Preliminary Ruling, Final Ruling
Y ou must request either a preliminary or a finalruling as a 501(c)3. As you’ll see below, a finalruling is more desirable.
In order to apply for a final ruling, the IRS
asks for (1) your budget for the current tax year,and (2) budgets for either three prior tax years oryour proposed budgets for the next two years.This means you’ll need to make a good guess asto your expected expenses for the next two years,or that you’ve operated for two or three yearsalready, through another kind of legal entity (andare switching to a 501(c)3), or that you’ve oper-
ated as the project of another non-profit (andthus can give evidence of your budgets and otherfinancial data for two or three years). In order toseek a final ruling, OAEC submitted their budg-et for the then-current tax year, plus for two pastyears (during which they’d operated as a projectof the non-profit Tides Foundation), and an esti-mated budget for the following year.“It definite-ly helps to show the IRS any previous years’budget activity to get a final ruling,” says OAEC’sDave Henson. “If your group has no history ofnon-profit activity, you’ll need to estimate twoyears’ future budgets, and the IRS will likely takelonger to give final approval.”
The other option is to seek a preliminary
ruling. Whether you seek a preliminary or finalruling, the IRS will grant you a temporary501(c)3 status and monitor your activities forthree to five years. If you’ve applied for a prelim-inary ruling, after three to five years you mayapply for a final ruling, basing the requiredbudget and other data on your first years ofoperation. If, after examining your organization’sposters, flyers, brochures, and letters, the IRSconsiders most of your activities in that period
238/fl1lftAppendix 3 /fl1rt
Setting Up and Maintaining a 501(c)3
Non-profit

to be related to your purpose, they’ll grant you a
final 501(c)3 ruling and will stop scrutinizingyou so closely. If the IRS determines that mostof your activities are notrelated to your purpose,
and thus not really non-profit activities, they candelay your organization’s final 501(c)3 statusand continue close examination of your activi-ties until you can show that you’re actually doingwhat you said you would.
If this happens, and the IRS doesn’t grant a
final ruling after three to five years, it affectsyour organization retroactively, since everythingyou were doing was based on the assumptionthat you’d receive that final 501(c)3 status. Thismeans anyone who gave you a tax-deductibledonation during that period must now pay taxeson it, because donations to your organizationduring that time are no longer tax-deductible.Thus, it’s hard to get grants until you have afinal ruling.
For this reason, experienced non-profit
activists strongly suggest you make your missionstatement as broad and general as possible whenyou first apply for non-profit status. If sometimelater you decide to do different activities thanyou originally envisioned, the wording of yourmission statement can be interpreted to includethe new activities and you don’t endanger yournon-profit status.
However, you may want to apply for a final
ruling right away, if you have a history of activityand can give four years of information on yourbudget and activities (the previous two years,and estimates for the current year and the fol-lowing year). OAEC applied for a final ruling intheir initial IRS application. For two years they’dbeen a project of the non-profit TidesFoundation, so they could estimate their futurebudgets reasonably well, and they had a historyof activity. They got their final ruling muchsooner than they could have if they had request-
ed their preliminary ruling first, making it easierto seek grants in their first few years.
Related and Unrelated Business Activity
Probably ninety percent of all 501(c)3 non-prof-its receive no other income aside from grantsand donations. But some engage in businessactivities, such as running a conference center,for example, which generates an income. If a501(c)3 were set up to run a conference centerfor a particular kind of educational activity,which was so stated in its Articles ofIncorporation, the IRS would consider allincome from the conference center as related tothe 501(c)3 non-profit’s purpose.
As noted earlier, any income from activities
not related to the 501(c)3’s purpose (called“unrelated” activities), is taxable. No more than50 percent of a 501(c)3 non-profit’s income canbe unrelated; most must be derived from activi-ties related to your purpose, as stated in yourArticles of Incorporation. If the IRS discoversthat more than 50 percent of your income-pro-ducing activities seem unrelated to your purpose,they can rescind your 501(c)3 status. Also, tomaintain your 501(c)3 status, no more than 20percent of your income can be from “passive”sources such as rents, lease fees, and interest onloans or investments.
“Disinterested” Board Members
As mentioned earlier, at least 51 percent ofyour board members must be “disinterested.” Ifyou use a voting membership to elect yourboard, 51 percent of the voting members mustalso be disinterested. The IRS will watch thisclosely for the first three years of your non-profit’s existence.APPENDIX 3 239

The “Public Support Test”
Every year you must pass the “public support
test” by demonstrating to the IRS that at leastone-third of your financial support comes fromthe public, through the sale of goods and servic-es, membership fees, and/or donations.Other Tax Exemptions
Y ou must apply separately for tax-exempt statusat your state, country, and/or city level.240 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

My website, www.ic.org/newcommunity,
offers a great many resources (including
more specific ones) for every topic covered inthese chapters, including a comprehensive list ofconsultants experienced in working with form-ing community groups. The site also featuresschedules for upcoming workshops and publictalks about forming new ecovillages and inten-tional communities, information on how a groupcan schedule a workshop. What follows is a listof some of the best resources from the site.
Books and Magazines
Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional
Communities and Cooperative Living, Fellowship
for Intentional Community (2000).Information on over 600 communities inNorth America — where they are, whatthey’re doing, how to contact them, maps,comparison charts, articles about communityliving. W ebsite <www.store.ic.org>
Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing
Ourselves , Kathryn McCamant, Charles
Durrett, and Ellen Hertzman, T en SpeedPress, Second Edition (1998). The book thatintroduced cohousing to North America.W ebsite <www.cohousing.com>
Communities magazine, Fellowship for Intentional
Community. Articles from experienced com-munitarians on various aspects of communityliving — raising children in community,growing older in community, conflict and process, effective meetings, decision-making
— covering the wide range of communitiesin North America from ecovillages tocohousing, plus updates of Communities
Directory listings. W ebsite <www.store.ic.org>
“ A Pattern Language for Villages,” in A Pattern
Language: T owns, Buildings, Construction,Christopher Alexander, et. al., OxfordUniversity Press (1976).
The Cohousing Handbook: Building a Place for
Community, Chris ScottHanson, Hartley &
Marks (1996). Practical advice and step-by-step processes for forming a core group anddeveloping and building cohousing commu-nities. Much of it, especially in the first half,is useful for founders of non-cohousing com-munities as well.W ebsite <www.cohousingresources.com>
Great Meetings! How to Facilitate Like a Pro, Dee
Kelsey and Pam Plumb, Hanson Park Press(2001). Basic of meeting facilitation, the facil-itator’s role and skills, preparing for anddesigning a meeting, problem-solvingapproaches and tools, positive communica-tion skills and conflict management, dealingwith challenging situations, and tips forbeginning facilitators.
Introduction to Consensus, Bea Briggs, Self-published
(2000). This is the book I recommend mostto forming community groups because of itsclear, straightforward format.
241/fl1lftResources /fl1rt

On Conflict and Consensus: A Handbook on Formal
Consensus Decision-making, C.T. Butler and
Amy Rothstein, Food Not Bombs Publishing(1991). A political activist and consensustrainer, C.T. Butler developed the FormalConsensus process as a more structuredmethod than other consensus processes andthe “principled objection” test for blocks to aproposal — the block must be based in thevision or values of the group.E-mail <fnbp@together.net> and W ebsite <www.consensus.net>
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making,
Sam Kaner with Lenny Lind, Duane Berger,Catherine T oldi and Sarah Fisk, New SocietyPublishers (1996). Provides the tools to putdemocratic values into practice in groups andorganizations, increasing participation andcollaberation, promoting mutual understand-ing, honoring diversity, and making effective,inclusive, participatory decisions.W ebsite <www.newsociety.com>
Getting Real: 10 T ruth Skills Y ou Need to Live an
Authentic Life, Susan Campbell, New W orld
Library (2001). One of the best guides Iknow of to the communication approachwhich, like nonviolent communication, workswell in the “rock polisher” of community —telling the truth and being transparent.W ebsite <www.susancampbell.com>
Introduction to Permaculture, Bill Mollison and Reny
Mia Slay. Permaculture basics: how to feedand house yourself in any climate the leastuse of land; energy; and repetitive labor.
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion,
Marshall Rosenberg, PuddleDancer Press(1998). Nonviolent communication (NVC)is one of the most powerful, and effectivetools to create a sense of connection betweenpeople, turn conflict into an experience ofmutual understanding, and reduce the fre-quency and intensity of future conflict situa-tions. W ebsite <www.cnvc.org>
The Mediator’s Handbook, Jennifer E. Beer and
Eileen Stief New Society Publishers, Revisedand Expanded 3rd Edition (1997). Overviewof conflict and mediation, a step-by-stepmediation process, skills and approaches forthe three main mediation tasks — support-ing the people, controlling the process, andsolving the problem.W ebsite <www.newsociety.com>
Nolo Press. Practical, plain-language information
and advice to help people in the UnitedStates set up their own legal entities andsolve their own legal problems with confi-dence, and whenever possible, with minimalneed for a lawyer. Books, CDs, legal forms,corporation kits, downloadable data, andlegal information online. See especially NoloPress books: Form your Own Limited Liability
Company ;Incorporate Y our Business ;A 50-State
Legal Guide to Forming a Corporation ;How to
Form a Non-profit Corporation ;a n d How to
Write a Business Plan .
W ebsite <www.nolo.com>
Permaculture Activist. Quarterly publication serving
the permaculture movement in NorthAmerica with useful, practical informationabout permaculture projects “on the ground.”W ebsite <www.permacultureactivist.net>
Self-Counsel Press. Similar to Nolo Press, but for
a Canadian readership.W ebsite <www.self-counsel.com>
Organizations and Associations
Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC).
Membership organization serves intentionalcommunities and community seekers inNorth America with information and net-working. Publishes Communities magazine,
Visions of Utopia video, the Communities
Directory, and more. W ebsite <www.fic.org> 242 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Northwest Intentional Communities Association
(NICA). Network of intentional communi-
ties in the Pacific Northwest that providesinformation and mutual support, and hostsregional gatherings.W ebsite <www.ic.org/nica>
Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). Supports and
encourages the evolution of sustainable set-tlements worldwide with information andnetworking. W ebsite <www.gaia.org> Also GEN Europe and Africa <www.gen-europe.org> and GEN Oceania and Asia <www.gaia.org/secretariats/genoceania/index>
Ecovillage Network of the Americas. The GEN organ-
ization for South, Central, and NorthAmerica. W ebsite <www.ecovillage.org>
The Cohousing Network. Promotes and encourages
cohousing communities in North Americathrough networking and information.Quarterly e-mail newsletter; biannual mailednewsletter. Much of their information can beadapted to fit non-cohousing communities.W ebsite <www.cohousing.org>
Canadian Cohousing Network. Promotes cohousing
communities in Canada through public edu-cation and networking.W ebsite <www.cohousing.ca>
Federation of Egalitarian Communities (FEC). Support
network for North American intentionalcommunities that value income-sharing, non-violence, participatory decision making, andecological practices.W ebsite <www.thefec.org>
Community Associations Institute. Provides informa-
tion and advice to community associations(homeowners associations, condominiumassociations, and housing cooperatives)through books and booklets, courses, andcertification programs.W ebsite <www.caionline.org>National Association of Housing Cooperatives. Offers
technical assistance and training to foundersand board members of housing co-ops.W ebsite < www.coophousing.org>
Institute for Community Economics. The organization
that developed community land trusts in1967. Offers information and assistance forcreating community land trusts through con-sultation, books, and a revolving loan fund.W ebsite < www.iceclt.org>
E.F . Schumacher Society. Information, book publish-
ing, workshops, and consulting on local eco-nomic self-reliance, through community landtrusts,“shoe box banks,” microlending, localcurrencies, and community supported agri-culture farms.W ebsite <www.schumachersociety.org>
Websites
Author’s website. More resources for ecovillage and
community founders: addditional informa-tion on zoning, communication skills, andother relevant topics; additional communitysuccess stories and cautionary tales; down-loadable Sucessful Ecovillage AssessmentT ool; updates on profiled communities;author’s workshop schedule.W ebsite <www.CreatingALifeT ogether.org>
Community Bookshelf. Mail-order books on inten-
tional community living, ecovillages, cohous-ing, consensus decision-making, effectivemeetings, conflict resolution, and sustainableliving. W ebsite <www.store.ic.org>
Emotional Freedom T echnique (EFT). EFT is the
fastest, cheapest, most effective and painlessself-therapy I’ve seen yet, and is ideal forhelping individual community memberstransform attitudes or behaviors that can dis-empower the individual and the group.W ebsite <www.thoughtfield.com> RESOURCES 243

Videos, Workshops, and Other
Resources
Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture
[video; 90 min.], Geoph Kozeny, Fellowshipfor Intentional Community (2002). Profilesseven diverse communities, explores the “glue”that holds communities together, offers can-did assessments from community membersof what works and what doesn’t work.Available online <www.store.ic.org>
Creating a Life T ogether: Practical T ools to Grow an
Ecovillage or Intentional Community. Three-day
workshop with Creating a Life T ogether author
Diana Leafe Christian at EarthavenEcovillage.E-mail <culturesedge@earthaven.org>
Creating a Land-Based Intentional Community.
W eekend and five-day courses with DaveHenson and Adam W olpert at SowingCircle/OAEC. W ebsite <www.oaec.org>
Culture’s Edge W orkshops at Earthaven. Wo rk s h o p s
and community internships in permaculturedesign, natural building, water catchment,constructed wetlands, and forming newintentional communities or ecovillages.E-mail <culturesedge@earthaven.org>W ebsite <www.earthaven.org>
Ecovillage T raining Center. W orkshops and commu-
nity apprenticeships in ecovillage design,renewable energy, environmental building,sustainable agriculture, biological wastewatersystems, and permaculture design at TheFarm community in T ennessee.W ebsite <www.thefarm.org/etc>
Living Routes — Ecovillage Educational Consortium.
Organization hosts live-in educational expe-riences at ecovillages in Europe, India, andthe US for college credit.W ebsite <www.livingroutes.org> Lost V alley Educational Center. W orkshops and com-
munity apprenticeship programs in perma-culture design, natural building, and organicgardening. W ebsite <www.lostvalley.org>
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. W orkshops and
community apprenticeships in permaculturedesign, natural building, and forming land-based intentional communities.W ebsite <www.oaec.org>
Sirius Community Educational Programs. Wo rk s h o p s
and community apprenticeships in perma-culture design, natural building, and organicgardening.W ebsite <www.siriuscommunity.org>
Communities Profiled in this Book
Abundant Dawn
<www.abundantdawn.org>
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
<www.dancingrabbit.org>
Earthaven Ecovillage
<www.earthaven.org>
Lost V alley Educational Center
<www.lostvalley.org>
Mariposa Grove
<www.mariposagrove.org>
Meadowdance
<www.meadowdance.org>
Sowing Circle OAEC
<www.oaec.org>244 CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

A
Abundant Dawn (V A)
agreements, 44, 72-74buy-in fee, 159, 162departing members equity, 167feedback sessions, 212-213income and expenses, 153, 159internal finances chart, 160-161labor requirements, 166land cost, 9-10, 131membership, 11non-profit status, 185-188, 197sample pet policy, 74, 235-237sample vision document, 231-232
accountability of members
and consequences, 215-217sample agreement, 216task review, 27, 214-215
agreements and policies. see also vision documents
behavioral policies, 72, 216communication agreements, 202-203conflict resolution policy, 213-214, 235drafting documents, guides to, 77-78need for policy manual, 180sample agreements, 233-237sample pet policy, 74, 235-237types of, 71-72written agreements, 8, 68-71
Allison, Patricia, 65Alstad, Diana, 55anti-business attitudes, 12, 28, 70, 75
B
Baker, Harvey, 221Bane, Peter (Earthaven), 142banks and lending institutions
borrowing power, 104-105financing, 132-136
Barrett, David, 148Borie, Lysbeth, 62Brause, Dianne (Lost V alley), 3, 17Bressen, T ree, 36, 62Briggs, Bea, 57, 61, 65Brown, Stephen (Shenoa), 39, 44, 120budget. see financial planningbuilding codes, 81, 111, 116-117Butchart, T ed, 146, 150Butler, C.T., 64, 65buy-in fee
alternatives, 30-31examples, 88-89, 159-160, 162-163
C
Charamella, John, 168-169closeness of community, 22, 33, 148-149cohousing
and condominium associations, 182-183definition, xvii, 20-21design, 31, 99, 149experience of, 12-13financial planning, 136-139and homeowner associations, 178-179
lack of membership control, 173, 182-183legal entity options, 184neighborhood support, 123-124remodeling examples, 101
The Cohousing Handbook (Hanson), 126
common-treasury religious communities, 196-198communication and process. see also conflict resolution
completing tasks, 27, 214-217emotional needs, 203-206
245/fl1lftIndex/fl1rt

exercises in, 47-52
feedback, 210-213nourishing relationships, 8, 202-203thought field therapy, 212
Community Alternatives Society (BC), 72, 216community design
initial decisions, 7-9, 20-29legal barriers, 80-82
community-owned business
co-ops, 156, 158-159need for legal entity, 75-76use of 501(d) status, 197viability, 155-157
community spirit, 28-29, 33-34, 202-203composting toilets, 81-82condominium associations, 178, 182-183conflict resolution
behaviors and attitudes, 204, 206-207in close communities, 201-202communication skills, 202-203conflicting visions example, 40-41difficult or wounded people, 203-206, 221-223exercises in, 47-52feedback, 210-213hidden expectations, 45-47, 51-52sample community policy, 213-214, 235setting consequences, 214-217sources of conflict, 207-210training, 200-201
consensus decision-making
attitude of banks, 133facilitator, 57-58, 60formal consensus, 64, 65making it work, 58-60process, 56-58, 64"pseudoconsensus", 60-62sunset clause, 62training, 58, 65-66
contracts, time pressure to sign, 107co-ops. seehousing co-ops
cost. see financial planning
Cottonwood Springs (MT), 68-69Covey, Stephen, 124credit rating, 105, 127, 135Cultural Creatives (Ray), 82
currency systems, internal, 166
D
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (MO)departing members equity, 167, 191
fees, 164financing, 30, 85-86finding land, 10, 80, 82-86food co-op, 158-159income and expenses, 154, 159internal finances chart, 160-161membership, 11, 87, 140non-profit status, 189, 194-195, 197vision documents, 40
Davidson, Gordon (Sirius), 36decision-making and governance
combining methods, 63-66consensus, 56-62, 64, 65-66, 133by council and committees, 63effect of financing choices, 140majority-rule voting, 56, 57-58, 62at meetings, 25, 27, 45multi-winner voting, 62-63, 65need for policy manual, 180power relationships, 55-56, 78, 206-207process, 7-8, 50-51, 56
DeLapa, Paul, 59, 212Didcoct, Betty, 53, 59, 64
E
Earthaven Ecovillage (NC)
buy-in options, 30, 159decision-making with committees, 63departing members equity, 167financing, 30, 89-91, 139-140finding land, 10, 86-89
and homeowner associations, 179-180income and expenses, 153-154, 158internal finances chart, 162-163labor requirements, 166membership, 11, 87, 140, 224-225non-profit status, 189sample vision documents, 39, 231site lease fees, 164-165site planning, 101, 142-146, 150-151
EarthShares fund, 14, 90-91ecovillage, definition, xvi, 143Ecovillage (NY), 83Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities (Gilman), 43, 44
Elixir Farm (MO), 71Environmental Impact Report, 120equity of departing members, 167-168, 191-192246
CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Estes, Caroline, 57, 60
expectations, 45-47, 51-52, 217
F
failure of communities
conflict, 218-219, 224-226conflicting visions, 35-36, 40-41hidden expectations, 45-47, 51-52, 217need for written agreements, 68-69reasons for, 6-7, 207-210and zoning issues, 114-116, 122-123
Farallones Institute, 93-94The Farm (TN), 124, 155Federal Fair Housing Act (US), 173, 180, 185Federation of Egalitarian Communities' (FEC), 85financial planning. see also internal finances; owner
ship, options
borrowing power, 104-105, 127business plans, 8-9, 96-97buy-in fee alternatives, 30-31buy-in fee examples, 88-89, 159-160, 162-163contingency fund, 128credit rating, 105, 127, 135determining assets, 29-30, 104examples, 85-98fundraising, 31-32loans, 104-105, 126-136need for legal entity, 75-76owner financing, 131owner-financing examples, 88-89, 94, 96-97private loan, 90-91, 129record keeping, 27refinancing, 90-91, 139-141total cost, 9-10, 26, 128
Fleming, Bill (W estwood Cohousing), 17, 28food co-op, 158-159founders, traits, 8-9, 15-18Full Circle (NC), 88fundraising, 31-32
G
Gilman, Dianne, 43, 44Gilman, Robert, 43, 44, 143Goldschmidt, Carolyn, 180, 184grants and donations, 139Greene, Patricia, 18, 168-169Greyrock Commons Cohousing (CO), 123-124The Guru Papers (Kramer and Alstad), 55H
Haggard, Ben, 147
Hamilton, James (Stone Curves), 121H a n s o n ,C h r i s ,1 2 6Harmony Village Cohousing, 39health and safety standards, 81-82, 110-111, 120Henson, Dave (Sowing Circle/OAEC), 170, 212
land purchase, 95-97, 102role as founder, 15, 16, 78
homeowners associations, 178-182housing arrangements, 163-164housing co-ops, 92, 132, 178, 183-185How to Form a Non-profit Corporation , 190
I
idealism, unrealistic expectations, 217
income and expenses. see internal finances
intentional communities, xvi-xviiiinternal finances. see also financial planning
buy-in fee, 30-31, 88-89, 159-160, 162-163community-owned business, 155-159departing members equity, 167-168, 191-192housing arrangements, 163-164income and expenses, 152-155, 159joining members and equity, 168-169, 172labor requirements, 165-167lease or rental agreements, 164-165and legal entity status, 173sample communities chart, 160-163
Introduction to Consensus (Briggs), 65
J
joining fee
alternatives, 30-31examples, 88-89, 159-160, 162-163
joint tenancy, 187
K
Kahn, V elma (Abundant Dawn), 78, 79Kann, Elana (W estwood Cohousing), 17Kaplowitz, Larry, 200, 202, 203-204, 205Kingsbery, Stuart, 181Kinkade, Kat (T win Oaks), 36Kozeny, Geoph, 33, 214Kramer, Joel, 55
L
labor requirements, 165-167
247INDEX 247

land, buying. see also financial planning
appraisal, 127buildings, condition of, 111contacting landowners, 84, 108-109developed land, 101-103, 172examples of, 85-98initial decisions, 7-9, 22-23, 103land trusts, 194-196and losing members, 87making an offer, 112-113, 127, 131need for legal entity, 75-76preliminary feasibility study, 109-112, 137raw land, 100-101, 104, 171-172real estate agents, 93, 105-106researching land values, 107-108site criteria, 22, 25, 84, 88, 95, 99-103site planning, 142-151and sustainable development, 80-82
land trusts, 194-196leadership. seefounders
legal advice
choosing a lawyer, 77-79and making an offer, 107, 131and zoning issues, 119
legal entity status. see also financial planning
advantages of, 75-76condominium associations, 178, 182-183corporations/non-profit corporations, 174-175criteria for choosing, 76, 170-171homeowners associations, 178-182housing co-ops, 92, 132, 178, 183-185and internal finances, 173joint tenancy, 187legal advice, 76-79Limited Liability Company (LLC), 173, 176-
178
and membership control, 180, 185, 191, 194non-profit status, 175-176, 185-198partnerships, 177subchapter S corporations, 175, 177tax issues, 76, 174, 175, 179tenancy in common, 187
legal protection, 90, 107, 174-175Limited Liability Company (LLC), 173, 176-178loans
banks, 104-105, 132-136owner financing, 131owner financing examples, 88-89, 94, 96-97personal loans, 129-131private, 90-91, 129property appraisal, 127
refinancing, 90-91, 139-141repayment example, 85-86tips for borrowing money, 126-128
Lore, Virginia (Dumawish), 19Lost V alley Educational Center (OR)
buy-in fee, 159departing members equity, 167, 191-192financing, 2-4, 10, 141former use permit issue, 118-119income and expenses, 154, 158, 159internal finances chart, 162-163labor requirements, 165membership, 11, 140, 200-201, 217non-profit status, 189sample vision document, 230-231
M
Mahaffey, Kenneth (Lost V alley), 3, 16majority-rule voting, 56, 57-58, 62Mariposa Grove (CA)
financing, 30, 91-92membership, 10, 11
Marsh, Chuck (Earthaven), 88, 142, 147, 149, 151McCamant, Kathryn, 148McKenny, Vinnie (Elixir), 71McLaughlin, Corrine (Sirius), 36Meadowdance Community (VT)
decision not to buy, 5, 114-116departing members equity, 167-168income-sharing, 157-158, 198internal finances chart, 162-163labor requirements, 166membership, 11, 225vision statement, 39
media coverage, 125meetings
facilitator, 25, 60, 202feedback, 28, 203, 212-213planning, 24-25, 59-60and visitors, 32-33
members, new
advertising for, 32, 219-220to established communities, 168-169, 172-173integrating, 32-33, 224-225, 228interns, 167and vision documents, 22-23
members, selection of
decision-making, 223-224difficult or wounded people, 221-223248
CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

past behavior, 226-228
questionnaires and interviews, 226-227screening process, 8, 27, 219-221, 223-228setting standards, 221, 228
membership
changes to, 34, 44-45, 87control of, 173, 182-183, 191, 194criteria, 8, 27, 219-221decision-making status, 45fees, 27, 31group size, 10-11
Miccosukee Land Co-op (FL), 183Moench, T om (Winslow), 148Morningstar Ranch, 117
N
Naiman, V alerie (Earthaven), 14-15, 16, 88-90Naka-Ima training, 200-201name, choosing a, 31Nature's Spirit (SC), 38, 192neighbors
good relations, 4, 95, 124and land purchase, 111-112and zoning variances, 15, 110, 122-125
non-negotiables, 49-50non-profit status
and income-sharing, 157-158and legal advise, 77-78need for legal entity, 75-76non-exempt non-profit, 176, 179, 185-188and taxation, 179tax-exempt non-profit, 175-176, 189-198, 238-
240
Nyland Cohousing (CO), 178-179
O
Obermeyer, Hank (Mariposa), 91-92"offer to purchase", 112-113On Consensus and Conflict (Butler), 65
"option to purchase", 112-113Owner's Disclosure Statement, 109ownership, options
condominium associations, 178, 182-183examples, 157-158and financing, 22, 30, 140homeowners associations, 178-182housing co-ops, 92, 132, 178, 183-185joint tenancy, 187and legal entity status, 75-76, 171-172Limited Liability Company (LLC), 173, 176-
178
non-profit status, 175-176, 185-198sole ownership, 23-24, 91-92, 129-131tenancy in common, 187
ownership, sole, 129
and inequality, 23-24Mariposa Grove example, 91-92use of T riple Net Lease, 130-131
P
Paiss, Zev, 12, 46, 49, 50A Pattern Language (Alexander), 150
permaculture, 143, 146, 147permits. see zoning issues
Pioneer V alley Cohousing (MA), 182-183policies. see agreements and policies
power relationships
awareness of, 55-56, 78behaviors and attitudes, 206-207and consensus method, 59
prejudice, dealing with, 104, 106, 124-125preliminary feasibility study, 109-112, 137press release, 125promissory note, 129property. seeland, buying
R
Ray , Paul, 82
real estate agents, 93, 105-106real estate market. see land, buying
Reid, Luc (Meadowdance), 15, 114-116revenue. seeinternal finances
roads issues, 109-110, 120Rosy Branch (NC), 88
S
sales contract form, 112-113Sandelin, Rob, 50, 53, 59, 62, 202Sandhill Farm (MO), 83, 155Schaub, Laird, 204Scheib, Cecil (Dancing Rabbit), 14-15, 80ScottHanson, Chris, 139septic systems, 82, 110-111, 120Sharingwood Cohousing (W A), 182
"budget party", 62-63zoning negotiation, 121
Shenoa Retreat and Conference Center (CA), 39, 42Shenoa Retreat and Learning Center, 39INDEX 249

Sirna, T ony (Dancing Rabbit), 14-15
site criteria
developed land, 101-103, 172examples, 84, 88, 95property or housing, 22, 25, 99-100raw land, 100-101, 104, 171-172
site-lease/assessment fees, 160, 162, 164-165site planning
cluster housing, 147-149Earthaven example, 142-146, 150-151permaculture design, 143, 146, 147your community building, 150
Sonora Cohousing (AZ), 179Sowing Circle/Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
(CA)
buy-in options, 30, 162-163chore wheel, 166-167conflict resolution, 27, 43-44, 213-214consensus statement, 56departing members equity, 167financing, 5, 10, 92-97, 141, 176former use permit issue, 118general principles statement, 26income and expenses, 153, 159internal finances chart, 160-161membership, 11, 87non-profit status, 189, 192-193organic easement, 196
spiritual communities, 12
start up. see community design
Steiner, Rudolf, 33
sustainable development, barriers, 80-82
T
tax-exempt non-profit status
501(c)3 model set up, 238-240501(d) status, 196-198and land trusts, 194-196overview, 175-176, 189-192and ownership of land, 192-194
tax issues
legal entity status, 76, 174and non-profit status, 179terms, 175
tenancy in common, 187terminology"a group of families", 104, 106
dealing with prejudice, 124-125
timeline, setting goals, 26, 28-29training
consensus, 58, 61-62, 65hiring expertise, 9
T win Oaks (V A), 196-198
U
utilities, 110
V
values, exploring, 47-53vision documents
drafting, 53-54elements of, 37-38and fundraising, 31-32general principles, 7, 25-26, 36hidden expectations, 45-47, 51-52process of creating, 42-45, 47-53vision statements, 38-41
visitors/interns, 32-33, 167V ogel, Paul Ekrem, 181
W
water issues, 81, 109, 120W atzke, Bob, 107, 112website, your community, 32websites, research, 20, 177Wilson, Roberta (Winslow Cohousing), 12Winslow Cohousing (W A), 12-13W olpert, Adam (Sowing Circle/OAEC), 34, 36, 37
Z
zoning issues
decision not to buy, 5, 114-116former use permits, 118-119General Plan, 110, 116housing density, 116-117and neighbors, 15, 110, 122-125subdividing, 120and sustainable development, 81-82, 109, 116variance or permit, 119-122
Zucker, Irwin W olfe, 219, 226Zuni Mountain Sanctuary (NM), 147250
CREATING A LIFE TOGETHER

Since 1993 Diana Leafe Christian has been edi-
tor of Communities magazine, a quarterly publica-
tion about intentional communities in NorthAmerica. She has been interviewed by NPR andthe BBC about intentional communities andcontributed a chapter on forming new commu-nities to Creating Harmony (Gaia T rust, 1999).
Her articles on ecovillages, financial and legalaspects of communities, children in communi-ty, and communication and group processissues in community have appeared in publica-tions ranging from Mother Earth News toCommunities magazine, the Communities Directory ,
and Canada’s This Magazine .
Diana leads workshops for forming-commu-
nity groups and educational centers nationwideand at communities conferences, on the practicalsteps to create ecovillages and intentional com-munities, including the land-purchase, zoning,and legal stages of these projects.
She lives at Earthaven Ecovillage in North
Carolina, one of the “successful 10 percent” com-munities she began researching for this book.
W ebsite: www.CreatingALifeT ogether.orgAbout the Author

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 New Forestry  Conscientious Commerce  Resistance and Community 
 Nonviolence  Progressive Leadership  Educational and Parenting Resources 
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NEWSOCIETY PUBLISHERS
New Society Publishers
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS STATEMENT
New Society Publishers has chosen to produce this book
on New Leaf EcoBook 100, recycled paper made with 100% post
consumer waste, processed chlorine free, and old growth free.
For every 5,000 books printed, New Society saves the following resources:1
45 Trees
4,076 Pounds of Solid Waste4,485 Gallons of Water4,836 Kilowatt Hours of Electricity7,410 Pounds of Greenhouse Gases
32 Pounds of HAPs, VOCs, and AOX Combined11 Cubic Yards of Landfill Space
1Environmental benefits are calculated based on research done by the Environmental Defense Fund and other
members of the Paper Task Force who study the environmental impacts of the paper industry.
For more information on this environmental benefits statement, or to inquire about environmentally friendly papers,
please contact New Leaf Paper – info@newleafpaper.com – 8889895323.