Jubilee Cohousing A month after heavy equipment noisily reshaped a steep landscape into a sloping entrance off Needmore Lane, we ceremoniously strung up the “Future Home of Jubilee! Cohousing” banner, in its well-built wooden frame. That satisfying June day in 2012 heralded an explosion of activity for members of our forming community. In the five years since first sowing the seeds of this cohousing dream, many invisible things had come to pass toward our goal, but here, at last, was one for the world to see. Jubilee! exists, the banner announces, a neighborhood being created by its members! In the America of my childhood, neighborhoods were often the heart and refuge of family life; the out-of-doors was for exploring imaginatively by one’s self or with neighbor children, and whichever adults were on hand watched and listened discretely, and intervened (when necessary) judiciously. Everybody knew everybody else in the neighborhood. Kids had enough pals to make sandlot ball teams, play capture the flag and kick the can. Families cookedout together on summer weekends, hosted sleep-overs, and pitched in when someone had a baby, or was sick or bereaved. In our neighborhood one family worked out ways to share their pool, declaring certain days private days and other days open through use of a signal flag. This is the very idea behind cohousing, particularly comforting in the midst of the various types of scary climate change we’ve seen since the last century. There are about 130 cohousing communities operating in this country, and they demonstrate a keen ability to re-create the more functional and fun aspects of neighborhood life from the 1950’s, while at the same time be on the cutting edge of ecoconsciousness by addressing the questions of— how to reduce consumption, reuse materials and recycle extensively as a community. For example, our plan for being a Passivhaus cohousing neighborhood skillfully addresses concerns for our environment and our economy. Passivhaus construction, used for years in Europe, claims up to 90% less energy use for great overall energy savings, and lower carbon emissions. The technology of the construction won’t limit the design of the homes. In fact, we anticipate with great excitement the fun of soon collaborating as a group to design our homes and neighborhood. My particular passion, though, is for the people part of the community; the bonding, trust building, creative problem-solving, cooperative decision-making, and all the wonderful excuses for life celebrations.
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As a group, founding members of Jubilee! are committed to a neighborhood that will be both kid-friendly and elder-friendly, made of thirty or so homes that will be built closely clustered, designed to accommodate aging in place, and with cars kept to the periphery. Reaching out to my Jubilee! friends to offer or ask for, light assistance will be easy because they’ll be just a stone’s throw away. We will be able to catch up with each other’s news when we collect our mail or share a meal at the Common House, or when out on the paths. It’ll be simple to find a walking buddy, or make up a carpool to town. In the months since the entrance sign first went up, Jubilee! members have had some more big visible firsts. In July we held our first members retreat on the thirtyeight acre property, camping out under the stars, complete with campfire and s’mores. In October, we hosted our first Explore the Land event, offering hikes, hay rides, children’s Halloween activities and refreshments. We are currently crowing about having published our website. Some of us Jubileers are now training as facilitators. Students from several states gather for four-day weekends of intensive study and practice facilitating in communities in North Carolina and Virginia. This training is stoking a perennial fire in me; to empower myself and others through a variety of processes. We get to work with other communities who use consensus, the same group decisionmaking process that Jubilee! uses, a process that seeks the consent of all participants. Watching other communities function, we can see into Jubilee’s future too. In one group, we glimpse communication challenges that will inevitably come up. In another, how older community members hand off responsibilities to younger ones. We see the results of reins held too tight, or too loosely. I love what we’re learning, because it fits with our values of interdependence, and developing deep respect for individual views and needs. It jibes with our desire to replace competition with cooperation. It’s real. And it feels really fitting for twentyfirst century Floyd. Story by Rosemary Wyman, who works in Floyd County providing education, consulting and hands-on caregiving services related to end of life. She and her husband, Walter Charnley, are founding members of Floyd Cohousing, LLC, and Jubilee!, an intentional neighborhood being created by its members.
Spring/Summer 2013