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co-housing: inward and outward facing
Apr. 2nd, 2025 02:24 pmA couple things I'm thinking about this afternoon:
To be viable, this community needs infrastructure - power, wifi, water, sewer
Inward facing, we are visualizing "neighborhoods" within the forest, groups of four to six families. Each neighborhood would have it's own well and septic/drainage field. A central greathouse would act as community center and town hall, where we'd meet, share weekly meals, plan.
We're looking at wood fired boilers that would bring heat and hot water to the homes. Wifi would have to be satallite. Power would be multi-layered and I think we'll depend on solar, wind, and water, too. We'll have to take a long look at how we use power. More fresh foods, with canning, smoking, and dehydrating instead of freezing. Manually washing clothes and line drying. There are some really good manual washers on the market. This is very different than what we're used to, but doable.
Each of the current adult members of the community have decent jobs. I'm trying to think how we'd structure the community finances. For this to community to be viable, we would need a non-insignificant number of people working on the land. Those people need to be paid, too. And we'd need to have income streams that come from those workers, too. I'm not sure who might take on the job of financial officer. It sounds horribly thankless. But what it comes to is that the people who have outside jobs will have to pay some kind of mortgage that would pay for the land, the taxes, the reserve fund, and paying the people who do the land work.
For example, just pulling a number out of the air, say we need 100 hrs/wk of land work - taking care of orchards, gardens, bees, livestock, and forest management. Let's say each of those hours will cost $20 plus the farm worker gets a pass on having to pay into the mortgage, so free housing. That's $2000/wk that the outside workers would have to pay. If we have 10 community members that have outside jobs, they'd pay $200/wk each, plus another $100/wk for land mortgage/taxes/reserve fund. On top of that, they'd be paying on their building loan, transportation, clothing, healthcare, entertainment. But, let's say I decide to work 10 hours for the community over my days off. Then I also get paid $200, which would offset what I'll owe. This would encourage community members to do the work the land requires, but does not require them to. They can pay someone else to do the work.
If we have four neighborhoods, each of those neighborhoods could have a designated Forest and Farm Manager whose job would be to not only manage the individual neighborhood orchards, gardens, and livestock, but also coordinate with the other managers for big jobs, like harvest time, taking down trees, building and maintenance.
Outward facing, we're looking at developing some type of public venue - camping, retreat, wedding. We'd need to put in water/sewer/power/wifi for this, too. It's possible that we could sell fruit/veg, eggs, meat, milk, butter in some kind of CSA, or rather sell to the local food co-op. There's not much money to be made with that, though. We wouldn't be producing enough volume. Organic honey has possibilities.
Feel free to share and critique. The more ideas I get the better!
To be viable, this community needs infrastructure - power, wifi, water, sewer
Inward facing, we are visualizing "neighborhoods" within the forest, groups of four to six families. Each neighborhood would have it's own well and septic/drainage field. A central greathouse would act as community center and town hall, where we'd meet, share weekly meals, plan.
We're looking at wood fired boilers that would bring heat and hot water to the homes. Wifi would have to be satallite. Power would be multi-layered and I think we'll depend on solar, wind, and water, too. We'll have to take a long look at how we use power. More fresh foods, with canning, smoking, and dehydrating instead of freezing. Manually washing clothes and line drying. There are some really good manual washers on the market. This is very different than what we're used to, but doable.
Each of the current adult members of the community have decent jobs. I'm trying to think how we'd structure the community finances. For this to community to be viable, we would need a non-insignificant number of people working on the land. Those people need to be paid, too. And we'd need to have income streams that come from those workers, too. I'm not sure who might take on the job of financial officer. It sounds horribly thankless. But what it comes to is that the people who have outside jobs will have to pay some kind of mortgage that would pay for the land, the taxes, the reserve fund, and paying the people who do the land work.
For example, just pulling a number out of the air, say we need 100 hrs/wk of land work - taking care of orchards, gardens, bees, livestock, and forest management. Let's say each of those hours will cost $20 plus the farm worker gets a pass on having to pay into the mortgage, so free housing. That's $2000/wk that the outside workers would have to pay. If we have 10 community members that have outside jobs, they'd pay $200/wk each, plus another $100/wk for land mortgage/taxes/reserve fund. On top of that, they'd be paying on their building loan, transportation, clothing, healthcare, entertainment. But, let's say I decide to work 10 hours for the community over my days off. Then I also get paid $200, which would offset what I'll owe. This would encourage community members to do the work the land requires, but does not require them to. They can pay someone else to do the work.
If we have four neighborhoods, each of those neighborhoods could have a designated Forest and Farm Manager whose job would be to not only manage the individual neighborhood orchards, gardens, and livestock, but also coordinate with the other managers for big jobs, like harvest time, taking down trees, building and maintenance.
Outward facing, we're looking at developing some type of public venue - camping, retreat, wedding. We'd need to put in water/sewer/power/wifi for this, too. It's possible that we could sell fruit/veg, eggs, meat, milk, butter in some kind of CSA, or rather sell to the local food co-op. There's not much money to be made with that, though. We wouldn't be producing enough volume. Organic honey has possibilities.
Feel free to share and critique. The more ideas I get the better!
