Читать книгу My House Our House - Karen M. Bush - Страница 14

“Intentional community” is best defined by the people who live it. Diana Leafe Christian, a longtime member of intentional communities and recognized author on the topic, describes intentional community this way: “A group of people who have chosen to live together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values.” Those core values typically include idealism and equality (D.L. Christian, the Fellowship for Intentional Community Directory).

And from the Meadowdance.org website:

In essence, an intentional community is a group of people coming together in a place they create to live in some particular way. The variety of intentional communities is nearly infinite: some are religious, some are not; politics run the gamut; they are large and small, rural and urban, ecologically minded and materialistic. They include monasteries, communes, anarchic squatter houses, cooperative housing, co-housing, kibbutzim, Christian activist communities, Shaker communities, and many other kinds of groups.

Awareness of non-traditional shared living situations has increased exponentially from the 1980s, when people began to write about their experiences and to create community websites.

One of the innovators was gerontologist Jane Porcino, Ph.D., who studied alternative housing options for older women. She noted that the number-one stressor for women at or beyond midlife is a major change in living circumstances (death of spouse, divorce, financial or health problems). And yet, she found that few people proactively design the living arrangement that best meets their needs. She and her husband joined several other couples to develop integrated, yet separate, households in an urban cooperative apartment complex. Their small community offered privacy for each couple as well as mutual support.

To help people start thinking of positive options, her 1991 book, Living Longer, Living Better: Adventures in Community Housing for Those in the Second Half of Life, described fourteen types of alternative communities, ranging from “accessory apartments” through the alphabet to “retirement communities.” In the intervening years, an even more varied set of options has emerged. Here are some brief sketches of several of those models:

•Cohousing Communities Architects Charles Durrett and Kathryn McCamant are the pioneers of the American cohousing movement. They studied well-established cohousing villages in Denmark and other European countries and brought the model here. Cohousing communities are carefully planned villages that combine individual houses with shared facilities for people of all ages. Residents design and manage the community, generally through consensus governance. They volunteer for community tasks, like maintenance and preparing shared meals.

The daunting planning phase of a new cohousing development typically takes several arduous years, from inception to investment, site selection, construction, and creating community. (See pages 184-185 for cohousing publications by Durrett, McCamant and others.)

In the years since the first U.S. cohousing community opened in 1991, cohousing has burgeoned. The 2011 Cohousing Association of the United States Directory lists 233 sites. But cohousing has not yet come to all parts of the country, and other forms of intentional community are emerging as well.

•The Fellowship for Intentional Community To start with, here is the go-to site for a broad overview and lots of information: http://fic.ic.org/. Established in its current form in 1986, the Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC) publishes a hugely informative, multifaceted website and a community directory. At one glance, you will grasp the great diversity of non-traditional community living options in the United States. The 2012 FIC Communities Directory lists 1,055 entries, and those are just the communities that self-submit a listing (only non-coercive/non-violent community listings are accepted.) The FIC mission is to “nurture connections and cooperation among communitarians and their friends” and to foster public awareness. The idealism of the Fellowship is reflected in their self-description: “a small group of dedicated individuals trying to change the world.” By their latest estimate, 100,000 Americans currently live in an intentional community of some type, including ecovillages and other environmental and social justice-oriented groups (see Geoph Kozeny, “In Community Intentionally,” FIC Communities Directory, pgs. 7 and 14). One subset of these, the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, is “a union of egalitarian communities which have joined together in our common struggle to create a lifestyle based on equality, cooperation, and harmony with the earth.” Different from most cohousing communities, the FEC communities generate and share income as a group.

•Home-Sharing, a.k.a. Homesharing Local and national media periodically spotlight stories of contemporary “Golden Girls,” small groups of women who share a home. These stories are reminiscent of the Ladies of Covington novels by Joan Medlicott, hopefully with less emotional drama for the inhabitants. Interestingly, we haven’t stumbled upon similar news features about independent single men living in shared housing groups, but they must exist.

Also called a “share house,” the “housemates” or “roommates” most often share a rented residence, but many variations are possible, including owner-occupiers renting space to the others. Residents are typically not related and not expecting a long-term arrangement. Annamarie Pluhar’s book, Sharing Housing, offers comprehensive guidelines about finding appropriate roommates and avoiding potential pitfalls.

There are social service agencies that organize home-sharing for individuals with special needs, financial or physical. The aim is to match individuals compatibly, for mutual benefit.

•Pocket Neighborhoods Architect Ross Chapin designs small neighborhoods of eight to ten clustered houses around a shared landscaped commons. The homeowners can readily get to know each other and interact in a more bonded way than in typical single-family housing developments. This ready-made neighborhood avoids the time and resource-consuming organizational process – and the more intensive level of mutual commitment – of a cohousing community. (See Ross Chapin’s Pocket Neighborhoods (2011) and http://pocket-neighborhoods.net/index.html)

•Retirement Communities Retirement Communities (not covered here) include, but are not limited to, facilities that offer a spectrum of options, from fully independent living through assisted living and nursing care.

•Aging in Place/Aging in Community The ground-breaking work of Ken Dychtwald, Louis Tenenbaum and other visionaries has been a catalyst to re-imagining lifestyle options for seniors.

Though not a specific type of living arrangement, the Aging in Place (AIP) movement promotes state-of-the-art home design, assistive technology and multi-service integration, to enable people to remain in the homes they want to live in, with maximum independence and safety, for as long as possible. AIP may or may not include shared housing in one form or another. For more about Aging in Place, see www.louistenenbaum.com.

The Aging in Community movement is inventing innovative models of senior cohousing, shared housing, and associated “village” networks. References include Raines Cohen, www.agingincommunity.com, and Audacious Aging: Eldership As a Revolutionary Endeavor, edited by Stephanie Marohn.