Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New York Times article on the Rocky Corner foreclosure

[Steve Welzer (stevenwelzer]

Sharon asked: “why is it so hard?”

I think: With the current standards of our over-developed lifeways, it’s
too expensive and too complex.

We’re part of an eco-communitarian movement, the eventual goal of which
should be the greening of the whole society. It will involve finding ways
to live more lightly and more locally -- in order to reduce stresses on
people and stresses on the planet.

There was nothing wrong with the way the Native Americans lived here in
1491. There was enormous diversity re: different lifeways among tribes, but
it was generally healthful, generally sustainable, and generally conducive
to full cultural enrichment for people.

The developmental ways of the Europeans have brought us to a crazy place in
regard to complexity and expense; not to mention the burdensome necessity
to labor for the institutions of the Leviathan in order to support it all.

We’re suffering from the stress of affluenza standards. The housing and
related infrastructure that by law and by convention -- and by ostensible
preference of modern consumers -- is very expensive. It’s too expensive.

And it’s too complex. Given those standards, “just us” folks who wish we
could create an ecovillage or a cohousing community . . . can’t. We wish we
could find a way to live ecologically, simply, cheaply. But it’s awfully
hard within the context of our complex, expensive hyper-modern reality. Us
amateurs don’t have ten million dollars and can’t endure ten million
headaches.

My “Ecovillage New Jersey” group has been meeting and brainstorming and
hoping for twenty years. We wish Chuck Durrett would just come in and do
his highly professional thing, tap his well of expertise and financial
resources, build it and let us pay it off gradually over time. It’s beyond
us. Land in New Jersey is expensive and zoning laws tend to be prohibitive.

We are contacted all the time by people who “get it” about the need for and
the desirability of an eco-communitarian lifestyle. Over the years we’ve
seen an enormous amount of interest; dozens of initiatives have been
launched. There are 20 million people in the NYC-NJ-Philadelphia area. Not
a single full-scale intentional community has gotten built.

Personally, I’m working now with the Altair EcoVillage project in the next
state over, Pennsylvania. Active since 1999 (!) they’ve built up some
resources. But the challenges still seem daunting.

With the current standards of our over-developed lifeways it’s too
expensive and too hard.

(Here’s where I turn for answers and solutions: https://youtu.be/WxC-rqY5ngg
)

Steve Welzer