Ecovillage

Ecovillage.

(a beginning paragraph, in draft form, excerpt length)

Q: What’s wrong with some of the best places to live around the world in our culture?

A: They are not affordable.

Ithaca’s elegant cohousing neighborhoods and Boston’s cohousing communities (by virtue of being in an expensive city, as is perhaps the same for Ithaca) cost $200,000 or so for a space, which is about the same as the cost of a McMansion or simply typical suburban house or downtown condo in an average-sized, average-cost city like Omaha, Nebraska. Lost Valley intentional community’s trial members must pay $500 a month to live there, lured there by the possibility of getting work supposedly in 20-miles-distant Eugene, Oregon, even in the highly probable event that their membership will never become established, official, permanent, complete. All to live in a small co-housing apartment, log cabin shack, or gorgeous yurt with loft, perhaps a small mobile home.

The main people who can afford these sorts of arrangements are middle-aged, and predominantly white. Where a growing population of dispossessed, dissatisfied youngsters and just-scraping-by families (creatively frugal out of necessity), could be the nascent, ascendant, fastest growing group of interested individuals in the concept of sustainable community living (though not exactly in the New Age-ism strangely/oddly common to intentional communities, or the isolation of ecovillage living, with ecovillages often situated in rural areas just a stretch too far from the nearest big town), they have no real place in it, because they do not meet the income threshold for these communities. To my knowledge, there is no standard safety net available from the villages, no available arrangements to live in these communities at a reduced cost when personal budgets do not permit otherwise. I imagine if anyone does come up with a compromise, it only happens with a lot of pleading and bargaining, striking the juiciest deal. It is a very unfortunate state of affairs.